The QWERTY layout was specifically designed to reduce coding speed because typewriters used to jam if people typed too quickly
The alternate... Well we do have one, its called Dvorak
Many people have switched to Dvorak one of several desperate measures to attempt to reduce the pain of coding. Your fingers travel roughly 16 miles in an average eight-hour workday.
The theory behind Dvorak is that the keys are supposed to be arranged in such a way that letters that occur with higher frequency in the English language are on the home row and under stronger fingers. For example, the letter e is under the left middle finger.
The goal is that your fingers would travel less during the course of typing, ideally reducing occurrences of repetitive stress injury, while also increasing typing speed and comfort.
Does it succeed? Hard to say.
If you can type faster with this layout, and you still work 8 hours a day, your fingers might end up traveling just as much
What keeps it interesting is that you can type on a physical QWERTY keyboard, but use the Dvorak keyboard layout by switching your Input Language setting within the Regional and Language Control Panel applet.
While learning Dvorak, one may have to totally give into it, which meant productivity may dive for a short while. One can always pick up slow time at work and all it takes is a couple of weeks to get up to a decent speed.
