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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?

#131

This won't help anyone who has lost the use of their hands, but I have some advice for touch typists who use a standard keyboard like a laptop or typical desktop keyboard: don't bend your wrists. Of course most people know about the ergonomic advice to have your keyboard at the right height so your wrists don't have to bend up or down. But I often see people typing with a horizontal bend in their wrists so that their…

Ergonomic keyboards with a split down the middle may help with this greatly.

As an added benefit you can now put a notebook or drink between the each side of the keyboard.

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

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's been shown that it's very hard to prove that you're not mentally ill if you're labeled as such. But what if you do have a condition that requires therapy? You're unlikely to recognize it yourself. Would you always refuse treatment and just go with painkillers instead? > Getting treatment just means you'll be put on essentially random psychiatric medications (which have their own side-effects) or have to spend…

>The patient in this case would not see a psychiatrist since he's not depressed or mentally ill. Severe pain due to psychosomatic causes sounds like mental illness to me. >Instead he would be sent to a psychologist who can only recommend further therapy. No, they can also strongly recommend that they see a psychiatrist for potential medications. >The patient in this case would not see a psychiatrist since he's not de…

> Severe pain due to psychosomatic causes sounds like mental illness to me.

In that case you're assuming both the psychiatrist and the GP overreact.

> Every health system I've dealt with funnels to medication pretty strongly.

Because patients often insist on medication because they do not accept that the ailment can't immediately be diagnosed.

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

#133

This won't help anyone who has lost the use of their hands, but I have some advice for touch typists who use a standard keyboard like a laptop or typical desktop keyboard: don't bend your wrists. Of course most people know about the ergonomic advice to have your keyboard at the right height so your wrists don't have to bend up or down. But I often see people typing with a horizontal bend in their wrists so that their…

The biggest change that helped when I developed temporary RSI when playing video games in my mid-teens was learning and switching to Colemak.

Natural keyboards (Microsoft-style) helped a bit, but the curved Kinesis Advantage really taught me that you should try to never raise your keyboard angle, and instead keep the keyboard flat at a height where your fingers rest on the home row, wrists straight and naturally held at a comfortable position in line with your lower arms. When done well, it’s like your fingers are hovering over the keys on the keyboard, pushing down, but it can cause strain in your arms as you don’t have any palm rests in this position without buying a Kinesis (and re-learning how to type on a straight column key layout). But by far the biggest difference was learning Colemak, it means my fingers rarely leave the home row and typing is less of a chore on my fingers, but still affects my wrists.

For your mouse hand, the Evoluent mouse may look (and feel) funny, but it certainly is less stress on your mousing wrist. You can fake this with a normal mouse (when you remember to) by rotating your hand, wrist and lower arm 90 degrees, placing your hand pinky side down next to the mouse, palm facing the mouse. Then keeping your wrist in that same vertical orientation, slowly move your thumb and first two fingers to cover the mouse. It’s a loose hold, not as easy to use as the normal grip, but it’s much easier on the mousing wrist. Don’t move the wrist in this position, when moving the mouse, try to remember to move your whole arm if possible. I’ll admit, I only use this mousing technique on days when I’m extra sensitive to RSI, normally my mouse movement is halfway between this extreme and a normal mouse grip—generally I modify the mouse grip to not cup it so tightly with a more horizontal wrist and that works okay...

Also watch out for wrist/finger/positional strain from non-computer activities you do regularly, including how you grip or put extra strain on your body when commuting or when using exercise equipment. There’s always a balance — you want stress to build tolerance, but you don’t want to take it too far and build injury instead. Listen to your body! :)

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

#134

This won't help anyone who has lost the use of their hands, but I have some advice for touch typists who use a standard keyboard like a laptop or typical desktop keyboard: don't bend your wrists. Of course most people know about the ergonomic advice to have your keyboard at the right height so your wrists don't have to bend up or down. But I often see people typing with a horizontal bend in their wrists so that their…

This is how I was taught to position my hands on the keyboard in 6th or 7th grade (I can't remember) and to this day I thankfully don't suffer from any wrist pain or fatigue.

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

#135

This won't help anyone who has lost the use of their hands, but I have some advice for touch typists who use a standard keyboard like a laptop or typical desktop keyboard: don't bend your wrists. Of course most people know about the ergonomic advice to have your keyboard at the right height so your wrists don't have to bend up or down. But I often see people typing with a horizontal bend in their wrists so that their…

Ergonomic keyboards with a split down the middle may help with this greatly.

Indeed, that is one of the purposes of those keyboards.

For myself, I love the TrackPoint so much that I can't bear the thought of using any other kind of keyboard with only a touchpad or a mouse. So standard ThinkPad keyboards it is for me. I even use a USB ThinkPad keyboard on my desktop at work!

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

#136

This won't help anyone who has lost the use of their hands, but I have some advice for touch typists who use a standard keyboard like a laptop or typical desktop keyboard: don't bend your wrists. Of course most people know about the ergonomic advice to have your keyboard at the right height so your wrists don't have to bend up or down. But I often see people typing with a horizontal bend in their wrists so that their…

This is great advice. I really enjoy ergonomic keyboards, and having as little strain on your wrist as possible is key. On "regular" non-split keyboards I ignore the touch-typist tenets and keep my wrists relaxed, so my index fingers are on an arc roughly around `qwefjiop`. Much more relaxed than forcing your fingers to an unnatural "home" row.

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

#137
About six years I was on the losing end of a head-on motorcycle vs. SUV collision, breaking both of my wrists (as well as a broken right femur and several other injuries that were minor in comparison).

I had "casts" that wrapped around my arms from mid-bicep to the tips of my fingers. Additionally, I couldn't walk due to the broken leg. There were a few months where 99% of my time was spent lying down in bed.

The solution to my "can't type" problem was a pair of standard #2 pencils. I had them pushed up into the ends of the casts so that the eraser end was sticking out and basically just "hunted and pecked" with my "two fingers" until all of the surgeries and subsequent healing were complete.

After a while I got pretty good at it too. I wasn't doing "touch typing" at ~120 wpm obviously but it was probably close to the days when I sent and received Morse code at ~18 wpm.

Luckily, this only lasted for a few months and then I was all healed up and back to normal. My doctors said I should expect arthritis at a relatively early age, though, and that carpal tunnel was certainly a good possibility too, so at some point I may need to come up with a better solution than a couple pencils -- something more like what the author here managed. Hopefully I've got a few more years left and the technology and available tools will continue to progress in that time.

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

#138

This won't help anyone who has lost the use of their hands, but I have some advice for touch typists who use a standard keyboard like a laptop or typical desktop keyboard: don't bend your wrists. Of course most people know about the ergonomic advice to have your keyboard at the right height so your wrists don't have to bend up or down. But I often see people typing with a horizontal bend in their wrists so that their…

I have my wrists straight when I type, but I used to have a problem with left hand's control key; every time I needed to press ctrl+ my writs bend and it started to cause pain. Then, one day I decided to map my capslock key to act as ctrl (found online that this was a thing) and once I learned to use it, all the pain was basically gone. It maybe took a week or so of learning to get used to it.

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

#139

This won't help anyone who has lost the use of their hands, but I have some advice for touch typists who use a standard keyboard like a laptop or typical desktop keyboard: don't bend your wrists. Of course most people know about the ergonomic advice to have your keyboard at the right height so your wrists don't have to bend up or down. But I often see people typing with a horizontal bend in their wrists so that their…

I have my wrists straight when I type, but I used to have a problem with left hand's control key; every time I needed to press ctrl+ my writs bend and it started to cause pain. Then, one day I decided to map my capslock key to act as ctrl (found online that this was a thing) and once I learned to use it, all the pain was basically gone. It maybe took a week or so of learning to get used to it.

+1 on keyboard remapping, though I’ve never gotten used to it permanently myself. In Colemak, Caps Lock was originally changed to backspace, so for users who don’t need to hit Ctrl as often, that’s also an option. I suspect the only way I’ll remember the remapping permanently is to disable the original/bad mapping, such that every time I do the old way, I remind myself it doesn’t work that way and hit the new key instead.

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

#140

This won't help anyone who has lost the use of their hands, but I have some advice for touch typists who use a standard keyboard like a laptop or typical desktop keyboard: don't bend your wrists. Of course most people know about the ergonomic advice to have your keyboard at the right height so your wrists don't have to bend up or down. But I often see people typing with a horizontal bend in their wrists so that their…

The biggest change that helped when I developed temporary RSI when playing video games in my mid-teens was learning and switching to Colemak. Natural keyboards (Microsoft-style) helped a bit, but the curved Kinesis Advantage really taught me that you should try to never raise your keyboard angle, and instead keep the keyboard flat at a height where your fingers rest on the home row, wrists straight and naturally held…

I used to get RSI on my mouse hand. Switching to a thumb trackball https://www.logitech.com/en-ca/product/wireless-trackball-m5... resolved it immediately.

My wrist is in a natural position, and the only thing that moves is the thumb.

It was surprisingly easy to get used to. I initially didn't think I'd use it for gaming, but that turned out to be not a problem - once you're used to it it's just as effective.

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