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Looking at it from another angle, I've got a suspicion that continually moving your hand from a typing position to use the mouse with a different (more of a cla

Looking at it from another angle, I've got a suspicion that continually moving your hand from a typing position to use the mouse with a different (more of a claw) hand shape probably contributed to the rise in RSI. When I started my career, it was the tail end of the era of the Typing Pool in large companies... when a room full of clerical people would be hammering away on electric typewriters for a full working day, but not dropping like flies with cases of RSI. So perhaps staying near the home row perhaps has other advantages. I try and use Vim keymaps whenever possible with the dev tools available to me, and to keep hands on the keyboard whenever possible. I certainly notice less fatigue than the old days when I used to type, mouse, type, mouse.

BoorishBears 8y ago
I suspect that’s better addressed by looking at the ergonomics of your setup. Typing can also cause RSI, and in fact if you look at the risk factors for RSI, way more boxes are ticked by keeping a mostly static position on a keyboard than with occasional movements of a mouse (especially the parts about leaving pressure on part of the body) I’d also imagine typewriters are very different from normal keyboards in usage, and typists were very focused on ergonomics There’s also the fact that RSI probably wasn’t as commonly diagnosed as it is today.
nickjj 8y ago
> Looking at it from another angle, I've got a suspicion that continually moving your hand from a typing position to use the mouse with a different (more of a claw) hand shape probably contributed to the rise in RSI. On the other hand, I always thought the opposite. My hands fly around everywhere. My right hand goes from the main keys area to the home/end/arrow keys and the mouse pretty frequently. I keep my forearms perfectly parallel to the ground with close to 0 resistance, then I mostly use my shoulder and elbow to move my forearms, which leads to my hands being in a different spot. I also never strain to reach any combo because I just move my hands instead of trying to break my wrist to press something like tilde + g with my ring / pinky and pointer fingers. Been doing this for 20+ years and I have no arm, wrist, hand or finger pain and this is with years of gaming abuse where I was clicking and doing repeated key presses for 12+ hours for entire summers back in the day. But if you ask me to type with my hands on the home row, I feel a very unnatural strain on the top of my hand when I move my fingers. After a minute it's painful. I dunno how anyone can do that without injuring themselves.

BoorishBears 8y ago

I suspect that’s better addressed by looking at the ergonomics of your setup. Typing can also cause RSI, and in fact if you look at the risk factors for RSI, way more boxes are ticked by keeping a mostly static position on a keyboard than with occasional movements of a mouse (especially the parts about leaving pressure on part of the body) I’d also imagine typewriters are very different from normal keyboards in usage, and typists were very focused on ergonomics There’s also the fact that RSI probably wasn’t as commonly diagnosed as it is today.

nickjj 8y ago

> Looking at it from another angle, I've got a suspicion that continually moving your hand from a typing position to use the mouse with a different (more of a claw) hand shape probably contributed to the rise in RSI. On the other hand, I always thought the opposite. My hands fly around everywhere. My right hand goes from the main keys area to the home/end/arrow keys and the mouse pretty frequently. I keep my forearms perfectly parallel to the ground with close to 0 resistance, then I mostly use my shoulder and elbow to move my forearms, which leads to my hands being in a different spot. I also never strain to reach any combo because I just move my hands instead of trying to break my wrist to press something like tilde + g with my ring / pinky and pointer fingers. Been doing this for 20+ years and I have no arm, wrist, hand or finger pain and this is with years of gaming abuse where I was clicking and doing repeated key presses for 12+ hours for entire summers back in the day. But if you ask me to type with my hands on the home row, I feel a very unnatural strain on the top of my hand when I move my fingers. After a minute it's painful. I dunno how anyone can do that without injuring themselves.