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http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Trackman-Marble-Four-Button-P...
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I've found that the biggest reason for neck and wrist pain is actually the mouse. The position that most people use the mouse, off to the right side (if you're right-handed), causes your arm and your hand to twist unnaturally, since it needs to be flat to the table. This puts pressure on the nerves running down your arm, and for me, this is what caused the most amount of pain, to the point where I was worried my care…
+1 to mice being evil. I'm not convinced by ergonomic mice despite having used one for the past 4-5 years. They are less painful to use but I find they just hide the problem. Using any normal mouse these days becomes painful within a couple of hours for me. Instead I use a Trackpoint basically all the time now. I have ThinkPads at home and a MacBook Pro with one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-ThinkPad-Travel…
georgieporgie: It appears you have been hellbanned (as of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4026814 ). You might be able to appeal it by emailing pg, or just create a new account.
Get vim/emacs and learn it inside out so you do a minimum of mousing and keystrokes. Also learn to code in your head as much as possible and only sit down at the computer to dictate your design. This is surprisingly effective once you get the hang of it. I spend about 60% less time in front of the computer now and I'm way more productive. Also get something like StayFocusd for your browser and add in all your distrac…
(disclaimer: I absolutely love emacs, but had to switch to vim just because of strain it puts on my wrists)
I occasionally get wrist pain. I have found that a lot of changes are not necessarily the ones the ergonomics experts sell. YMMV but these work for me: 1) If I need to, I take a break and soak my hands in hot water. 2) I program in Perl and tend to find that my hands shift positions. In particular my right hand tends to shift at least one place over compared to typing prose. I find standard keyboards, not ergonomic o…
Its worth spending money on a decent one, and I'd avoid Logitech units if you have a choice. The main things to look for are ball size and extra buttons - yes, you can get two-button trackballs with no scrolling ability or third button.
I highly recommend the Kensington Slimblade, which has a massive ball and lovely twist-to-scroll mechanism. Ignore the reviews saying the software is terrible on OSX, all the problems have been fixed.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kensington-K72327US-SlimBlade-Trackb...
One slight oddity is the hardware "clicker". Twist-to-scroll feedback is achieved by a tiny piezo speaker inside the unit that clicks whenever you scroll. Its worth spending ten minutes with a screwdriver and soldering iron removing it if you want to keep your office mates sane.
Get vim/emacs and learn it inside out so you do a minimum of mousing and keystrokes. Also learn to code in your head as much as possible and only sit down at the computer to dictate your design. This is surprisingly effective once you get the hang of it. I spend about 60% less time in front of the computer now and I'm way more productive. Also get something like StayFocusd for your browser and add in all your distrac…
[1] http://5digits.org/pentadactyl/index
[2] http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3-...
I've found that the biggest reason for neck and wrist pain is actually the mouse. The position that most people use the mouse, off to the right side (if you're right-handed), causes your arm and your hand to twist unnaturally, since it needs to be flat to the table. This puts pressure on the nerves running down your arm, and for me, this is what caused the most amount of pain, to the point where I was worried my care…
I suggest building some muscle in your arms. It's amazing how much strength does to combat the physical horror of sitting at a keyboard all day. Wrist curl, reverse wrist curl, overhead press, bench press, deadlift, pull-up. All these helped me immensely. PS: steve8918 is right about the mouse. Build some strength, and stop flicking your wrist sideways to reach the mouse. A laptop's trackpad is a huge improvement.
Use.
A.
Trackball.
Period. Especially at work. It's vastly better ergodynamics. It has a little bit of a learning curve but it's not that bad. And for clicking and dragging windows around and whatnot, it's just fine. And it doesn't stop you from using a mouse if you need to use photoshop or play an FPS game or somesuch. I have a mouse and a trackball on my home computer. If for some reason you spend all day in photoshop then you should probably switch to using a stylus input tablet.
been using dvorak for > 15 years. switched because of pain from coding 12-14+ days at startups. also used a kinesis advantage for ~10 years. am now on a topre realforce, which i very much prefer over the kinesis, and have been for 6 months without the pain returning. so, half-splitting the problem, i don't think it's the keyboard. worth mentioning: i can't imagine typing in qwerty now. it just doesn't have that butte…