I don’t even think that learning a new layout is the dealbreaker. I think the dealbreaker is that, no matter how you work, you will occasionally need to use a c

I don’t even think that learning a new layout is the dealbreaker. I think the dealbreaker is that, no matter how you work, you will occasionally need to use a computer with a standard keyboard layout. It may not be very often at all (the last time I used a random computer was an on-site programming interview with the company’s PC, and that was a text editing disaster despite my familiarity with QWERTY, though I still got an offer), but it’s probably often enough that it’s not worth the small potential gains of another keyboard layout. Of course, now that I present that argument, I realize it could be applied to text editors shortcuts and plugins, which I have customized extensively on all my main development machines. That said, I almost never do any significant coding on random machines, so the cost/benefit analysis might work out in my favor (I certainly behave as if it does). I also remap all my Caps Lock physical keys to Control/Command, which is pretty common among programmers but very rare among non-programmers. That’s another case where my gut says that the small rare inconveniences of using random computers are outweighed by my regular productivity increases. However, I don’t have any actual data on this, so it turns out my argument in the first paragraph of this comment is really just a guess. I do intuitively feel like QWERTY to Dvorak is a much more significant alteration than Caps Lock to Ctrl or some customized hotkeys in my text editor of choice.