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Resolutions for programmers

matt.might.net

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Re: Resolutions for programmers

#111

Post by tremendo »

beagle3 wrote: post #98
jarek wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't any shoe with no heel cushioning be a way to get there?

One required feature is the flexible toe-ball connection (so that you can comfortably use the toes to balance when the weight is on the balls of your feet), which not every shoe without heel cushioning will provide, though some probably will. The other important feature is "high-resolution" impact transfer - you need precise ground feedback for your muscles to compensate for an uneven terrain. If you have (as an extr…

I own a pair of the Merrell True Glove trainers and love them. I thought they used basically the same sole as the VFF, although obviously not with separate toes. I just couldn't buy into having plastic between my toes, or not having option of wearing some liner/socks, also since mine look more "normal" or let's say less "goofy" I can confidently wear them in any environment.

Re: Resolutions for programmers

#112

Post by lena »

AlexandrB wrote: post #57
mhartl wrote: post #41

I have a couple of contrary suggestions with respect to health. 1. Don't follow the conventional wisdom on RSI I struggled with RSI for years, and did all the usual things (warmups, exercises, braces, a Kinesis with modified key layout, etc.) Then, in early 2010, I read (at Aaron Iba's suggestion) The Mindbody Prescription by John Sarno. Within a couple of days, I saw remarkable improvement; within a month, I was sym…

> The Mindbody Prescription by John Sarno The central claim of this book (from reading Amazon reviews) seems to be that chronic pain may be caused by mental/emotional distress. To me, this seems like a remarkable claim, and I'm super-skeptical without some kind of evidence. Out of curiosity, does the author offer any such evidence in the book? Are there other books on the topic?

Sarno's book is part great and part fluff, but the idea that stress/ideas play a big part in chronic pain is not controversial among pain scientists. Explain Pain by Butler and Moseley is a great book about this, but unfortunately it is rather expensive. The latter part of this blog post gives a summary: http://changeyourpain.com/2011/03/03/what-was-that-about-chr...

This is a TED video by Moseley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwd-wLdIHjs

And this is a good summarizing post about pain science: http://www.bettermovement.org/2010/seven-things-you-should-k...

Re: Resolutions for programmers

#113

Post by jackfoxy »

gtani wrote: post #72

languages: I'm going to give F# under mono another try, in the spirit of other langauges suggested (haskell, ocaml, racket)

I would really like to hear progress reports on that one. Does F# Mono now correctly implement tail recursion? The most recent release notes suggest it does.

Re: Resolutions for programmers

#114

Post by beagle3 »

tremendo wrote: post #111
beagle3 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One required feature is the flexible toe-ball connection (so that you can comfortably use the toes to balance when the weight is on the balls of your feet), which not every shoe without heel cushioning will provide, though some probably will. The other important feature is "high-resolution" impact transfer - you need precise ground feedback for your muscles to compensate for an uneven terrain. If you have (as an extr…

I own a pair of the Merrell True Glove trainers and love them. I thought they used basically the same sole as the VFF, although obviously not with separate toes. I just couldn't buy into having plastic between my toes, or not having option of wearing some liner/socks, also since mine look more "normal" or let's say less "goofy" I can confidently wear them in any environment.

Never heard of these - I will look them up.

> I just couldn't buy into having plastic between my toes

Me neither, but I just had to try, and I actually like it, even though I don't like "toe socks" inside a regular sneaker.

> or not having option of wearing some liner/socks

There are injinji socks; but I prefer the VFFs unsocked if I can properly wash and dry them (I use socks when I don't have wash-and-dry facilities).

> since mine look more "normal" or let's say less "goofy" I can confidently wear them in any environment.

That's a definite plus. (On the other hand, if you're looking for a conversation starter, the vibrams are hard to beat!)

Re: Resolutions for programmers

#115

Post by morganpyne »

Groxx wrote: post #40
mattmight wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned Dvorak to help with RSI. It worked. I'm fast at Dvorak after 4 years (90 wpm), but not as fast as I was with Qwerty (120 wpm). Dvorak has a pleasant "rolling" finger feel and my wrists never ache, so I've kept it. What fascinated me about learning Dvorak was that I felt like a stroke patient. Suddenly, I could not do something I had been able to do for years. It made me consider the cost of a keystroke. Gre…

I used to have wrist pain after particularly-long coding bouts. Then I decided to type like you play piano - hands up, wrists straight, move arms rather than wrists to punch keys in other locations. No pain again. Ever. Only later did I find out that it's the recommended wrist posture. I still cringe a bit when I see people buying keyboards with wrist-rests (and using them), especially "ergonomic" ones - why improve…

Hah! For years when I played the piano, I held my hands like I now type; relatively flat fingered and straight wristed. It never affected my ability to play anything complicated and the only real problem was that my piano teacher insisted that this was not the 'correct' way to hold my hands while playing. Never suffered from RSI during the many many hours I've spent at either type of keyboard.

Re: Resolutions for programmers

#116

Post by jules »

vacri wrote: post #95
jules wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn Colemak [1] instead. The change in comfort when typing is incredible. The difference in how much you need to move your fingers when typing is big. Typing with QWERTY feels you moving your fingers all over the place as fast as possible; typing with Colemak feels like letters flowing off your hands. Whether it is faster I do not know (obviously after years of using Colemak and rarely using QWERTY I type faster on…

How do you find the two-backspaces-no-caps-lock thing?

I've remapped caps lock to ctrl instead of backspace, so I don't have experience with that.

Re: Resolutions for programmers

#117

Post by derwiki »

Evgeny wrote: post #103
derwiki wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel dirty trying to hawk my blog post, but I wrote one a few days ago about setting yourself up for success with New Year's Resolutions: http://derwiki.tumblr.com/post/15086471518/setting-yourself-... tl;dr is "pick measurable resolutions, try a bunch in a staggered manner starting with the most achievable first to gain momentum, don't be afraid to cut and run if some resolutions aren't making sense as you try to…

A nitpick: the amount of sit-ups you can do does not correlate well with the six-packness. At 20ish% body fat it's possible to train yourself for a huge amount of sit-ups, but your abs still would not be too visible. If you have an ability to track your body fat with a decent precision, that would be a better metric.

You're absolutely right. As another friend asked, "is the goal to actually increase ab strength or to receive an unprompted compliment from your girlfriend?" This resolution had what I felt was the least well defined goal/metric and will probably take some refining if I want to "succeed" at it.

To my downvoter, just curious: why? I thought my blog post was relevant, and it seemed better than taking 30 minutes to re-hash my thoughts into a HN comment.

Re: Resolutions for programmers

#118

Post by derwiki »

jasonkester wrote: post #100
tomjen3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it that makes people assuming exercise -> running? It has all the unpleasant effects of exercise + it destroys your knees and you still don't have a sixpack.

Rock Climbing is probably a better plan then. It is fun in the way that you're not supposed to be having fun anymore at your age, to the point where you find yourself rearranging your schedule so that you can do more of it. And it absolutely will give you a sixpack by the time you're any good at it. The only downside is that it won't actually get you fit in the traditional sense. I can pull into a front lever using t…

For cardio, you could also do top-rope laps. Pick a route slightly below your peak, climb it, descend, climb it, descend, climb it, descend. It's fun to see if your technical improvement by the third time compensates for climbing slower because you're tired.

And FWIW, I've been climbing 2 times/week for 3 years now and have no where near a six-pack :)

Re: Resolutions for programmers

#119

Post by jules »

tjoff wrote: post #82
jerf wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the one reason to learn Dvorak; it naturally causes you to touch type, because there's no sane reason to have your hands wander around the keyboard; all the keys you use are on the home row. QWERTY affords hand wandering and hunt & peck. If you want to "learn to touch type" it's probably more effective to "learn Dvorak" and let the touch typing take care of itself. I'm not sure about the virtues of paying the…

I can't be the only one that very often have my left hand on the (left part of the) keyboard and the right on the mouse doing a lot of shortcuts while navigating the GUI. Such as ctrl+z, ctrl+c, ctrl+v, ctrl+w, ctrl+t, ctrl+n, ctrl+s that requires two hands on dvorak ("especially" on an ergonomic keyboard) - or at least requires the right hand (=> you can't use the mouse) or you have to reposition the left hand (not…

Colemak keeps those keys in the same position, except S but S goes where D is on QWERTY so it's almost the same. Try it out.

Re: Resolutions for programmers

#120

Post by slowpoke »

rmc wrote: post #29
ArbitraryLimits wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know what you mean about the stroke patient thing. I had (still have, actually) RSI-ish problems in my right wrist but not my left, so I started mousing with my left hand and it felt exactly the same. Years later, my day-to-day productivity has fully recovered, but I still can't play mouse-intensive games like Minesweeper without getting confused and clicking the air with my right hand when I meant to use my left.

I switched from right handed mouse to left handed mouse and after about 2 days I was able to use the mouse normally, and am still pretty good at it.

You might just be ambidextrous with a strong right hand. My strong hand is the left, but besides more complex things like writing I can also do pretty much everything with my right hand without having to train.
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