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What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

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Re: What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

#41

Post by stevekemp »

tcoff91 wrote: post #28
csallen wrote: post #25

This story resonates. A few years back I was dealing with mild pain while coding. I stupidly ignored it for months as it got significantly worse, to the point where it became impossible to type for extended periods. I tried lots of things. My doctor did a nerve conduction study, which apparently ruled out carpal tunnel syndrome, but he wasn't much help beyond that. He gave me some straps that I slept in and wore arou…

Try doing some rock climbing either outdoors or at the rock gym. Fixed my hand pain real quick.

In my case too much bouldering caused forearm pain that lasted for two years. Didn't stop me from typing, but it did have a significant impact on my daily life :/

Re: What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

#42

Post by armada651 »

arkades wrote: post #31
neltnerb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this has happened to several family members in the US, though thankfully mine was diagnosed properly because I could point to family history. Initially they wanted to write it off to migraines (I can't blame them since it's more common and can have similar symptoms at first) and now nine years later it's painful to use my hands and I've mostly given up martial arts. It would almost certainly be worse if I hadn't…

One of the doctors took them seriously, did a biopsy, and gave them a diagnosis. They did not like their diagnosis because “idiopathic” means “we don’t know what causes this,” which the patient translated as “go the fuck away.” As if all human disease is deeply understood and an admission of ignorance is equivalent to laziness. They then continued going to additional doctors.

> As if all human disease is deeply understood and an admission of ignorance is equivalent to laziness.

People think that there is a pill or operation for whatever ails you, which is simply not true even with modern medicine.

Re: What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

#43

Post by tedunangst »

m12k wrote: post #10

That story of how the doctors just dismissed her pain as delusion is terrifying. Doctors are supposed to be people of science, but one of the very fundamentals of science is to acknowledge that you don't know everything, that your current knowledge is just a theory that can be improved upon. I find there's a tendency among doctors to think they know every possible disease, and if someone comes along with one that doe…

Would it be better if the doctors told patients the condition is idiopathic?

Re: What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

#44

Post by arkades »

armada651 wrote: post #42
arkades wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the doctors took them seriously, did a biopsy, and gave them a diagnosis. They did not like their diagnosis because “idiopathic” means “we don’t know what causes this,” which the patient translated as “go the fuck away.” As if all human disease is deeply understood and an admission of ignorance is equivalent to laziness. They then continued going to additional doctors.

> As if all human disease is deeply understood and an admission of ignorance is equivalent to laziness. People think that there is a pill or operation for whatever ails you, which is simply not true even with modern medicine.

Indeed. Especially in neurology, where the tissue is non-regenerative. Hopefully we can find ways to slow tissue destruction - often we cannot - but that’s a far cry short from reversing it.

Re: What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

#45

Post by sitkack »

I have been lucky to not be impacted by hand or wrist pain. I did experience chronic back pain for years due to a pinched sciatic nerve, it can be debilitating and depressing. Chronic pain is a large precursor to suicide, if you have it, you need to get it fixed.

My interest in this is from a FutureOfProgramming perspective, how can we interact with computers in different, higher order ways. What does the Mother of All Demos [0] look like in 2020?

Travis Rudd, "Coding by Voice" (2013) [1] this uses Dragon in a Windows VM to handle the speech to text. This was the original, "termie slash slap", a kind of Pootie Tang crossed structural editing.

Coding by Voice with Open Source Speech Recognition, from HOPE XI (2016) [2]

Another writeup [3] that outlines Dragon and a project I hadn't heard of called Silvius [4]

It looks like most of these systems rely on Dragon, and Dragon on Windows at that due to not having the extension APIs on Mac/Linux. Are there any efforts to use the Mac's built in STT or the Cloud APIs [5,6]?

[0] Mother of All Demos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

[1a] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI

[1b] https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI?t=510

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRyYIIFKsdU

[3] https://blog.logrocket.com/programming-by-voice-in-2019-3e18...

[4] http://www.voxhub.io/silvius

[5] https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/

[6] https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/

Re: What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

#46

Post by casion »

Fibromyalgia And idiopathic disease are not terms for "go away".

They mean "I've tried what I can think of and theres no further testing we can recommend"

Notably, a positive punch biopsy for small fiber neuropathy IS diagnosis with treatment that works fairly well. Ideopathic simply means that the base cause is unknown.

The author need to educate themselves further about what doctors can do and what words mean. He has a good scientific diagnosis, and he's outright dismissing it based on some misdirected anger.

Re: What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

#47

Post by justaguy500 »

m12k wrote: post #10

That story of how the doctors just dismissed her pain as delusion is terrifying. Doctors are supposed to be people of science, but one of the very fundamentals of science is to acknowledge that you don't know everything, that your current knowledge is just a theory that can be improved upon. I find there's a tendency among doctors to think they know every possible disease, and if someone comes along with one that doe…

I think it's mostly due to the 80-20 rule:

Most(80%) issues doctors encounter are textbook cases with easily visible symptoms that match a known cause.

The remaining 20% consist of rare problems that might be really hard to spot and diagnose.

I'd guess doctors get a lot of unneeded spam visits from the mentally unwell, so it's really easy to get clumped into that same category as them if your problems aren't within that 80%

Re: What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

#48

Post by shakna »

m12k wrote: post #10

That story of how the doctors just dismissed her pain as delusion is terrifying. Doctors are supposed to be people of science, but one of the very fundamentals of science is to acknowledge that you don't know everything, that your current knowledge is just a theory that can be improved upon. I find there's a tendency among doctors to think they know every possible disease, and if someone comes along with one that doe…

Getting a diagnosis when you don't have something easily understood can be an utterly soul destroying process.

I have fibromyalgia. Not as a label stuck to something that can't be understood, but firmly fitting to a disease that isn't yet fully understood. (Yay for me - I have every known symptom at one time or another.)

It took ten years, an enormous amount of pain, two neurologists, three GPs, a psychiatrist and a pain specialist before they were able to nail it down - and now they're able to help.

Unfortunately, there was a tendency to treat it as psychosomatic. Also unfortunately, treating it as psychosomatic promotes behaviours like "pushing through the pain" that are absolutely guaranteed to cause a flare up or major relapse in fibroymalgia.

This kind of story created fear for you. And it should, I'm sorry to say. For the most part, you will suffer alone and without understanding, and it's up to the sufferer to push their story along until they get an answer. I'd wish that process on nobody.

Re: What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

#49

Post by latchkey »

stevekemp wrote: post #41
tcoff91 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try doing some rock climbing either outdoors or at the rock gym. Fixed my hand pain real quick.

In my case too much bouldering caused forearm pain that lasted for two years. Didn't stop me from typing, but it did have a significant impact on my daily life :/

I also suffered from hand pain from typing and took up climbing both inside and a bit of outside for a good 8 years solid.

I found bouldering to be way more intense than just top rope (eventually getting into lead) climbing. Most of my hand/arm injuries were from bouldering.

I concur with the previous response though... climbing, done well and not over doing it... was the 100% solution to my pain problem.

Sitting and typing all day, you lose muscle and strength, not just in your hands, but your arms, shoulders and neck. Climbing builds it right back and really helped more than any special keyboards or posture changes I tried.

Re: What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

#50

Post by modeless »

stevekemp wrote: post #41
tcoff91 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try doing some rock climbing either outdoors or at the rock gym. Fixed my hand pain real quick.

In my case too much bouldering caused forearm pain that lasted for two years. Didn't stop me from typing, but it did have a significant impact on my daily life :/

How much was too much? I can certainly imagine that bouldering could cause wrist injuries. But in my case, like above, it strengthened my wrists and improved the pain I was having from typing.
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