I have both an Ergodox and a Ferris which are both now gathering dust. In my experience, columnar layouts are not worth it for me as a developer, because there is nothing that I can gain from a layout that changes the position of the {};'<>() keys that will ever offset the productivity and familiarity lost by those keys never being where I expect them to be.
I feel like it took a month to get fully used to and then I haven’t looked back. I did have an RSI motivation.
Are you able to switch back and forth between staggered and columnar?
Yes. Without even thinking about it.
So what do you use Kanata for if you don't mind the question?
I have a bunch of home row mods, and I also have layers with dedicated app-specific utility-mappings that I have automatically toggle on when the relevant app window is focused so that I don't have to waste extra keys to toggle/switch between different layers.
Designing a symbol specific layer[1] that includes all the symbols without needing to shift the keys made programming much more pleasant for me. It took a bit of getting used to but since programming and typing symbols is something we do quite frequently during the day, the brain gets used to it rather quickly.
[1] https://configure.zsa.io/ergodox-ez/layouts/v56OO/latest/10
I tried to change the keyboard layout to a more "ergonomic" layout (optimot), but after months of training, I could never gain the proficiency I have in AZERTY. I think it's not worth it to switch.