61–70 of 297 posts
There is a lot of hype on this thread about the Moonlander keyboard. The hype is real. The author has a neat hack, but seriously, just get yourself a split keyboard that supports the QMK firmware, customize the crap out of it, and your hands will thank you forever.
There are probably multiple different causes for RSI in programmers, but for me, a regular keyboard is fine. Even my slouch is fine. I type with my elbows on the table and it's fine. It's the mouse that killed me. A handful of years after graduating from college, I thought my programming career was over because the pain in my neck and shoulders was so bad I couldn't type. I went to a bunch of doctors, neurologists, p…
Congrats on finding and resolving your carpal tunnel problem. I switched to a basic wireless trackball[1] about 5 years into my career (10 years in industry) which has kept me mostly pain free since I can avoid moving my wrist. Still might need to look for a better keyboard and a slightly better trackball, but for anyone reading this with minor pain: don't ignore it. Try new things early and try to reduce your pain,…
This is the late 90s, so neurologists and other doctors weren't very useful at all. One even suggested surgery to correct my problem which got me really scared I might be out of the profession and wondering what I could do.
What I found out was that there's a nerve that runs all the way down your arm into your hand/wrist, and when I twisted my right hand outward to use the mouse, it was pinching this nerve constantly. But instead of having pain in my wrist or forearms, it was causing pain in my neck and shoulders. This is a well-known phenomenon called "referred pain" where the body might not have the proper pain receptors to show pain in one area, so it sends the pain signals elsewhere.
I started to wonder why I could write notes with a pen for hours and hours throughout college and never had any issues, but a couple of years out of college, I had such debilitating pain that I almost had to quit. So I bought a mouse that had the form factor of a pen and tried to recreate my experience writing by moving my keyboard away and using the pen mouse the way I would when I write with a pen. It was a very primitive mouse with a roller ball the size of a marble at the tip, but it completely worked. After the pen mouse died in 9 months, I tried to recreate my wrist angle in a similar way as the pen mouse with a normal mouse and it worked as well. As I said, I've adopted this convention and people comment on how weirdly I hold the mouse, but I've been pain free ever since.
There are probably multiple different causes for RSI in programmers, but for me, a regular keyboard is fine. Even my slouch is fine. I type with my elbows on the table and it's fine. It's the mouse that killed me. A handful of years after graduating from college, I thought my programming career was over because the pain in my neck and shoulders was so bad I couldn't type. I went to a bunch of doctors, neurologists, p…
The mouse was also the issue for me but I switched to a trackball. All the work is done by my thumb, no need to move your arm around.
But, they stopped producing that particular kind (they were also hard to maintain using a special key to open the case) so I just switched to using my left hand for the mouse on half my computers and right hand on the other half. That was easier than moving equipment around from machine to machine for me and coworkers/family. No RSI since.
Why two? Because the first one didn't last a year, so they sent a replacement. That one didn't last long either. For $250 I was expecting a durable keyboard, but this isn't. Many people on Geekhack and other keyboard forums also report build quality issues with them.
That said, I still highly recommend this keyboard. It is comfortable enough to spend $250 every year or two on. I see it as less than half a dollar a day for a professional tool. How much do people spend on Windows and Office licenses? Not only is the layout phenomenal, with the arrow keys and Home/End/PgU/PgDown perfectly placed, but it also had very good mechanical switches.
My tendons have been trashed by a medication(cipro) and I had some awful lows when my body was hurting, including my fingers.
The only thing I have found helpful was exercise and physical therapy. I have been doing PT for over a year now with a professional. I also won't code 8-10 hours a day. I want to program for a long time, so I prefer jobs with a room to think instead of cranking out code non-stop.
I did also use some supplements that were found to help with the damage in studies, but not sure if any were helpful.
> If you’re adult-sized, it’s nearly impossible the keep the shoulders in a natural, pulled-back position while typing on a keyboard. I have to disagree with this.. I'm 6'1 and had bad posture for most of my life. I had the same issues with pain that you describe. But recently I've put a lot of work into it having better posture and I don't have any problems anymore. You just need the right desk/chair height and sit…
That said, i sold the keyboard after only a few months and i’m back to a normal style keyboard so it wasn’t that big a deal clearly.
> I tried a few of those Kinesis split keyboards. Too squishy for me. Not far enough apart. The CherryMX Kinesis split keyboard was is too clickey for calls and screenshares. Muscle memory made it difficult to switch. This is a really cool hack, and I’m happy that the author found a solution for their pain that works for them, but this bit confused me. Kinesis are keyboards with separated key clusters, but not split…
I find it really odd that the OP is staring down the barrel of an RSI that's going to inexorably lock them (presumably) out of their career and passion, but the learning curve for a proper ergonomic keyboard seemed to high. I was up to an acceptable 40WPM on the Ergodox a week after switching, and his complaints about " the Cherry MX" switches fall a little flat since there's about a dozen different kinds, all with d…
It's all hype. There's nothing medical behind any of it.
I find the extra key travel of those switches fatigues my fingers/arms far more and makes me feel far more like I'm going to have RSI.
I did have full blown RSI, and ditching mechanical keyboards was a key part of getting past it. Now that's just my anecdote, there's no evidence the mechanical switches are actually worse. But there's no evidence they're better either.
No one knows whether it's hard rebound or key travel or anything that actually causes the issues. And different RSIs are totally different. It's possible Mechanical switches could be better for carpal tunnel but worse for tendinitis or vise versa. But it doesn't seem like it has been studied.
My experience with medical treatment was doctors and PTs don't even know what the different types of keyboard switches are at all. They know about desk positioning and ergonomic shaped keyboards but switch type was not something that they had any advice on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Kinesis are keyboards with separated key clusters, but not split keyboards. When one says split keyboard I think they are normally talking about things like the Ergodox EZ/Moonlander Kinesis has also their freestyle-line, which are physically splitted keyboard. But traditionally, the name refers to the split of the key-segments, not the whole keyboard. Until a decade ago, there barely where any real split keyboards…
Is just having a softer touch the answer?
But nothing is going to quiet the sound of switches designed to give audio feedback, such as the Cherry Blues. I do not recommend those for use in an office or even at home with other people at home.
It is not about learning the different layouts. There’s just not enough keys here, unless I start switching layouts based on writing language. So much money gone, especially to get the more esoteric pieces shipped here.
I am contemplating adding shortcuts to unused halfs of the keyboards.