Most of the fast guitar riff/shred technique involve same hand action, hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides. These compound notes could be picked individually but it's much easier to use same hand action, as its faster than the coordination between hands.
Consider the following example... try tapping your fingers on the desk, evenly and controlled, as fast as you can, and you'll find that you will hit with your pinky, then same hand ring, middle and index, and then switch hand and do the same on the other side. In my personal opinion this feels very similar to the same-hand inward rolls that are common in Colemak, and a large part of the fun and pleasure of using it.

Programming wise, I think there has been some study done on character occurances in different languages, but very little that I can find which also include the keystrokes required to edit (a huge amount of moving the cursor, cutting, pasting, jumping words and to/from parenthesis, etc). This kind of action is not visible in the final finished code but does account for a sizeable percentage of the keystrokes made. Probably high enough to warrant moving some of the letters away from the bottom row, if you ask me.. and it's entirely overlooked in the majority of studies. The vi editor puts the cursor movement right under your fingers on the home row, and this is the single best shortcut I've ever come across when programming. I went as far as to add a modifier key so I always have the cursor keys there, even in other apps. Love it!

Lastly, dvorak put L and S on the same pinky finger, making it brutally hard on unix users. It might be scientifically designed by a professional, but typing back in the 30's wasn't exactly the same as it is today.

I was looking for the same thing and found only Xah Lee's Emacs command frequency table. I'd be very interested if you found any others?

How long have you used Colemak, since you only said "for some time"? And how long have you used Dvorak before that? And how long have you touch typed Qwerty before switching the first time (if at all)?

Sorry if you've answered these earlier, I don't remember :)

Yes, this is the reason why Dvorak seems easier to learn than Colemak. Colemak's learning accessibility is due to its similarity with Qwerty, so any Qwerty touch typist finds it much easier to learn than many alternatives. Dvorak is designed to be easy to learn considering the learner isn't already a Qwerty touch typist, so its fair to think it's easier to learn than Colemak for newcomers to touch typing.

I can only help you with my own experience. I touch typed Qwerty for only half a year before deciding to switch to Dvorak. I used that for a couple of months and reached my Qwerty touch typing speed, which even though wasn't my max.possible, still was faster than my previous way of typing. Then I switched to Colemak and saw a progress exactly twice as fast as the one with Dvorak. These days (two years with Colemak) I type with about double my speed of that time.

My conclusion from that is that both Dvorak and Colemak can feel great, once you get used to them – yes, I did love the feeling of typing on Dvorak. But I also love the one with Colemak, they're just very different. I see how Dvorak would be more pleasing for you, given that you haven't touch typed before and it's got higher hand alternation. Colemak requires a little bit better finger coordination and... independence if I could call it that. But once you get used to it, it definitely isn't something you'd find slowing you down or reducing your comfort. On the contrary – the finger rolls, which so many of the words use, are a pleasure to type. Some of them even feel awkward in the beginning (YOU, -ION...) but I love them now. Typing with completely relaxed fingers feels like rolling my fingers on the table most of the time – so effortless.

I'm not trying to bash either layout. Each has advantages. My personal opinion is that Dvorak's only advantage is its high hand alternation, which certainly isn't bad, but the finger rolls on Colemak are such delight to use, that I'm not sure which is preferable (for me). On the other hand Colemak has many other advantages, which I don't think I need to go into. And some of them are also dependent on how one uses the layout – shortcuts, type of software used, text typed, etc.

Hope that was helpful and not very boring.

PS: And, of course, my advice to you: Since you're new to touch typing, give it a bit more time. I know how that sounds but I think it'll grow on you. Type Colemak for at least two months. Reach a good speed, you're happy with. Then, if you still have your doubts, try Dvorak. If one thing is certain, it is that you're the best judge on what's best for you. If you're looking for a good layout in the long term, maybe it's worth it to try both and choose the one, better for you.

PS2: I just checked the thread's OP and remembered it. Most of the stuff I mentioned were already talked about, so sorry for the probably longer post than needed, but my point stays the same :)

Once again, pafkata makes excellent points! If I had a post-of-the-month award to hand out...

I concur that Dvorak might be easier to learn for a "non-QWERTY" typist (that is, one not used to touch typing QWERTY and not overly familiar with the layout beforehand).

If I may add one little thing beyond the learning and shortcut issues, it's layout switching. I find it easier to go back and forth between the occasional QWERTY board I have to use and my Colemak machines, than I did when using Dvorak. I've heard people theorize that it could be an advantage to use very different layouts because then your brain can "keep them in separate drawers" whereas two similar layouts might get mixed up more easily, but I myself don't hold to that. I find it comfortable that only 17 keys are different instead of nearly twice as many.

And yeah, I too would advise you to take into account that you've been changing back and forth and probably are confused as hell right now. ;)

Perhaps you have replied this before but don't you play any typing games or tests? Which ones?

Thanks for the words guys.

And this is a good advice – try increasing your accuracy with a tutor, typing difficult words or random characters. Anybody would be frustrated to type any layout if he has to bother with fixing mistakes too often. I (and probably almost everybody) started really enjoying Colemak only after achieving decent accuracy.

Yes, switching layout is similar to jumping off a cliff. You cannot look back, i.e. looking at the keys while learning to touch type.

Only brave and fearless members should apply.

And it's useless to drive with one foot on a Ford (Qwerty) and another foot on a BMW (Colemak). You cannot run doubly faster that way.

What do you mean by point 2? I didn't understand you there.

After you get comfortable with the positions of the letters, you'll start enjoying it much more, I'm sure. It's important to feel the progress, so that's good :)

Yeah by number 2, I think he means that the B (Qwerty) is inline with the naval.  Which means the keyboard is directly in front of you rather than off centre to the left.  Mousing on the right with the numpad, might make you sweep the whole keyboard left a little.

@knightjp, I'm still intrigued by the shortcut issue.  Can you spell out those shortcuts that you'd miss please.

Aha, I guess I wanted to work out which you were desperate to keep on one hand.  I get that you could be mousing with the right, and want to use Z X C V and perhaps the A, but I wouldn't have thought the others mattered.

Not having some game keys is more of an issue for me than the above shortcuts, as they tend to be ordered around WASD.   When gaming, rather than remapping I switch the layout back to Qwerty, but that pretty much rules out any in-game typing for me (not that I game much).

Z X C V is pretty much it. I know that it is not the best reason, but its something that plays an important part of an advanced PC user's day. Admin staff in our office use it a lot. I never thought that I would miss it until I didn't have it anymore. Finding out that I can have my cake and eat it too with Colemak, kinda seals the deal. But we rebels always like the challenge, hence being drawn back to dvorak.

pinkyache: I'm kinda intrigued that as to why you have not switched to Colemak. Is it because of the difficulty to switch after using Dvorak for so long? Or something else.. ?