I'll address your points one by one. First off, programming does not involve that much typing, even technical writing is very doable with normal qwerty at 100wp

I'll address your points one by one. First off, programming does not involve that much typing, even technical writing is very doable with normal qwerty at 100wpm or so. You only see people using chorded keyboards in fields that involve typing with very little thinking, such as court stenographers. Typing is not the bottleneck for most of us. As for discussing and buying exotic stuff - that is a vocal minority of engineers. You do not need a fancy mechanical keyboard or 10 years of VIM experience to do your job. Very few people 3D print their own keyboards! Finally, unlike dvorak or colemak (which are pretty rarely adopted in themselves), tiling window managers or any other form of 'opinionated optimisation' - these things require hardware. They're in the same category as vertical mice. No matter how much better they are, it's going to take a lot more effort to a) buy the hardware and b) insist on having the hardware with you everywhere you go. For most people in most configurations, that bar is too high. I didn't see you mention RSI or other wrist problems. The one way chorded keyboards might become popular is if we have a large number of engineers end up with severe wrist problems in the course of their normal job. Then you'd definitely see a surge in interest for alternate typing methods. But so far it seems only a minority of engineers end up with these problems.