Ask HN: How do you deal with cold fingertips when you code?

> Absurdly enough, the room temperature doesn't have much to do with it, because the air condition is working at full throttle and my room is close to 80-82 Fahrenheit most of the time.

Airconditioning, open windows, or bad isolation can cause an un undesired airflow.

> The doctor told me that it's called Raynaud's phenomenon and that I'll have to figure out ways to deal with it.

Wait, your doctor did not tell you how to deal with this? You're not paying anyone here for medical advice.

For people who work behind a desk for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week I recommend the following:

First of all, regular physical exercise. Its obvious but it has to be stated, and its even more so important if you don't do physical labour.

Second, for office work the following advice (in no particular order: based on own experience, pomodoro techninque, plus local laws concerning this type of work): put an alarm on your smartphone or watch or equivalent device, set it to one hour. Every time the alarm goes off, you take a walk and do some stretches, total of min 3 up to 5 min (more will cause drama with coworkers and/or boss). If someone complains, you tell them that smokers get to smoke in the bosses time (thereby having a walk, good for their blood circulation; smoking itself obviously isn't good for blood circulation and if you do quit ASAP; consult your M.D. for aid) and you need a small walk to keep your blood circulation going. (Of course, you could also try to plan meetings or grabbing a coffee together with your walk & stretch, tho I don't recommend 6+ coffee during 8 hours of work.) During this downtime, you can think of whatever comes up in your mind. It is actually rather likely that more often than not you get inspiration during your downtime, but that is a useful byproduct not the main goal (this is called the diffused mode of thinking). Oh, and if someone laughs at you, know that when you're both elder you're the one who's laughing because you cared about your physical health throughout your working career. I mentioned this is partly based on pomodoro technique. Its a variation on it. If you're self employed, I actually recommend the pomodoro technique itself (ie. traditional pomodoro is 25 minutes of focus, with a 5 min break, and after 2 hours, a longer break (there are variations, worth looking into this further)). But if you're working for a boss or in a team then a small break after 25 minutes of focus is frowned upon. I believe its a productivity loss, but this is the way the status quo of work force generally thinks, sadly. There's some excellent pomodoro apps available for macOS, Android, iOS and surely also for other OSes and platforms. Like I said, alarm apps also work.

Sweden here. Put on a hat if your hands or feet go cold.

Generally cold fingers are from poor circulation. Living in Colorado where a few months of the year we get very cold weather so I have learned a few tricks about cold hands (from Snowboarding to Programming I've experienced cold hands almost everywhere).

One awesome thing my work did for me was brought in a hand massage specialist who taught me several stretching techniques for the hand that help increase blood flow which in turn helps keep them much warmer.

Check out the the following page [1], it has pictures and descriptions that teach great stretches. Not only is it good for circulation it's good to just do this in general to prevent other common problems that stem from lack of stretching.

side note stretching has been a real game changer for my programming. Not only does it make me feel more energized, the stretching seems to have increased my work ethics by a lot because I feel more energized to be that team player.

[1] http://www.toc.md/exercises_wristhand.htm

If this doesn't help just grab a desk USB hand warmer and that should be able to help when your hands aren't feeling so nice (as mentioned by other users in this).

edit Also wanted to mention after thinking a bit more and the hands, feet, and head are the places you lose the most amount of body heat from. I wear a hat while programming so possibly having one at your desk may also help keep in more heat? Just a thought, doubtful this is the root of the issue for ya though.

It's Raynaud's, not "poor exercise routine leads to poor circulation and OP just needs a pep talk" itis. Raynaud's is not a disease of the blood not moving due to being sedentary; it arises from arterial spasms that cut off blood flow. To your point, exercise to improve circulation is indeed often prescribed to mitigate the attacks of Raynaud's, but they won't "completely go away," and that's a bummer of a thing to say to someone with a chronic, uncurable disease that you feel you understand.

A number of people doing that in this thread, by the way, not just you. Raynaud's can be quite aggressive, painful, and limiting to the sufferer's quality of life, including the onset of gangrene and the threat of digit loss in particularly extreme cases. I also see people condescendingly do this to those afflicted in my family -- your fingers get cold? That's easy to fix. Come run with me!

Not how Raynaud's works. Exercise? Good suggestion. Will cure the problem in a week? Google Raynaud's.

Standup frequently and wear USB warming gloves. Seriously!