Okay, I can roll with this.

I've used QWERTY for 16 years.  Sequences like "SWEATERDRESSES" and "FASTED FADS" and "RECEDED" fell smooth and natural to me (no joke).  A few months ago (before tinkering with multiple layouts), I could average 105 WPM on hi-games and 120 WPM on keybr's random sentences, no warm-up, no problem.  While not world class, it'd be an understatement to say I just "got by."  I could have been perfectly content typing QWERTY for the rest of my life, dismissing those who complained of awkwardness or pain as lazy, inexperienced, poor learners (if they stuck with QWERTY anyway), rebels without a clue (if they switched), too old, etc.  (And I did for most of that 16 years.)

Clearly, since I have *16* years of experience with QWERTY--far more than anyone could possibly have with Colemak (and some of them can have opinions about that layout!)--that means I'm right!  QWERTY must be smooth and comfortable to type on, because it is for me and I have so much experience to back me up!  If you have a comparable length of experience and disagree, that just means you practiced wrong, or are rationalizing, or for some other reason aren't as good as me.  :P

Or MAYBE, maybe it's that experience actually HIDES flaws from us!  Maybe we get so used to those flaws and working around them that we become blind to them!  Maybe our first impression is MORE accurate than our 365th impression because it's pure--untainted by habit (and other, less flattering mechanisms).  Stuff like "you did not spend sufficient time to allow your motor skills and muscles to get accustomed" reads exactly to me like "just get used to the awkwardness and you won't notice it anymore!"  Yeah, no kidding, I did exactly that with QWERTY.  Do you really think that means the awkwardness doesn't exist?

Ever been writing the same paper for days and days, see it as grammatically flawless, and then hand it to someone to proofread and they find something like a repeated word in in the first sentence?  (Ahem.)  Same phenomenon.  I'm sure the C and Java coders among us have stared at the same piece of buggy code for hours, seeing nothing but flawless code, yet when we hand the code to someone else, it turns out the bug was a comma instead of a semicolon, or missing braces on an if-statement (which was "properly indented"), or something of that nature.  Same phenomenon.  Ever see one of those parents in the supermarket with an unbearable child, yet the parent seems completely oblivious to it?  Same thing.  Ever hear a crappy song on the radio that you found yourself humming after the 50th time you heard it?  Same.  Was there ever some food or beverage you hated at first, but were forced (or forced yourself) to eat or drink, and you eventually developed a taste for it?  Same.  Been stuck some place with a horrible smell and eventually be unable to smell it?  Same.  Guess why companies spend millions of dollars to keep telling you day after day about their products.  I mean, you heard them the first time, right?

Familiarity breeds acceptance.

Just something to think about.

EDIT:  I acknowledge that further experience can REFINE one's opinions (e.g., adding new insights, exceptions to rules, etc.).  What I do not accept is that one's first impression OF FLAWS is always wrong because those flaws tend to "disappear" with experience.  As a rule of thumb, flaws ALWAYS tend to "disappear" with experience, because we get used to them and learn to ignore them (or, in some cases, even admire them).

I hadn't really thought of it that way, but you make a good point. I know practice makes perfect, I never thought practice makes blind... However, while agreeing, I would like to temper what you are saying a little.

Some things that feel uncomfortable may not actually be flaws. For someone new to touch typing everything will feel uncomfortable. Eventually people get used to it and it's now comfortable, but that doesn't mean that every movement is flawed. If a layout contains technique that you are not used to, such as a heavier pinky load, that may or may not be an actual flaw. Note: May or may not be; I believe Shai for instance thinks Dvorak loads the pinkies too much. Other people have no problems with it.

It's a bit like your taste example; If you acquire a taste and now like it, does the food taste bad except you are now oblivious to it? I would say not; You got used to it and now the food tastes good. Other situations will be more analogous to the screaming baby example - they truly are flaws that you have now tuned out.

It follows that when you pick up a new layout, you will naturally be using the techniques you are used to from your qwerty typing. That means you are implicitly comparing the layout to "difference to qwerty technique". Flaws in the layout that are the same as for qwerty will not stick out as badly as the ones that aren't present in qwerty.

As I've said many times, it's still perfectly legit to quickly evaluate which layout suits you best. So what if it happens to be the one that allows you to employ your qwerty technique instead of starting over? But if you want to opine on flaws, you will be doing so from a precariously subjective position unless you give each layout more time.

One last question. If qwerty is perfectly comfortable, why bother switching? You probably won't beat the speed of qwerty, and you can't beat perfectly comfortable in the comfort department either. After all, the proof is in the pudding - perhaps for you qwerty is a good layout.

Phynnboi already said he thinks Colemak is better than QWERTY. So if the "Colemak hype" makes more people switch to a better layout that's a good thing. And that was Shai's goal after all.

Phynnboi, placing not-so-common letters on the home row under the pinkies, as you do in your "Colemak competitor", increases same-finger digraphs (you have oi, ge, ce, ec). So you too don't mind same-finger digraphs that much? Because if you want to reduce them people really need to train their pinkies and use them even though it may feel awkward. Shai thought same-finger digraphs slowed him down the most.

bsdhacker, maybe you don't mind, but placing the apostrophe there makes n't and 's not very comfortable to type. I think the semicolon needs to be on the left (as it is in your layout), because for programmers the semicolon is usually followed by Enter.