Colemak is designed so that the most frequent letters are the easiest to type.
And it leaves several letters right where they have always been in QWERTY so its way easier to learn than Dvorak. Dvorak completely rearranges everything.
Colemak is friendly because it leaves zxcv where they have always been so that your cut/copy/paste shortcuts still work as always.
If u r one of those ppl looking to increase typing speed and avoid RSI, Tendonitis, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome etc. then it is great and a lot of ppl use it.
More and more keyboards are coming out that have built in support for Colemak that way u can use Colemak even on some weird computer that does not let you adjust your keyboard layout.
I'm in tooooo much pain to learn a new layout. But if I was going to learn a new layout I would NOT do Dvorak. I would use Colemak.
Yea. But why would they place the P and the F so close together? It just doesn't make sense. I don't think I could write one clear sentence when some of the most commonly used letters are so close together. The Y also seems weirdly placed. I don't really feel comfortable hitting it with any other finger but my middle one (which I can comfortably do on the QWERTZ layout I'm using for all my English typing needs).
As for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
I'm a programmer by trade and have yet to suffer it.
IMHO, the solution isn't a new layout but a new typing technique.
Upon close examination, my typing technique could be called "8 fingers" and is pretty comfortable (pretty efficient as well, since I can type a total of 500 character/minute just fine.)