If ergonomy and/or speed are your only concerns, then there's no point. Or if you can't be bothered - Dvorak is a good layout so I don't think anyone will be worse off for sticking to it. Furthermore, my switch from Dvorak to Colemak wasn't too easy: Colemak is designed to be easier to switch to than Dvorak and other layouts that move a lot of keys around... from QWERTY. Since the Dvorak layout was in my muscle memory, a lot of keys did have to move around for me to learn Colemak so that's one advantage lost.

I do feel that there are advantages beyond the 'coolness factor' though. Have you read the FAQ's points on this? None of those are major points but they do factor in. I in particular was annoyed by Ctrl-W and Ctrl-V being next to each other so I'd close a browser window instead of pasting into it. Furthermore, I migrate a lot between keyboards in my daily work and each time I can't use my own layout I don't have to think so hard about using QWERTY because it's a lot more similar to my own layout!

Bottom line: If you're really interested, Colemak can be recommended for its advantages even if they are a lot smaller than the advantages over QWERTY. If you're not really really interested, you'll be just fine with Dvorak.

Agreed. And arguably the same speed and much more comfortable typing is found using Colemak.

Agreed.

Indeed, when I learned Dvorak, it was painful because I was not a touch typist. Now that I'm fluent with it, I see that I can try a different layout pretty easily, just sticking a layout image in front of me. Of course, gaining productive speed would require time.

I had only been on Dvorak for like two weeks or so, and I was annoyed by how often I had to press multiple consecutive keys with the same finger.  I pasted several documents that I’d written (there’s one: wr) into that .. uh .. thing on the website .. anyway, and it told me that that phenomenon would be cut in half with Colemak.  So, I decided I still have a month before school starts again, and it only took me two weeks to get comfortable with Dvorak, and it’s worth losing those two weeks to get the best for the rest of my life, and so I went ahead and made the switch!

A bit more to say, but you summed up the most pertinent points there.  ;)

If you're anything like me, Colemak should become more and more comfortable until it's as nice to your hands as Dvorak was - unless my memory of my Dvorak days fails me.

Try using my PKL 'extend' mode a bit as that really helps production! Getting arrow keys and a bunch of other editing tools to the home position has felt very productive to me; a bit like Vim's goodness spreading to the whole GUI (now, if I could only get Windows to understand RegExp...).

On Unix/X11 this is so much easier: select to copy, and middle click to paste.  No switching between mouse and keyboard, no dependency on the keyboard layout, and thank god, no clicking around in context menus. :-)

I fully agree.

I'd say that my main reason for not sticking with Dvorak (aside from those mentioned in the FAQ) is that Dvorak was designed to be used on a typewriter. Colemak had no mechanical limitations to consider and I doubt it can be improved much at all.

I'm no expert.. but I think he means that, things like hand alteration were very important in a typewriter because pressing keys took a LOT of finger strength it practically took the whole arm to strike a key. Its not practical to focus on handrolls on a typewriter, where in a soft touch keyboard, its very important. (hand rolls are typing clusters of letter in one go... things like "one, ast," etc.

I would no doubt argue that Dvorak is hands down the best layout for a typewriter. But for a modern day keyboard, Colemak makes much more sense.

I'm old enough to have had to use a typewriter in school (and what was essentially a typewriter on computer card punch to make cards for creating a computer program to batch submit to a card reader tied to a mainframe). 

Believe me even powered typewriters are quite different than modern computer keyboards.

Copy what you wrote on to this site http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/ & see what you get as the optimum layout.. I did and it came out as Programmer Dvorak.