[imglorp]

The idea is still around; it comes and goes.

Emacs supports them for example. You can buy hardware chorded keyboards like the Bat.

I think the problem is they come with a large learning curve for prose--just imagine learning to touch type again--but then multiply that by a few factors to do programming with all the symbols to be efficient. Ye olde 101 key keyboard is about the fastest thing there is right now, balancing keyboard size and key-to-semantic entropy.

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/KeyChord

http://www.infogrip.com/bat-keyboard.html