Your wrists might fare better in the long term, and overall your typing experience would be more pleasant, so there are some advantages. I'm learning python at the same time as programmer dvorak currently, and I see them as entirely separate, but complementary, pursuits. I'm getting fed up with qwerty, especially because I need to write french, english and code, which don't gel well together on the canadian english keyboard that I'm used to. Punctuation is a nightmare for coding, and it's full of dead keys.

Compare this

to this.

and tell me which might be better long term for ergonomics and sanity? Every time I want to use brackets and braces, I have to shift my right hand to the right alt key and press the keys next to Enter. Ergomonic nightmare and slows me down a lot. All because they crammed all of the accents in the top right, and they're all dead keys. Sigh.

It'll take me a while to get back to 100 wpm (I was in the middle of learn to touch type qwerty, and it clicked how dumb it was.

I'm getting an ErgoDox soon, and I plan to use a slightly tweaked programmer's dvorak. I've heard of using semicolon as a dead key, which is ingenious. I'll have to read into it, but essentially, if you press semicolon, it doesn't print until you put a space bar. You could type another key after, and it will print the accented key. Doesn't even have to be related to the character you pressed.

examples:

;n = ñ

;e = é

;h = â

I say go for it if you want to, but don't expect it to make you a better programmer.

A cooler one, with healthier wrists, an awesome keyboard, and a more enjoyable typing experience in the long term, yes!

Let me know how it goes, or how it went (whoa, sorry for ressurecting an ancient post! I searched from programmer dvorak, trying to find fellow pilgrims). If you've learned some handy info, I'm all eyes! We are quite few.