Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury (2022)
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Re: Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury (2022)
#2Meta: typo in title, "programmers" lacks an m.
Re: Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury (2022)
#3Ergonomic mice are what’s useless. They give your wrist the tilt it (may) need but the real panacea is to keep your wrist/forearm off the table by resting your elbow on your armrest and having your desk height match your armrest height.
Re: Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury (2022)
#4A good reason to keep Copilot enabled. Probably cuts my keystrokes down by 30% or so.
Re: Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury (2022)
#5i killed my RSI that I had for YEARS by seriously over-hauling my workspace. I also went to occupational therapists who helped me figure out what I was doing wrong and how to fix it.
I use a moonlander split keyboard so my shoulders are properly spread out instead of hunched together, and my wrists and arms can fall at a more reasonable angle.
I use a "tall" ergo mouse. This was a huge upgrade from my small mouse and I definitely noticed the improvement.
I figured out how to properly set the height of my desk such that I was not craning my arms up or down.
i fixed my "cross-legged" posture I used to use while sitting at the computer.
And finally: I built up a weight lifting habit that strengthened my entire body.
Of all of them, weight lifting likely had the biggest impact.
Re: Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury (2022)
#6Am I correct to understand that this is actually an issue for these people?
As a programmer of far less exalted code, I’ve never felt like I was at risk of an RSI in my hands. (My neck is a different story.) I spend a lot more time thinking than typing. I wonder if this is because I program in a corporate setting, or if I’m just not as smart/fast at coding as these people, or if it is just a reflection of a different era in programming?
Re: Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury (2022)
#7Am I correct to understand that this is actually an issue for these people? As a programmer of far less exalted code, I’ve never felt like I was at risk of an RSI in my hands. (My neck is a different story.) I spend a lot more time thinking than typing. I wonder if this is because I program in a corporate setting, or if I’m just not as smart/fast at coding as these people, or if it is just a reflection of a different…
I'm assuming we spend more time figuring out the right way of using a framework these days over writing hundreds of thousands of lines of code in a lower level language.
Re: Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury (2022)
#8> in particular, due to use of emacs
I use Emacs too full-time (at work as well as at home). I use the 'ctrl' key on both sides of the keyboard. For example, if I'm typing C-a (i.e., ctrl+a), I hold down 'ctrl' with the right little finger and 'a' with the left little finger. Similarly, if I'm typing C-k, I hold down 'ctrl' with the left little finger and 'k' with the right middle finger. I touch type and any touch typing lesson teaches us how we always use both hands to type shift+key, i.e., the key with one hand while holding down 'shift' with the opposite hand. The same lessons can be applied to the 'ctrl' key as well. Never had any problem using Emacs like this.
However there are some laptop keyboards which do not have the right 'ctrl' key and that makes good typing habits really difficult when the 'ctrl' key is involved. That led me to write a minor mode to make Emacs a better experience for myself on such keyboards without having to resort to a modal editing mode like God mode or Evil mode. My non-modal editing mode is called the Devil mode https://susam.github.io/devil/> (HN post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35936885>)
Since I've never suffered from RSI due to Emacs usage, it makes me very curious about what the actual contributing factors are that cause some Emacs users to get RSI. Is it the very large number of hours spent with Emacs? Poor typing habits? Poor keyboards? An inherent susceptibility to RSI?
Re: Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury (2022)
#9Am I correct to understand that this is actually an issue for these people? As a programmer of far less exalted code, I’ve never felt like I was at risk of an RSI in my hands. (My neck is a different story.) I spend a lot more time thinking than typing. I wonder if this is because I program in a corporate setting, or if I’m just not as smart/fast at coding as these people, or if it is just a reflection of a different…
RSI is pretty common in several fields and depending what you’re programming, as well as your individual setups.
For example, I used to develop for feature film post production. Using 3D applications was part of development and there’s a lot of motion of the wrist involved. So I’d use a Wacom tablet along side it or an ergo mouse.
I’ve met tons of developers with RSI in the same field too.
Or it may be as simple as the development environment or task. How often are you moving your hands from home row? A lot of developers have shortcuts on their numpad or elsewhere which necessitates frequent motion. Switching my shortcut keys for minimal movement really helped.
There are other aspects of typing that contribute too. The angle of your wrists can exacerbate the issue. Tented keyboards are better. The angle of your keys from your base hand position matters or you might get rsi in your finger joints. Ortholinear keyboards help. The angle of your shoulders relative to your keyboard can give you shoulder pain, split keyboards can help.
Another thing that matters is also what they do in their spare time. I’m a musician with multiple instruments, I draw etc…
Each of those increase my risk of RSI and indeed I did have pretty bad wrists at one point.
Re: Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury (2022)
#10> in particular, due to use of emacs I use Emacs too full-time (at work as well as at home). I use the 'ctrl' key on both sides of the keyboard. For example, if I'm typing C-a (i.e., ctrl+a), I hold down 'ctrl' with the right little finger and 'a' with the left little finger. Similarly, if I'm typing C-k, I hold down 'ctrl' with the left little finger and 'k' with the right middle finger. I touch type and any touch t…
Remapping control to caps lock also could be used to avoid RSI.