> I went ahead and tried it out and soon enough after doing “ls -latr” on the terminal, I had to shake my head and sadly walk away from it. I didnt like the way Dvorak was laid out especially for the weak fingers of the right hand.
Of course it's going to feel awkward. The name "ls" was picked because it was easy to type on qwerty keyboards. Many Dvorak users get around this issue by creating an alias.
The author then shows off some metrics attesting to the superiority of his keyboard layout. The stats are put in a ridiculous light. A 2.3% reduction in finger travel is touted as "69,600 cm" or "34,000 less keystrokes".
Keyboard layouts are full of trade-offs. I don't know if the author realizes which trade-offs he's made, but it looks to me that he's optimized for finger travel distance at the expense of overall comfort and typing speed. Let me explain.
Compared to Colemak and Dvorak, the Workman layout reduces hand alternation. The idea behind hand alternation is to maximize typing speed. A finger on the left hand can strike a key while the right hand moves into position for the next key. If a keyboard layout doesn't encourage hand alternation, then one hand will sit idle while the other types multiple letters. Unless the letters are a rollover combo, such one-handed typing will be slower. Also: Compared to Colemak and Dvorak, the Workman layout increases keystrokes on the bottom row. The more you have to use the bottom row, the slower and less comfortable typing becomes.
Lastly, the improvements are negligible. Workman is 2-5% better than Dvorak and Colemak in the metrics that the author strove to optimize. If there are any important metrics that he didn't consider (and I think that's the case), his layout is almost certainly not better.
The lesson to draw from all this is: Use whatever keyboard layout you like, with the exception of qwerty. Qwerty is objectively terrible.