> on both US QWERTY and Colemak when you constantly type [];:{}| and so on, your pinky has to reach over to do it. At least for me that meant contorting my hand a bit to reach over. On my split keyboard all the symbols are behind a layer on the home row, and I barely use the pinky for anything, which fixes the issue.
On a completely standard rectangular-block keyboard, I don't use pinkies to type. Actually, I do use my left pinky to hit left shift. But that's it.
There is a subset of split keyboard layouts which solve for this by moving the modifiers to the thumb area, which is often void when a keyboard is split. Quite a pleasure to use and has much less buy-in than QWERTY alternatives.
Maybe my hands are small, but to type []|\+= and not use my pinky I would either have to move my entire hand over or contort it even more to use my ring finger
On a completely standard rectangular-block keyboard, I don't use pinkies to type. Actually, I do use my left pinky to hit left shift. But that's it.