I worked with a programmer in his 40s who hunt and pecked. A generous estimate of his speed would be 10 wpm. He would always yell back at anyone critiquing his typing: Think more, type less.

He was one of the better programmers on the team. Whether this was because he was forced to make good decisions to limit the amount of code on the screen or not, who knows. I think the only critique I had was that his comments were... a little lacking.

Alternative keyboard layouts are not only about speed. It is also more comfortable. Your fingers are traveling only half the distance compared to traditional layouts.