Forty years of programming

This might be particular to the age of the OP. I just turned 47, so I'm one year older than him.

In 1981 (so when I was 5) my parents bought me a Sinclair ZX81. It came with literally nothing except a BASIC interpreter in ROM and a manual. The manual explained how to program in BASIC and had a bunch of listings that you could type in for rudimentary games etc. So when we got our computers at that era all we could do is "program". Was it hardcore software engineering? No. Did we understand it at that age at any meaningful level? No. But it was programming, of a sort.

In the next few years I experimented more and more until I started to grasp higher level concepts.

My point is there was a particular window in time that met these criteria:

- affordable personal computer.

- no (or very few) games available, you had no choice but to write programs.

This was around 1980-1983. Before 1980 most people didn't have access to personal computers. After 1983 you could get computers that could easily read games from tapes or floppies.

So I guess there were a bunch of 5 year olds in that era who were almost forced to program.

I did that too. I thought it was common. I learned programming by reading my older sister's Computer Science manual from high school in preparation for me starting high school (2004, Romania).

All school work was on paper so it was a necessity.

But it was fun too. In pointless classes like French, there was nothing better to do. It was worthwhile to work on my personal programs on paper and type them out when I got home.

You had to think about the approach before starting to write it down. I would leave a lot of vertical space in case I needed to put something above. In some cases I would write the code afterwards, draw a rectangle around it, and point to where it needed to move. It was a bit messy sometimes.

Portrait displays are worth trying, in my view. I've gone through various iterations of multi-display setups, and I've settled on having 2 x 27" portrait displays at 1440p (or scaled 4K equivalent), one directly in front of me and one to the side, plus a landscape display of any size to the other side.

Both the portrait displays get a good amount of use. The central one is most important of course but the one to the side is useful too as I don't have to turn my head much to look at it. Its usual use is documentation or similar but using it for actual work is no hardship.

The landscape display is mainly there because I work in video games, so I kind of need one. I usually use only about half of it at most, though, to avoid having to turn my head too much. If I was in some other line of work I'd probably have a 3rd portrait display instead.

(I did use the large monitor + laptop below arrangement for a while, and that was good too, but one day I knocked my drink over and it destroyed my laptop. So that prompted a rethink.)

After a lifetime of programming I feel like I still have a pretty-good “keyboard stamina”. I attribute this to not having any habits, let alone bad ones. Or maybe they’re all bad. I’ll explain.

I started programming pretty early, but I didn’t have a desk until my first job after college. I pretty-much made do with whatever situation was available to me. I also started working pretty early, doing physical jobs. I bucked hay for local farmers at about 12 and started shearing Christmas trees at about 15. The latter doing a lot of damage to my shoulders over the next few years. In college I rowed crew, which didn’t make things better as far as my arms went.

After college I started programming and I’ve been doing it professionally for going over 30 years now. It’s never really been physically comfortable. Even back then I was good for like an hour-long sit at most before I had to get up and move around and “get the blood flowing“ so to speak. That’s never changed. I still don’t like working at a desk. I stand, I sit on the floor, I sit in comfortable chairs, I lay down on the sofa, I’ve been known to steer a sailboat with one hand and program with the other.

I feel like this is why it still works for me - I don’t repeat my posture much. I have a really, really low bar for my programming “situation” and take full advantage of that.

I think this is key. I never had too many issues taking breaks, to be honest. Even when 'programming', I spend a lot of the time thinking about what to do, and not actually typing. I heard early on that if you're constantly typing, you're doing it wrong, and I must've taken it to heart.

I'm 44 myself, and fortunately haven't had that sort of pain in my hands/wrists/forearms. Have had back pain though, and that sucks.