Here's a study that tried to figure out other possibly optimal keyboard layouts (given lots of explicit assumptions): http://arcavia.com/kyle/Projects/Programm

Here's a study that tried to figure out other possibly optimal keyboard layouts (given lots of explicit assumptions): http://arcavia.com/kyle/Projects/ProgrammerKeyboard.html http://arcavia.com/kyle/Projects/ProgrammerKeyboard.html "This was a humongous waste of time. The program to do the analysis is about 700 lines of code, and went though about 3 iterations. I am most disappointed by the lack of benefit offered by a more efficient layout; even when considering a purely optimized layout you only get 21% savings over Qwerty." Of course, there are other ways we could change keyboards. For example, accepting even more data from your digits could be a useful avenue to explore. 20% improvements are not that spectacular, maybe there's a contraption that is conceptually like a keyboard but is 10x faster (so 12 cps -> 120 cps?). Alternatively, plover. but then custom dictionaries and bleh..