Actually I think you are totally out with regard to keyboards. Especially if you are a professional programmer and don't have specific medical reasons for avoiding Qwerty keyboards. The advantage of being able to use any machine at close to your normal typing speed is pretty clear. Sure Qwerty sucks, sure its designed to slow your typing down, but its the most common keyboard layout by far and if you cant type at touch-typing speeds on one then you are at a competitive disadvantage if you move from job to job. Many establishments have rules prohibiting the use of non-standard equipement so bringing your own wont really help.

I speak with a bit of expeience with this as I normally type on a UK layout keyboard, but I live in Germany where the layout is different, I used to even have a US keboard at home and UK at work but that just made things worse. I mistyped so often it wasnt funny. So now ive standardized on the UK layout. This puts me at a disadvantage when I use a colleagues machine or help someone out on their box. I can just imagine how much worse it would be if I didnt use a Qwerty variant.

Incidentally, I find that from an ergonomic POV German keyboards really suck for programming, and suck for programming perl even worse. The fact that all braces/brackets have to be typed with the right hand while the right thumb is pressing the alt-gr key is a total nightmare. It wouldnt suprise me if German coders (and other non-english coders with similar layouts) have above average (compared to english/american coders) levels of stuff like carpel tunnel and RSI.