[libdong]

I've always wonder why Norman, Dvorak etc. preform so much better than qwerty by most metrics, but real-world studies showing that much of a difference are rather lacking.

I can imagine it must be hard to design a good study comparing them when almost everyone uses qwerty.

[hashhar]

I don't think the gains are manifested as speed. They come as better ergonomics. Try this tool [1] to see how different layouts compare.

[1]: http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/#/main

[teilo]

There is no speed advantage. The anecdotal evidence saying otherwise has nothing to do with the layout, but with the effort put into learning to type properly. The rest is confirmation bias.