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What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?

• tenken 7y ago
  Thank you for sharing!
• lawik 7y ago
  Very interesting read. I've spent some time on that particular what-if now and then. I imagine a lot of people making a living at a keyboard do. Glad to hear that, much as I've imagined, it doesn't mean the end of the line. It will make things a lot harder but it doesn't have to be the end of life as someone doing programming.
• delinka 7y ago
  I'd like to start using this so I can pace and code at the same time.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• peteretep 7y ago
  I thought this was going to link to “Speaking Perl Outloud” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3JeYfBTcY https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3JeYfBTcY
  • methodOfPayment 7y ago
    This is very cool!
  • gjstein 7y ago
    The author does link this video in the article; really a cool talk!
• mikestew 7y ago
  Boy, did I misread that headline. I thought it was about hunt-and-peckers, and who cares? Why I know people quadriplegic/missing hands/nervous system problems, and they write code for a living. Turns out, that’s exactly what it’s about. Interesting read to broaden your thinking on who uses your stuff. An encouraging read as well: your life doesn’t end if you can no longer wiggle your fingers in pre-determined patterns.
  • klyrs 7y ago
    > Boy, did I misread that headline. It could have been worse. I read it as a bad lead to an article about dynamically typed languages.
• dejawu 7y ago
  On the other side of this, I found it very interesting how a programmer who can't see codes using text-to-speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94swlF55tVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94swlF55tVc
  • hestipod 7y ago
    I envy and truly admire people who suffer such adversity and who live good lives. I don't know if its because they usually never knew any different so can't compare, or if they just have an innate mental strength I do not. After losing my health and life I've had an extremely hard time accepting such a huge reduction in QOL that just seems to get worse and really wish I had their ability/outlook.
• korijn 7y ago
  The interlude is very familiar.. I have several relatives who have gone through "the fibromyalgia experience". I can totally understand that one responds to what is effectively a refusal to acknowledge that you are actually experiencing pain with curses.
• m12k 7y ago
  That story of how the doctors just dismissed her pain as delusion is terrifying. Doctors are supposed to be people of science, but one of the very fundamentals of science is to acknowledge that you don't know everything, that your current knowledge is just a theory that can be improved upon. I find there's a tendency among doctors to think they know every possible disease, and if someone comes along with one that doesn't fit in their system, they write it off as psychosomatic. They probably get their fair share of actual hypochondriacs, but I'll wager that more than half of the people who are dismissed this way, are actually suffering from a real, but rare or understudied illness.
  • tarsinge 7y ago
    Psychosomatic diseases are a real thing though. You can have real physical symptoms. Last year my muscles started to « shake », with lots of skipped heartbeats (extrasystoles). After all the checks the doctors said the classic « it’s stress ». Well then I took a real break and embarked on multi month road trip on another continent. The symptoms disappeared nearly overnight. I think I experienced a burnout but it manifested through physical symptoms. Edit: needless to say the medical response was very frustrating and hard to believe. In the end they were right that it was not a physical cause, but apart from that it really felt like they had no idea. Also it could be a multi-level cause like gut flora causing anxiety causing be physical symptoms but it’s beyond what a doctor can diagnose I think.
    • 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
      They're real, but doctors often do a half-assed (if not downright negligent) job of ruling out other possibilities before settling on somatoform disorders (or any other psychiatric diagnosis, for that matter). Especially when it comes to women presenting with chronic or recurring pain or fatigue as their primary symptoms.
    • armada651 7y ago
      Regardless of whether you think the advice from the GP is sound or not, the best way to get a doctor to listen to you is to listen to (and follow) their advice first. Cursing at them out of frustration only makes your situation worse.
• frou_dh 7y ago
  The Talon voice software mentioned seems to be created by HN user lunixbochs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20359884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20359884
• dloss 7y ago
  Interesting interlude. The diagnosis of fibromyalgia and the recommendation to see a psychologist reminded me of Gabor Maté‘s book „When the body says no“: https://drgabormate.com/preview/when-the-body-says-no-chapter-one/ https://drgabormate.com/preview/when-the-body-says-no-chapte...
• arendtio 7y ago
  Reminds me of Stuart Turner and his talks: - https://robotsandcake.org/about/humans/stuart-turner.html https://robotsandcake.org/about/humans/stuart-turner.html - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjnBpiirfr7LL-mUk9uSpZw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjnBpiirfr7LL-mUk9uSpZw
  • escapologybb 7y ago
    Hey, that reminds me of me as well! I still use DragonDictate for Mac to do all of my dictation, whether that is writing Hacker News comments, writing emails, having meaningful discussions (okay arguing) on Twitter or writing code. One of the most useful features of DragonDictate for Mac is the Auto-text feature where you can use single words to trigger larger blocks of text, this is great for filling in empty functions et cetera. There are also some really great Sublime Text plug-ins like auto complete all which makes writing code so much easier. I mainly like to work in Python, but also have a huge library of Bash scripts to iron out lots of the little wrinkles that pop up when you cannot use your hands and you're trying to use a computer efficiently. Honestly there are so many of them that I have been using so long that I am not sure I could enumerate them off the top of my head! I have played with Talon a little bit but never really got to grips with it, I don't know whether that's because I'm too used to using my method or that Talon was a little overcomplicated. I am however so pleased that there is work being done in this area, I am really happy that developers and industry are starting to understand that Accessibility does not just mean "works with a screen reader" as it has in the past. One of the main problems and trying to solve at the moment is how to write mathematical notation using the tools I have at hand, which is a Mac, Sublime Text and DragonDictate for Mac. Anyway, I am a coder who cannot type, AMA!
    • arendtio 7y ago
      Nice to see you in the thread ;-) > One of the main problems and trying to solve at the moment is how to write mathematical notation using the tools I have at hand, which is a Mac, Sublime Text and DragonDictate for Mac. Sounds like LaTeX should be an option. When I write LaTeX I use vim and the KDE PDF viewer Okular. When I save the file I let a script compile it and Okular automatically updates when the new PDF file is ready. While I do all that with a keyboard, I guess it shouldn't be that hard to set it up with voice commands (judging from the video in the blog post). I don't know how PDF viewers act on a Mac, but using sublime instead of vim should be no problem. To speed up the creation of formulas you might want to take a look at this post (it uses vim, but maybe there are some good ideas you can make use of): https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/ https://castel.dev/post/lecture-notes-1/
• kahlonel 7y ago
  Kudos to this guy’s bravery; he is living my worst nightmare. My biggest fear is losing eyesight or ability to use hands, and articles like this confirm my beliefs that our current technology is no way near mature enough where disability isn’t a concern anymore. And these doctors, what can I say about them. It looks like they are getting worse, or just lazy, with every passing day. If you are a doctor and you don’t want to do anything that requires more effort than prescribing painkillers, do this world a favor and get retired because you are actually damaging the medical industry.
  • Kye 7y ago
    One theory I've heard is that too many people were pushed into becoming doctors for the money, and now the profession is full of people who hate it, are deep in debt, and see no way out.
    • arkades 7y ago
      Close. The bigger issue is that reimbursement has fallen precipitously while documentation requirements have risen greatly. People who loved the job when they had 20 mins with a patient and two minutes of charting and had a comfy life with a hope of a retirement fund, are now seeing patients for 7 minutes, documenting for 10-15, and unable to pay off their debts before retirement (never mind sending their kids to school, or paying their own retirement.) The job has changed, the pace has changed, and yes, going from “comfortable living” to “oh fuck” has an element to it. I know very few who went into the field just for money though. It’s never been a good career for that, relative to all the school debt and the lost decade of life to education/training.
  • mikelward 7y ago
    The author is Naomi Saphra. Probably not a "he". :)
• house9-2 7y ago
  My career in Software would be over if it wasn't for voicecode.io and now Talon. I go through periods where typing does not bother me at all and long periods of intense random pain in forearms, wrists, palms and top of my hands. Certain aspects of controlling your computer by voice are way more efficient than using a keyboard, others not so much. Lucky for me using a mouse does not bother me that much so I continue to use that for scrolling and mousing and alternate clicking by voice or mouse. I probably work by voice about a 1/3 of the time right now, ideally it would be more like 2/3 of the time. There is definitely a big learning curve to using voice control and like they said in the article you have to be careful about voice strain. - http://voicecode.io/ http://voicecode.io/ (now defunct) - https://talonvoice.com/ https://talonvoice.com/ - light years ahead of where voicecode.io was with speed and accuracy - free - can be used without Dragon (although accuracy with Dragon is much better) - currently only works on Mac OSX, but has plans for Linux and Windows support
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • albinowax_ 7y ago
    Is moving somewhere that does pair programming a workable option in this situation?
    • house9-2 7y ago
      I have pair programmed off and on, both in person and remote; yes it helps because you are typing less, but sometimes you end up being the driver for long sessions so it is not perfect.
• modeless 7y ago
  A friend of mine has a different solution to this problem which I think is really great. Programmer salaries are more than enough to pay someone to type for you. But he doesn't just hire typists. He trains apprentices. https://blog.iangilman.com/2018/06/wrists-apprentices.html https://blog.iangilman.com/2018/06/wrists-apprentices.html
  • yread 7y ago
    Oh that's Ian Gilman from Openseadragon! That's an awesome piece of software and in the issues Ian is always positive and ready to help
  • bdcravens 7y ago
    Having a medical condition which causes bone density and arthritic issues, I’m certain my body will diminish far quicker than my brain will. Hiring a typist is the same conclusion I’ve come to as well, and ultimately it would inevitably become a pair programming session.
  • csallen 7y ago
    Thanks for sharing, this is great.
• csallen 7y ago
  This story resonates. A few years back I was dealing with mild pain while coding. I stupidly ignored it for months as it got significantly worse, to the point where it became impossible to type for extended periods. I tried lots of things. My doctor did a nerve conduction study, which apparently ruled out carpal tunnel syndrome, but he wasn't much help beyond that. He gave me some straps that I slept in and wore around to keep my wrists immobilized. I did some physical therapy. I got a split keyboard and ergonomic mouse. I even took a month off from typing, then returned, but the pain was worse than ever. The double whammy of severe pain combined with the fear that you'll never code again is rough to say the least. I resolved to just code with my voice. I never found Talon but found VoiceCode instead. It also relied on Dragon's NaturallySpeaking software, which I was dismayed to learn was still the best desktop software out there. My hopes and ambition for what VoiceCode could do always outpaced reality, but it was workable. I remember impressing some friends who witnessed me quickly and accurately writing code by speaking what seemed like gibberish. As the author notes, the biggest problem quickly becomes that your voice tires out. You're not built to talk nonstop for hours on end every day. I was forced to become a much more efficient developer for a bit. Eventually the pain began to subside. I remember when I first noticed it happening, because it was one of the happiest moments of my life. After a little experimentation and observation, it was clear that my recovery was positively correlated with consistency in going to the gym for heavy weightlifting sessions. Even today, pain in my hands and wrists is a reliable signal that I haven't been lifting in recent weeks, and when I start back, the pain goes away.
  • sdegutis 7y ago
    I had literally the exact same experience as your first two paragraphs. Where my experience diverged is when I met a doctor of some kind who explained that it's the same kind of pain that truckers often get for resting their arms on the armrests. Turns out it was because I was resting my arms on the keyboard or the desk between me and the keyboard. Stopped doing that, the pain went away completely within a few days, and hasn't come back since. That was like 4 years ago. Just don't rest your arms on anything, that's the trick.
    • kzzy 7y ago
• arbitcoin 7y ago
  Teach ;)
• meonkeys 7y ago
  I've been here with an L&I claim for RSI. Extreme pain. Doctors are _very_ reluctant to tell you to take a break for work. Even for a while. What if they are wrong? Massive lawsuit. The best advocate and the one with the final say is yourself. You must become an expert on the subject and be prepared to make big changes in life for your happiness and health. "It is that hard. You can do it."
• arkades 7y ago
  Dunning-Kruger applies to medicine as fully as it does to any other technical field. When people say things like “all (highly technically trained specialists) are idiots these days, they have no idea how to (do their jobs, which I am untrained to evaluate)”, that statement says a lot more about the intellectual humility of the speaker than it does about the people they’re criticizing.
• sitkack 7y ago
  I have been lucky to not be impacted by hand or wrist pain. I did experience chronic back pain for years due to a pinched sciatic nerve, it can be debilitating and depressing. Chronic pain is a large precursor to suicide, if you have it, you need to get it fixed. My interest in this is from a FutureOfProgramming perspective, how can we interact with computers in different, higher order ways. What does the Mother of All Demos [0] look like in 2020? Travis Rudd, "Coding by Voice" (2013) [1] this uses Dragon in a Windows VM to handle the speech to text. This was the original, "termie slash slap", a kind of Pootie Tang crossed structural editing. Coding by Voice with Open Source Speech Recognition, from HOPE XI (2016) [2] Another writeup [3] that outlines Dragon and a project I hadn't heard of called Silvius [4] It looks like most of these systems rely on Dragon, and Dragon on Windows at that due to not having the extension APIs on Mac/Linux. Are there any efforts to use the Mac's built in STT or the Cloud APIs [5,6]? [0] Mother of All Demos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY [1a] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI [1b] https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI?t=510 https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI?t=510 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRyYIIFKsdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRyYIIFKsdU [3] https://blog.logrocket.com/programming-by-voice-in-2019-3e1855f5add9/ https://blog.logrocket.com/programming-by-voice-in-2019-3e18... [4] http://www.voxhub.io/silvius http://www.voxhub.io/silvius [5] https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/ https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/ [6] https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/ https://aws.amazon.com/transcribe/
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • caspar 7y ago
    Talon actually uses Mac's built in STT if you don't have Dragon. James from http://handsfreecoding.org/ http://handsfreecoding.org/ was working on a fork of Dragonfly[0] to add support for Google's speech recognition, but I'm not sure if he still is. There are several barriers to that working well though: additional latency really hurts, API usage costs and (as far as I know) an inability to specify a command grammar (Dragonfly/Vocola/Talon all let you use EBNF-like notation to define commands, which are preferentially recognized over free-form dictation). [0]: https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/dragonfly https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/dragonfly
• casion 7y ago
  Fibromyalgia And idiopathic disease are not terms for "go away". They mean "I've tried what I can think of and theres no further testing we can recommend" Notably, a positive punch biopsy for small fiber neuropathy IS diagnosis with treatment that works fairly well. Ideopathic simply means that the base cause is unknown. The author need to educate themselves further about what doctors can do and what words mean. He has a good scientific diagnosis, and he's outright dismissing it based on some misdirected anger.
  • jonathanyc 7y ago
    At the beginning of the story I empathized with the author, myself having had to deal with pain in my hands that required injections to resolve. But their attempt to make their article more “funny” and dramatic at the expense of their doctors rubbed me the wrong way. It’s not cool to use other people like that to get more clicks. The tipping point for me was the author making their doctor ask them to leave their office. It’s just as bad as people being rude to retail workers who can’t accept a refund.
    • rntz 7y ago
      I don't think the author is trying to exploit doctors to get clicks. I think they're expressing genuine anger and frustration with the healthcare systems they've encountered and the dismissal they've experienced from doctors in those systems.
      • jonathanyc 7y ago
        A doctor telling you they don’t know what the root cause of your problem is is not dismissal, unless all of the author’s doctors are acting in bad faith. I was sad to hear that because of my bone structure in my wrists I will have to be very careful when typing for the rest of my life in order to avoid the pain coming back. I didn’t swear at my doctor when he told me that.
        • rntz 7y ago
          From the post: > I went away to the UK. I brought my medical records from America, but my British neurologist did not read my records or perform examinations. [...] My GP read the note and informed me: He would not prescribe me painkillers. He would not send me for a second opinion from a neurologist, or treatment from any other specialist. "Bad faith" is a vague term. Is not reading medical records evidence of bad faith? I don't know. But I'd sure feel dismissed if a doctor who hadn't read my records concluded without examination that the root cause of my problem was psychological and my GP refused to allow me to seek a second opinion. I think you may be confusing the American diagnoses (which were of the "we don't know the underlying cause" variety - fibromyalgia, idiopathic neuropathy) with the UK diagnoses (which I'd paraphrase as "you don't have a non-psychological problem and we won't allow a second opinion").
• rolph 7y ago
  I took the time when i was young to do a lot of typing. Now I use templates and a library of code snippets, it greatly reduces typing required to deliver a POC code. the optimization comes later.
• groundlogic 7y ago
  I got RSI like 15 years ago. The only thing that's worked for me long term when I'm actually doing coding all day long, is a combination of: a) a keyboard holder below the desk - something similar to https://kw.pricenacdn.com/files/images/products/original/14/Fellowes-Keyboard-Holder-and-Office-Suites-Mice_3145576_45ae0a57ac523fe92e4159d6ecc149aa_t.jpg https://kw.pricenacdn.com/files/images/products/original/14/... - I got mine from IKEA a long time ago - unfortunately they discontinued that product - the key thing here is the get the keyboard as close to your legs as possible, i.e. enabling your arms to be purely horizontally oriented while typing - or ideally even sort of downwards-pointing. b) Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro - manufactured 1999-2001 (e.g. https://mechanicalkeyboardtryout.blogspot.com/2016/03/microsoft-natural-keyboard-pro-image.html https://mechanicalkeyboardtryout.blogspot.com/2016/03/micros... or http://www.dansdata.com/nkpro.htm http://www.dansdata.com/nkpro.htm) I have two of these; they're very durable. You'll need to wash the key caps in your dishwasher once a year.
  • ranieuwe 7y ago
    My resolution has been to use a trackball. Literally resolved all my issues. Switched to a mouse for a while, 2 months in RSI came back. Trackball it is.
    • groundlogic 7y ago
      I guess you primarily point, rather than type?
  • anotherevan 7y ago
    I love the MS Natural Keyboards and agree about the durability. I had one of them so long the little nubs on the J and F keys actually wore away and I couldn't place my hands by touch any more. (I scored the two keys with an old soldering iron.) I've tried the Sculpt keyboard, and just not as good for me. I do use the silver media and other keys along the top quite extensively, plus being a Vim user, the escape key seems to be a bit too dodgy. As they've been harder to buy, when my last one finally died (which is when I found I don't like the Sculpt that much) I ended up trading fixing someone's printer configuration for their barely used Natural keyboard that had been sitting in a corner for ages as they didn't like it. Going to be very sad when I can't find one any more.
• artur_makly 7y ago
  Read. Network. Speak. Lead
• raidicy 7y ago
  I have a very similar issue. I tried to use Vocola and it worked for a while but then i kept straining my voice. I recently had to quit school because I've strained my voice and hands too many times to count. But its not just my hands anymore. Anything that involves any amount of real effort for more than a few minutes usually ends up injuring a muscle group. Has anyone successfully come back from something like this? Life is getting pretty bleak.
  • TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    What, if any, strength building activities do you do that target any area of your body?
    • raidicy 7y ago
      I try walking 5 minutes a couple times a day which is ok. I tried doing DDP yoga, the routine you do in your bed, and i got hurt the first time. it took months for my abdomen to stop hurting.
  • mwiethoff 7y ago
    I was in a similar boat a few years ago. I had to leave my job a because of an RSI—it was devastating to lose both my career and my passion to this injury. My solution was to switch to coding by voice, and I've been doing that full-time for the past year. I did notice some voice strain at the start, but it went away after I started speaking more naturally (i.e., pretending I'm talking to a person and not a computer). I'm working on a new voice coding app—developing it entirely by voice—that I hope can help people in this situation: https://serenade.ai https://serenade.ai. I'd be happy to chat more with you; my email is matt@serenade.ai.
    • raidicy 7y ago
      Thanks for your comment. I'll download this and try it out. I like the idea that your app is opinionated. It shortens the amount of time of setup.
  • gimp 7y ago
• drej 7y ago
  Take the time and watch the talk linked in the article, it’s pretty darn impressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3JeYfBTcY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3JeYfBTcY
  • n3k5 7y ago
    Tavis Rudd's Using Python to Code by Voice [0] is also interesting. Looking up that URL, I came across the more recent Coding by Voice with Dragonfly [1]. Haven't seen that one yet, but just quickly skimmed through. Unfortunately the live demos are silent (you can't hear speaker Boudewijn Aasman talk to the computer), but it seems worth checking out if you're interested in setting up some recent voice recognition software with your own custom voice command syntax. [0] https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI [1] https://youtu.be/P5DCDiCv4TE https://youtu.be/P5DCDiCv4TE
• Stratoscope 7y ago
  This won't help anyone who has lost the use of their hands, but I have some advice for touch typists who use a standard keyboard like a laptop or typical desktop keyboard: don't bend your wrists. Of course most people know about the ergonomic advice to have your keyboard at the right height so your wrists don't have to bend up or down. But I often see people typing with a horizontal bend in their wrists so that their hands are pointing straight forward as they type, like this crude sketch: | | | | | | | | | | | | +---+ +---+ / / \ \ / / \ \ / / \ \ If you do that, try this instead: don't bend your wrists to make your hands straight. Relax your wrists and let your hands be at the same angle as your arms: / / / \ \ \ / / / \ \ \ +---+ +---+ / / \ \ / / \ \ / / \ \ Your fingers will still be able to find the keys, but it may take some getting used to if you've been using the "bent wrist" position. Once you get the hang of it, this may reduce the stress on your wrists. I've been typing on standard keyboards nearly every day for about 50 years without any significant problems. I tried using the "bent wrist" position as a quick experiment and it was really uncomfortable. So while I can't say for sure that it will help everyone, I'm pretty sure the "straight wrist" position has helped me.
  • tomc1985 7y ago
    Ergonomic keyboards with a split down the middle may help with this greatly.
    • rhinoceraptor 7y ago
      As an added benefit you can now put a notebook or drink between the each side of the keyboard.
    • Stratoscope 7y ago
      Indeed, that is one of the purposes of those keyboards. For myself, I love the TrackPoint so much that I can't bear the thought of using any other kind of keyboard with only a touchpad or a mouse. So standard ThinkPad keyboards it is for me. I even use a USB ThinkPad keyboard on my desktop at work!
• nmstoker 7y ago
  I really appreciated this article as it presents the kinds of challenges that all sorts of people can find them with unexpectedly, and shows how perseverance and the help of technology can be a way round them. More specifically I was interested to see that the version of Dragon for scripting isn't available any longer. However this might be something where Mozilla's recent efforts with speech recognition could help and as a bonus the project is open-source and adaptable. https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech The WER they've achieved is already good for general recognition and through experimenting with narrowed domains / language models it can be made extremely accurate. For anyone interested, there's a walkthrough I did of steps needed to set up a narrow domain LM on their forum below with a video showing it working. I'm guessing that a programming scenario would be somewhere in between: it would be a fairly defined range of words but that list would be quite a bit broader than the example I show. https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/tune-moziiladeepspeech-to-recognize-specific-sentences/41350/24?u=nmstoker https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/tune-moziiladeepspeech-to-re...
  • nmstoker 7y ago
    Oh, and as a follow-up, if you want to indirectly help make the recognition better, especially for non-English speakers or minority accents, contributing voice samples here is a great way help (no coding/technical skills, so share it with family and friends if you like!) https://voice.mozilla.org/en https://voice.mozilla.org/en
  • suby 7y ago
    Thanks, this is helpful. I'm building a similar system to Talon but based on Deepspeech (I don't have an OSX device, and I'd like to use it on Linux without having to run dragon in a VM which in my experience is an absolute pain).
• flurdy 7y ago
  This is totally my fear of what might happen to me. Not specifically the ailment that the author has, but I am worried what will happen to me if/when I no longer can type, in my case possibly due to rheumatism. My mother has severely swollen finger joints due to rheumatism, my grandmother on my father's side (Farmor in Norwegian, so much easier to explain) also suffered with it, and my older sister is now complaining of painful fingers. My paranoid hypochondriac traits are certain I am genetically guaranteed to suffer from rheumatic fingers. I depend on typing fast not just for my job but also my hobby and how I perform a lot of tasks in real life. (As I expect it is for many on HN). Not being able to type much in the future seemed terrible. However, this article and comments have made me realise I might be able to work around it. But still daunting. (If it ever becomes an actual problem). I already suffer from some RSI tinges due to my mouse which has led me to now own a plethora of different Kensington and Elecom trackerballs and a penguin mouse. And I own two MS Sculpt ergonomic keyboards and plan to buy a Keyboard.io split keyboard soon, to prevent typing RSI. Guess I can further buy myself out of tomorrow's typing problems with some eye-trackers, microphones, foot paddles, VR goggles etc.
• temac 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure typing for even just 4 hours a day is not going to end well for anybody. I should try to measure the time I spent typing, but in fact I'm not sure I could even find a way to just have enough things to type for 4 hours, every (or just most) days. On the rare occasions I've typed e.g. ~ 1000 LOC per day during a few days, I sometimes ended up with temporary RSI. But, at least for me, this is not a sustainable rate for other reasons, anyway. If some people manage to type huge loads of code (or doc or whatever) in a sustainable way, I'm curious to know how they do it? For example do they only ever work on new code and with low rate of interaction with other people? How much is their typing vs. code review ratio (on my side I think is roughly 50/50 and if I could change things I would probably do even more / longer reviews)?
• iovrthoughtthis 7y ago
  Had this problem. It was ulnar nerve compression in my back from poor posture. Left it for ages and have reduced sensitivity in my ring and pinky on both hands. Physio therapy, Laptop stand, external keyboard, mouse, good chair and foot rest help a lot + a tonne of rest. Stretches and general core strength helped a lot too. Running and lifting weights. I can still type. It’s a gift. I try not to take it for granted and count every day I can still use a keyboard.
• mwiethoff 7y ago
  I developed an RSI a few years ago, and I had to leave my job. It was devastating to lose both my career and my passion to an injury. Since then, I've been working with a friend on a new voice coding app called Serenade [1] that aims to enable anyone to program by voice. With Serenade, you can speak natural English voice commands like "delete second function" and "add class person". Not only can this be faster than typing, but it also means you don't have to memorize the syntax details of every language or a bunch of editor keyboard shortcuts. We found that cloud speech APIs and programs like Dragon weren't accurate enough for common programming words, so we built a custom speech engine (based on Kaldi [2]) that's designed specifically for coding. The app is still early, but we think the future of programming is working with these higher-level inputs rather than typing out code entirely by hand. We're looking for people to give feedback, so if anyone is interested in giving it a try, you can download Serenade at [3] or email me at matt@serenade.ai. [1] https://serenade.ai https://serenade.ai [2] http://kaldi-asr.org http://kaldi-asr.org [3] https://serenade.ai/download https://serenade.ai/download
  • hilyen 7y ago
    Definitely interested. I’ll check it out. Same boat, software engineer, my index and middle finger main knuckles on both hands inflame from the slightest use even after years of therapy, doctors visits, etc. Also tendinitis in both elbows/arms. Note to those who are pushing off fixing your ergonomics, don’t. If you feel pain, numbing, tingling; do not ignore it. Listen to your body, don’t be like me.
    • elevenoh 7y ago
      Had a similar issue. Then I went zerocarb and it faded fairly quickly.
      • cheez 7y ago
        0 carb is the thing!
    • throwaway61292 7y ago
      Can you elaborate on somethings you wish you had done. I get a bit of pain after half a day of coding, mostly my right pinky after hitting enter multiple times. Also get pain after certain activities like rolling food into a ball for my toddlers. I’ve joint pains here and there and the doctors have not yet found the cause and think it’s early onset of arthritis and have been told to take pain killers. I’m 39 by the way! Edit: added age
• danenania 7y ago
  Wow, Talon looks very interesting. For those who have gotten up to speed with it (or something similar like VoiceCode), how long did it take you to get reasonably productive? Also, is anyone out there working on a voice control VSCode plugin with deep TypeScript integration? I'd imagine the TS language server and programmability of VSCode could allow you to do some amazing things with voice.
  • house9-2 7y ago
    Voice programming takes a fair amount of effort to get started with, however once you have your microphone dialed and are getting good recognition you can take 'baby steps' and start augmenting your workflow to include voice. i.e. with Talon the alphabet is custom, so once you learn that you can do a lot with just `cmd+tab` `cmd+A`, `cmd+C`, etc... and it is customizable using python scripting so you can simplify many common tasks. I believe there is a VSCode plugin for Talon, I personally use Atom. Certain things are tedious with voice coding, like typing common abbreviated words like `args`; with Talon you have a few options, spell it out: `arch red gust sun` or use the `shrink` command `shrink arguments` or if you use it a lot you can come up with your own customized word for it; also words that sound the same but are spelled differently: `two`, `to`, `too` or even `2`
  • nickwongv 7y ago
    Talon is great. It practically saved my career as a coder. There is a learning curve, but it's aided by the #help channel in Slack (https://talonvoice.slack.com/messages/C7ENXA7C4 https://talonvoice.slack.com/messages/C7ENXA7C4), which is a good starting point after installing the (currently Mac-only) package at https://talonvoice.com/ https://talonvoice.com/. It took me a while (several months) before I could be reasonably productive, but that's because I was trying to avoid usage of my hands altogether, the available community commands were still fledgling, and I was transitioning from another voice control system. It'll be easier if you can still mostly use your hands since you can incrementally move over to voice coding/control, and the built-in functionality and community commands have truly progressed. There's also the eye tracking functionality if it's difficult for you to use a mouse/trackball etc. There is a community-maintained Talon VSCode plugin, but no explicit TypeScript integration. That's a great idea, though! I think some folks use VSCode snippets to help their workflow. I personally want to get to the point where I can utter commands that can write the correct code in whatever language/context I happen to be in, and maybe something even higher level than that. The Talon author and community members are already thinking along those lines, as evidenced by upcoming APIs that make Talon easier to use and even more configurable/extensible than it already is.
• halkro13 7y ago
  Love it it best I like someone
• halkro13 7y ago
  Love ot
• throwythingy2 7y ago
  My story is not a million miles away from this. I was fobbed off - despite being hospitalised for a year in my teens - as being 'psychosomatic'. Quite why, in this day and age, doctors can't just fess up straight and say 'I don't know' is baffling. Wind forwards to my mid twenties, and guess what, I am genetically diagnosed as having a recognised, hereditary muscular problem. Suddenly, everything slots in to place, and it turns out I'm not actually a lazy bugger at all... To the OP: I cannot recommend pain management programmes enough -- the NHS run them, and I learnt a huge amount about managing both chronic pain and the associated medication. They also do sleep management programmes. The Occupational Therapists are also really helpful, they run so-called 'rehabilitation programmes', which are basically all about working out how you can maximise your capabilities within your limits. Best of luck.
• aftbit 7y ago
  >It is easy to respond to anyone who has overcome adversity with one of two reactions: “It can’t be that hard,” or “I could never do that”. Move past both reactions. It is that hard. You can do it. What a lovely way to look at the world. Thank you for this!
• kgraves 7y ago
  > What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type? Answer: Find another career, you're finished.
• effnorwood 7y ago
  Something else
• dybber 7y ago
  I had a similar experience with RSI, starting in 2012 right before my CS PhD. I somehow got through the PhD. Afterwards I’ve redirected my career towards education, so currently not coding as much. My advice: slow wrist curls with heavy weights (5 seconds up/down, 5kg) keeps it away for me, it seems that this knowledge only just arrived at physical therapists a few years ago, but is still not common knowledge for ordinary physicians. Don’t do rubber and exercises or other exercises with low weight. Whenever I stop my training (e.g. on vacations), the pain quickly returns. Also, I always use ergonomic keyboards - my preference is those from Microsoft. I always have a Microsoft Sculpt in my backpack when out of office.
• jlgaddis 7y ago
  About six years I was on the losing end of a head-on motorcycle vs. SUV collision, breaking both of my wrists (as well as a broken right femur and several other injuries that were minor in comparison). I had "casts" that wrapped around my arms from mid-bicep to the tips of my fingers. Additionally, I couldn't walk due to the broken leg. There were a few months where 99% of my time was spent lying down in bed. The solution to my "can't type" problem was a pair of standard #2 pencils. I had them pushed up into the ends of the casts so that the eraser end was sticking out and basically just "hunted and pecked" with my "two fingers" until all of the surgeries and subsequent healing were complete. After a while I got pretty good at it too. I wasn't doing "touch typing" at ~120 wpm obviously but it was probably close to the days when I sent and received Morse code at ~18 wpm. Luckily, this only lasted for a few months and then I was all healed up and back to normal. My doctors said I should expect arthritis at a relatively early age, though, and that carpal tunnel was certainly a good possibility too, so at some point I may need to come up with a better solution than a couple pencils -- something more like what the author here managed. Hopefully I've got a few more years left and the technology and available tools will continue to progress in that time.
  • 19ylram49 7y ago
    Yikes. As a motorcycle rider and software engineer, this type of story does scare me a bit, but I’m glad to hear that you’re all healed up! I hope that you didn’t give up on riding, but I understand if you did. Much love and respect!
• einpoklum 7y ago
  I've often wondered about possible getting into that situation sometime in the future. It's a bit scary how your livelihood and even your entire sense of identity relies on good typing skills and reasonable eyesight. Also, I can sympathize with the author regarding the horrid way some medical practitioners (or perhaps even "the system" in general) have treated him/her. It's incredible when you first realize many doctors will simply not be bothered to get uncommon conditions properly diagnosed! This also has some financial motivation, in that non-trivial diagnostics require a bunch of costly diagnostic procedures (think MRI for example).
• sterlind 7y ago
  For anyone in a similar boat who can't get their doctor to take them seriously, ask for a referral to physical therapy. Doctors don't push back on that because it's not "drug seeking," and PTs and physiatrists are much more qualified to handle these types of issues than regular MDs. I started having this issue when my EDS led to Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, which caused nerve pain down my hands, and only exercises to release the entrapped nerve in my shoulders helped.
  • lutorm 7y ago
    I second going to a PT, but I went through a number of PTs before I found one that actually knew about referred pain and trigger points and specifically worked on treating those in addition to strengthening. Just doing strengthening only made the trigger points worse.
• YazIAm 7y ago
  A few tips from my RSI journey. I had developed a severe case ~8ish years ago. It took 1.5 years before I could code full-time again. Was a very painful period. It's still difficult for me to code beyond 40 hours a week, which makes side projects difficult. The most effective techniques for my (partial) recovery, and for keeping the severe pain at bay for the last 6 years: - I never ever use standard computer mice, and try to avoid the trackpad as much as possible. For me, they were worse than the keyboard. Instead, I've been using a Wacom tablet (with pen) for years. I've gotten several colleagues who were experiencing pain to use pen tablets as well, with uniformly good results. - Further reducing the need to leave the keyboard by switching to vim and also using spectacle for window management. I found vim-adventures.com very effective for learning vim - not affiliated with the project in anyway, just a very happy user. - Always coding with my elbow a touch over 90 degrees. I find that placing the keyboard on my lap is the most comfortable (although that maybe dependant on body proportions). In my opinion most desks are way to high for comfortable ergonomics, my lap happens to be everywhere I am, so that's convenient. - Plenty of exercise developing back muscles (which I had completely neglected prior)
• shocks 7y ago
  What worked for me is: - First stabilising by avoiding all unnecessary usage - Avoid wrist straps, they make it worse because your muscles will atrophy - Learn stretching and strengthening exercises from a physio - Use a Kinesis Advantage and a trackball - Avoid pronation - Start rock climbing, to make my arms/wrists strong Since then, I rarely have pain. You can get short term relief from dunking your wrists in ice cold water (reduces inflammation).
  • georgebarnett 7y ago
    The Kinesis Advantage is truly magical. It was a game changer for me.
• cwkoss 7y ago
  It is interesting to consider how the ability to speak code with the specificity necessary for a computer to know what to do would probably also vastly improve your ability to communicate in pair-programming type situations.
• martamoreno2 7y ago
  A coder does two things: * He gets this Keyboard: https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/ https://kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/ * He reads this blog: https://www.thepaleomom.com/start-here/the-autoimmune-protocol/ https://www.thepaleomom.com/start-here/the-autoimmune-protoc... And fixes himself...
  • 59nadir 7y ago
    I just want to caution against this advice as it's very likely to be dangerous and counterproductive for anyone who actually has real issues with their hands. The solution is to stop typing immediately.
  • switch007 7y ago
    That's a rather long advert, do you perhaps instead have links to something less "BUY MY BOOK! SIGN UP FOR MY NEWSLETTER! SUBSCRIBE!" and a little more scientific research?
• WalterBright 7y ago
  I'm curious. What about a foot keyboard, where one can type with one's toes?
  • bmn__ 7y ago
    That doesn't work. Human toes are not flexible like fingers. Pedals, however, intended to be operated by the whole foot, are a great idea and do exist.
• jasoneckert 7y ago
  I had a similar pain problem that affected my back, neck, arms, wrists and fingers. I ended up having to cut out most carbs from my diet to reduce the inflammation that was causing the pain. No breads, rice, beans, starches, bad sugars, etc. It's been more than 2 years now, and I've have zero pain whatsoever since I started that.
• xedrac 7y ago
  Switching to Dvorak saved my career. It forced me to type extremely slow for awhile, which helped my pain subside. I haven't had a problem since. Qwerty is such a terrible layout.
  • z0r 7y ago
    I believe you, but I don't think qwerty is inherently a problem. Typing extremely slowly for a while helps. I've developed pain in my wrists multiple times over the years, and have always switched workflows as a result. Went from a wireless apple 'magic keyboard' to a model m to a goldtouch (split, elevated pyramid keyboard) with a left handed mouse, and every time I've found relief from the pain (later on with the use of wrist braces for a few weeks to prevent unconscious wrist flexion). The common element has been a forced change in computing activity - the pain would not cease immediately, so a combination of pain, the changed input layout, and in some cases the wrist braces meant less of doing anything at all with the computer. There's the magic potion for RSI for me - less repetitive stress, enforced by a changed computing environment. Changing the size of the input devices, the layout (from right handed to left handed mouse, from a mouse to a trackball, to a touchpad, to a vertical mouse.. whatever) changes the type of stress too. I won't be surprised when I have to repeat the process of changing to anything else at all. I've already returned from the goldtouch to the model m, but I won't be unhappy when I have to switch back.
• jnwatson 7y ago
  I was fortunate my first job out of college was a large defense contractor. The last thing they do to get your cube set up is take your measurements and set the desk, keyboard, monitor and seat heights appropriately. I’ve been using those measurements ever since. I was also fortunate to have taken an entire year of typing in high school. Not only did I get my wpm over 90, but the teacher was a stickler on posture and hand position. That discipline has stuck with me 25 years.
• khanmaytok 7y ago
  Only for Mac...
  • nickwongv 7y ago
    Linux support appears to be in beta. Windows is on the roadmap and being worked on AFAIK.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• Vesuvium 7y ago
  It's a very interesting story, thank you for sharing it.
• polpenn 7y ago
  Something I’ve always wondered about the programming / software development profession: do people buy insurance for their hands? My sister is a denturists and she has insurance for her hands. Curious if this is something people in our profession have considered to protect from incidents like this.
  • ThrustVectoring 7y ago
    I do. One easily searchable phrase for it is "own-occupation disability insurance". It covers anything that prevents me from working in my profession, although there are payout time restrictions on hard-to-verify mental health ones to prevent malingering. Automatically qualifying events include loss of sight, hearing, voice, use of any two hands and/or feet. After qualifying, I get paid $5k/mo until age 65.
• qwsxyh 7y ago
  When I type, I type by moving my whole arm. No aches or pains. It's only when I'm playing video games and use multiple fingers that my wrist hurts.
• liuw 7y ago
  If you don't do it already, take regular breaks. That helped me recover from RSI. The difficult part is remembering to take regular breaks. I use a piece of software call Workrave and have been very satisfied with it.
• mkl 7y ago
  Well this problem sounds familiar! I solved it in a different way as voice coding was much more difficult 15 years ago. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (Hypermobility Type), and associated nervous system pain. I lost my ability to type in 2002, and began my PhD in 2004 (in applied maths - lots of programming). I did the whole thing typing with mice, trackballs, and modified versions thereof, mainly using predictive on-screen typing software I wrote. When touch screens became widely available I adapted the software to them and did my typing that way. Since ~2016 I've finally been able to type useful amounts on two very specific keyboards with low travel and high springyness (Surface Pro keyboard cover and Bluetooth Surface Keyboard; Surface Book keyboard is okay but not as good; HP has some keyboards that might be good but don't sell them individually). I use dictation software for prose, but haven't tried it for programming, Latex, etc. Talon seems worth investigating though, as there are periods I need to minimise my typing.
• hinkley 7y ago
  Right at the beginning of my career, Symantec was approaching a bunch of little companies for some community outreach project they were doing that I can hardly remember. Because they sent us a rep with severe RSI and I was so fascinated by her setup we barely talked about the project (and then my boss changed directions like he did 5 times a week). This was just months before I briefly developed RSI myself and switched to Dvorak. The next time it resurfaced I learned about pinched nerves in the neck and started taking better care of my spine. Now I only get problems when I'm working at a properly shitty desk or in a crap chair. Anyway. She was using an early Wacom tablet instead of a mouse, and a pretty complicated macro system. Next job I met a guy who tried a BAT chording keyboard, never liked it, but set it up next to his regular keyboard and with a ton of programming macros for idiomatic code (define function, for loop, if/else if, etc). Probably around that time I encountered an article about how French CS people were tut tutting about how ubiquitous computers were bad for us because we used to have to think before coding, so you thought about the problem instead of just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. From all of this and a bunch of other experiences I've sort of developed a thesis it really is worth it to spend at least 10% longer on a task thinking about ways to avoid grunt work and sources of human error. When new programmers ask me how to get better I point out that nobody is going to notice if it took them 4 hours or 4 and a half to do a task. After you think you're done ask yourself what you could do better with another 20 minutes and do it. (eventually you start doing this class of work preemptively, and you add other new things in). And for those with RSI, this is existential. On any project there are a group of tasks for which it's more important they are done right the first time than that they are done quickly. Throw yourself onto those tasks. Don't try to be a spaghetti hurler if you are struggling with RSI. Make yourself available to help and mentor junior people (it's amazing what you can learn about a system and about your own programming skills by observing all the bits people struggle with the most). Michaelangelo is said to have spent a great deal of time in contemplation before starting work. We don't always get to do art but sometimes it's called for.
• PopeDotNinja 7y ago
  Question, for anyone with physical typing limitations... How hard would sign language be for you? Is that less/more painful than typing? I'm wondering how practical it'd be to set up a computer that could recognize hand motions and/or sensors. Also, I wonder how long it'd take me to learn to type with my toes. Apparently people do it! https://www.google.com/search?q=type+with+toes https://www.google.com/search?q=type+with+toes
• redact207 7y ago
  In the last few years I've reached zen with keyboard comfort. The 2 biggest changes have been: 1. Get the flattest, lowest keyboard you can. I use an external Mac keyboard and keep it flat to the desk. 2. Move the keyboard as far away as possible from you. This extends your arms out further so your wrists aren't compensating by bending for being so close. I've recently started using a standing desk and found it useful to bring it in a position just below my armpits so it supports my outstretched arms. It sounds a bit odd, but I have no pain, discomfort or tiredness.
• eee391 7y ago
  I had severe rsi on my forearms from too much coding with bad posture and no exercise. It got me for more than 3 years. It was a muscular issue the nerves were fine. I lost endurance in the forearm / wrist muscles and it didn't seem to come back no matter what I tried. Doctors therapy exercise etc. It was a nightmare. I went on a leave. I barely kept my job. At times I couldn't use the computer for more than 10 minutes before my Muscles were exhausted. Gradually but very slowly things improved. Today I can manage it pretty well. My recovery started with reading this book and I recommend it to anyone going through chronic pain: The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain
  • eee391 7y ago
    The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain
• jansc 7y ago
  Interesting post. I’ve been dealing with RSI on and off for the past 5 years. Natural keyboard, standing desk, reducing keyboard use in my free time, lots of breaks, almost no hobby activity, stretching and exercises helped, but the pain keeps coming back after while. Any suggestions for Linux-based tools?
• ypcx 7y ago
  I've learned touch typing before I've even learned coding, and I think it saved me from most of RSI that I could get. (Most RSI would be coming from punching the keyboard too hard when under stress / on a lot of coffee.) My only serious RSI experience was on Laptops, with the task switching combo - Alt+Tab (or Cmd+Tab/Cmd+`) - which was really killing my left palm with severe pain. Since that time I'm remapping left-Alt/Cmd+Tab to left-Alt/Cmd+Spacebar (Karabiner on Mac, Sharpkeys+Autohotkey on Windows), and I'm constantly amazed how good and productive that combo is. And that it should have been used for computers instead of Alt+Tab from factory. I'll share the configs gladly ofc if anyone's interested.
  • krysp 7y ago
    That really does sound like a better combination! Never done system remappings on OSX, how did you go about it?
    • ypcx 7y ago
      Hi. On OSX it's actually very easy (at this point in history): 1. download & install Karabiner Elements (open source: https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements) `brew cask install karabiner-elements` 2. run the program, and install "Anti-RSI App Switch" config from the internet repo (or anything else you prefer): Menu bar icon -> Preferences -> Complex Modifications -> Add rule -> Import more rules from internet -> search for "rsi" -> Anti-RSI App Switch -> Import (you may have to go through the "Add rule" a few times to enable all parts of the rule, but the internet import happens only once)
• cabaalis 7y ago
  > My GP read the note and informed me: He would not prescribe me painkillers. He would not send me for a second opinion from a neurologist, or treatment from any other specialist In a real Healthcare system, a second opinion doesn't require the consent of your doctor. It is despite them, not at their descretion.
• nirvdrum 7y ago
  If anyone is having difficulty typing for whatever reason, you may want to check out the dictation-toolbox organization on GitHub [1]. About a decade ago I began developing symptoms from excessive typing on a MacBook Pro (that short key travel distance is a killer). The pain is still pretty persistent, but I have ways of managing and part of that was relying on dictation. When I got started with dictation, I saw several people were solving different parts of the same problem in different ways. The dictation-toolbox organization is my attempt to collate all of that work together. Unfortunately, there's not a great out-of-the-box solution and there are several tools in there that still "compete" in some sense. But, at least they're all centrally located and devs from the various projects bounce ideas off each other. Each of the devs is very responsive and will help you get started. Pull requests are always welcomed, but even just suggestions for overall improvements are well-received. Whether due to genetics or environment, an injury/condition can be annoying enough. Having it also potentially compromise your source of income is just additional stress. I won't say dictation is a silver bullet, but it really helped me out. Hopefully it can help you out as well. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have questions, need help getting started, or want to get involved. [1] -- https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/ https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/
• hogFeast 7y ago
  The stuff about doctors in the UK is quite amusing. I actually look after a relative who has similar but not identical issue. Like OP, the diagnosis is madness and advice to see a clinical psychologist (ironically, this person was a psychologist themselves). Like OP, the doctor is actually actively intervening to prevent a second opinion from a neurologist (which is slightly redundant as the conclusion will most likely be the same...although sometimes you get lucky). In what is probably not a massive coincidence, my relative probably saw the same people as OP (I live in the Edinburgh area). This unit got handed a massive stack of cash recently...BMWs all round for the boys. Recently, as my relative's condition has deteriorated, I think about this a lot (they are basically a parent to me). Doctors in the UK are, by and large, arrogant. If you want to know if someone is a doctor in the UK, talk to them...they will tell you within the first ten seconds...multiple times. Most outside primary care seem to actively dislike patients. I know multiple people who became doctors...none did anything for anyone but themselves (amazing given that almost everyone at my school was strongly encouraged to do charity work). I went to a university with a huge, well-regarded medical school...nothing that I experienced at university altered this view. There is something fundamentally, one could even say psychologically, wrong with the kind of person who becomes a doctor in the UK. But there is also something utterly wrong with the incentives: the NHS has no capacity for care outside a narrow boundary. They have "policy" in areas where this makes no sense. In this area, there is a clear medical consensus that these issues aren't psychological...outside the UK. Inside, there is "policy"...if you have any of these problems (fibro/CFS/ME) you are mad. Say what you will about the US healthcare system but in these cases, i.e. infrequent, then you actually get a decent result, doctors are paying attention to research, and they are actually willing to consider the possibility that you aren't "putting it on". The only exception is MS...unf, as it is often clear where the boundary lies between MS and some of the other things in this group, this is a largely redundant distinction to everyone but the doctors.
  • Engineering-MD 7y ago
    It looks like you’ve had some bad experiences with doctors. I myself am a doctor in the UK, and my experience differs from yours. I would say like all humans, some of my colleagues are arrogant, and some are not. I would agree we tend to mention it early in conversation, but more because for many their whole life revolves around it (it makes discussing your life difficult if you ignore it!). The term used commonly is functional. Some people (like yourself and the article author, as well as some doctors) take this to mean they are ‘mad’. This is not the meaning of functional. It implies a lack of recognised organic pathology, with a likely cause within the brain. This is a very heterogenous category due to the lack of known biological pathology, and includes those with rare and undiscovered diseases, those with true psycho local issues causing somatisation , and those simply lying. Due to the difficulty in treating these diseases, often people attempt one of the treatments that can work for some of these people (somatisation): psychotherapy. Of course this doesn’t work for everyone, but given the low risk it poses it is worth trying. As for American healthcare, there is an incentive to overinvestigate and overdiagnose. Not all pathologies found are relevant or explain the clinical findings.
• rkagerer 7y ago
  Developed RSI 15 years ago, tried all kinds of contraptions. Here's what helped me: - Kinesis Advantage keyboard w/ footswitch https://kinesis-ergo.com/products/#keyboards https://kinesis-ergo.com/products/#keyboards - Ambidextrous mousing (one on each side, to split the load). Favor your PageUp / PageDown buttons over the evil mousewheel. - Lifestyle changes (biggest bang for the buck). Try to get at least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise in each day, e.g. running. - Proper ergonomic positioning This video from the article is a phenomenal demonstration of dictation coding: https://youtu.be/Mz3JeYfBTcY https://youtu.be/Mz3JeYfBTcY Fun fact (or myth?): Your tongue is one of the few muscles in the body that can't get RSI. I played around prototyping a tongue-switch a while back using a flex sensor.
  • mostlyjason 7y ago
    Huh interesting any reference on your claim that the tongue can’t get RSI?
• 29athrowaway 7y ago
  Take posture seriously. Get an ergonomics assessment, invest in ergonomic input devices. And listen to your pain... if you are in pain and not already injured you are doing something wrong.
• AlchemistCamp 7y ago
  The Kinesis Advantage 2 helped me a great deal.
• bengrunfeld 7y ago
  They become "journalists"
• corporealfunk 7y ago
  When I was in college (almost 20 years ago), I was studying music (piano and electronic music/synthesis) which involved many hours at both a piano keyboard and computer keyboard. In my junior year I had intense pain in my wrists and had to ask my CS profs and music profs for extra time to complete assignments. They obliged, and it took about a year of visiting several PTs, doctors and finally a body worker trained in PT to resolve it. She knew that my pain was "referred" pain from nerve issues in my arms and torso (caused of course by bad ergonomics). The wrists were not damaged, only "feeling" the pain from nerves further up the arms that had become constricted. Through simple stretches and good desk ergonomics I have been pain free since. I highly recommend the book "Comfort at Your Computer: Body Awareness Training for Pain-Free Computer Use" by Paul Linden. Also "The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook" for info on referred pain and self massage techniques to help alleviate it.
  • lutorm 7y ago
    I thank "The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook" and the PT that recommended it to me for finally breaking the cycle and beginning my recovery after 6 years of severe RSI. Learning about trigger points have also helped me self-treat my chronic neck pain and various other aches and pains. I can't recommend it enough.
• teddyh 7y ago
  No discussion about hard-to-explain pains would be complete without a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Sarno https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Sarno
• softcore 7y ago
  All these people talking about repetitive strain injuries and other joint issues have a deeply valid stance on this issue. My best advice is that prevention is better than cure (or treatment). Remember, if you are computer-locked, to aim to do wrist stretches as well as look out your window (or any far distance) to exercise your eye muscles.
• MsNifi4128 7y ago
  I think that's pretty awesome!! I've been working on cp since preschool. I never took a computer class, but I tested out of computer class in 7th grade. So, I never learned to keyboard. I can peck fast, but I have been trying to get the money for Dragon, haven't yet. But I have been learning to code to not give away my app and software ideas away. I networked my high schools computers in San Diego when I was 12. So, I know quite a bit but this is Definitely the highlight of my the month. I will be checking you out. Maybe we can work together. I have a tremendous idea, just needs thoughtful spirits like this.
• lutorm 7y ago
  There is a device that worked wonders for massaging my forearm muscles: The "Arm-Aid": https://armaid.com/ https://armaid.com/ It was not a panacea by any means, but even though I'm fully recovered from my RSI today, I still pull out the arm-aid when I've typed a lot or done something else that has caused my arm muscles to tighten up. (It's apparently a big hit with climbers, too.) You can also use it to massage your calf and shin muscles. Incredibly painful if you're anything like me, but very helpful. Use it in combination with the "Trigger Point Therapy Workbook" mentioned elsewhere.
• mirimir 7y ago
  > My GP read the note and informed me: He would not prescribe me painkillers. He would not send me for a second opinion from a neurologist, or treatment from any other specialist. The only referral he would write would be to a psychologist to help me “resolve the underlying issues behind my pain”. People like that deserve torture. Perhaps there's a hack to induce fibromyalgia or idiopathic small fiber neuropathy, and if there is, they deserve to acquire it. If it were me, I'd likely be buying opioids from dark markets.
• Eli_P 7y ago
  It's interesting if and how the reverse task is possible: if we can type with our voice, can we hear back the feedback? Hearing back the gobbledygook we pronounce might be a start to a mental disorder. Should the feedback be isomorphic to the input? There could be different levels of abstraction, starting from audio tty and ending with a high level commands. The usable solution would be non-trivial, what should I hear after running make -j? There could have been a commands like "give me the first five warnings", "navigate to the first warning". Blindfolded navigation in the code tree would also be interesting. I could say commands like "list modules with route handlers", "go to function X", "get the type signature", "summarize function". If the sane audible feedback would be feasible, it'd open a door into coding for people with visual impairments, or coding while wandering around, or pushing commits with a headset from the beach.
• 19ylram49 7y ago
  Man, this is so inspiring but also a reality check! I just looked at my hands and realized just how much I love and rely on these babies. I’ve had similar feelings when I’ve met blind software engineers (yes, they exist). This is why you should aim to never take anything for granted.
• anderspitman 7y ago
  Started getting fairly severe RSI about a year ago. It's at a manageable level now, but was really scary there for a while. The things that I credit (this is difficult to measure) as most helpful, in descending importance: 1. See a physical therapist and get a stretching/nerve glide regime from them. 2. Take lots of breaks to do the stretches. 3. Ergonomic keyboard (I'm using a Kinesis Freestyle 2). 4. Use foot pedals for CTRL, shift, and meta. I rigged up a simple 2-pedal Arduino solution for myself. Code here [0] [0] https://github.com/anderspitman/ergo-pedals https://github.com/anderspitman/ergo-pedals
• Pimpus 7y ago
  I'm sorry to hear about the pain many of you suffer from. Please consider reading a book from Dr. Sarno. He will challenge the mechanistic view of the human body many of you erroneously hold. More importantly, he will cure you if you're willing to be cured.
• steenreem 7y ago
  > After selecting a particular phrase using my cursor control commands, I say “clip [foo]“, and every time I want to enter the same phrase after, I say “paste [foo]“. I therefore only have to dictate a particularly obnoxious variable name once. A simpler solution might be an editor with an auto-completion feature where completion items can be selected using abbreviations or full names with small errors.
• stonewhite 7y ago
  Tavis Rudd gave an inspiring talk about solving this problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI
• michaelrbock 7y ago
  Here are some additional resources for folks looking to ditch the keyboard: https://handsfreecoding.org/ https://handsfreecoding.org/
• djohnston 7y ago
  Facebook is building type by thought stuff that looks rather promising. I think their stated goal is 100 wpm
• cryptonector 7y ago
  Long ago my hands started hurting. By the end of each week my hands hurt a great deal. Eventually I figured out a solution for me: - first and foremost, use sticky keys Sticky keys is an accessibility technology you can look up that ultimately means I can avoid "ulnar deviations" -- twisting the hands outwards at the wrists. Others may be able to use sticky keys to avoid other deviations. - second and foremost :), never ever rest my forearms or wrists on anything (such as a desk) while typing Typing moves your tendons from the elbow all the way to your fingertips! Resting your wrists or forearms while typing means pressing on your tendons and the sheaths they move through, and this is one cause of RSI. This means, among other things, not having arm rests on my chairs. - type with keyboard on lap - put monitor at head level The first three items help me avoid hand/forearm injuries. The last two items (note overlap) mean I can better control my seated posture to avoid neck/shoulder/back injuries. With my keyboard on my lap I don't have to make as much effort to hold my arms up, thus alleviating shoulder strain, which also reduces the need to rest my forearms while typing. Having my monitor(s) high up means I can sit up straight (which reduces back strain) and keep my head balanced over my neck (which reduces neck and back strain). I should probably add that I avoid Emacs keybindings like the plague, as those involve lots of modifier keys, which are the source of my ulnar deviations. Yes, with sticky keys I can avoid them, but I'm not sufficiently disciplined about not ever pressing modifier keys and modified keys together to make Emacs keybindings acceptable to me. It won't surprise anyone that modal keybindings (VIM!) are my preference. I should probably also mention that using text-based applications as much as possible helps me avoid using the mouse. The mouse too is a source of deviations. Ever since I discovered this solution, I have not had the sort of pain that might make me quit the industry. A talk on RSI inspired me to look for solutions. In particular, that talk taught me about various "deviations", and I immediately recognized ulnar deviations as one of my key problems, which is what led me to find sticky keys. NB: I'm not suggesting the above will work for anyone other than myself. What I am suggesting is that anyone struggling with RSI symptoms might be able to find a solution for themselves. The speaker in the linked video clearly found a solution that works for her. Also, I've tried many keyboards. My favorite are curved keyboards with no builtin wrist rests, but these are hard to find. Nowadays I use compact gaming keyboard (Arvo) with cherry mx browns -- compact means I don't have to move my hands a lot, "gaming" means N-key rollover (all the keystrokes will be emitted even if they happen close enough in time to overwhelm the buffer on non-gaming keyboards), which together with "cherry mx" means I get enough haptic feedback that I can know about and correct typos without even having to look at what I'm typing. Note: edited.
• dockao 7y ago
  Great discussion on non-manual options. However, the most sound solution is to fix the hands. The most common problems relate to tightness, which will manifest as pain, numbness or weakness. The solutions lie in the yoga-taichi-chigong type of pursuits. The common denominator being mindful breathing in conjunction with lengthening maneuvers, expanding on the exhales, maintaining on the inhales. Our hands are healthier when we use them, witness the rapid decline with casting or other immobilization. So the answer to tightness, whether from fatigue or other factors, is deep breathing & lengthening.
• nickwongv 7y ago
  Talon: https://talonvoice.com/ https://talonvoice.com/ ^ the voice coding (and eye tracking) system referenced by the author. I use it every day. It's actively developed, has some unique capabilities, and the community is great!
• kazinator 7y ago
  In 1990 I had a coding job, working for Neil Squire Society (then called Neil Squire Foundation). https://www.neilsquire.ca/ https://www.neilsquire.ca/ One of the input devices I was working with was a sip-puff switch: a breath operated device controlled by tongue movements to create small air pressure or rarefaction. I was working, among other things, on a sip-and-puff operated text viewer/editor, and a kind of boot screen that would allow people with different disabilities and input device requirements to share the same PC. We had a driver (then for MS-DOS) which allowed an encoding derived from Morse code to produce any key code that a PC-101 keyboard could produce, right down to the three finger salute. I wanted to know what this is really like, so I decided to spend time with my hands off the keyboard, learning how to use it. After a while I was able to write code. The Morse code entry method encodes input symbols in terms of sip (negative pressure corresponding to Morse dash) and puff (positive pressure, Morse dot), which are sampled in relation to a fixed time base. As you get faster at producing the symbol patterns, you can crank up the clock speed to shorten their duration. Some of the fastest users were able to type 40 wpm, which is faster than "hunt and peck" typists.
• astrofinch 7y ago
  I had some really nasty RSI a few years back. This website saved my career: https://www.painscience.com https://www.painscience.com
• edisonjoao 7y ago
  nice!
• funous 7y ago
  Speech recognition developer here - I hear many people complaining about the accuracy of speech recognition hindering multiple use-cases. I work for a lesser known speech recognition company Speechmatics [1] and accuracy is our top priority. We do have a real-time speech recognition API available, adding it as an alternative speech recognition provider for some of the tools mentioned here might improve the experience for end-users. I've got in touch with our team to see if there is any way we can get involved. [1] https://www.speechmatics.com/ https://www.speechmatics.com/
• thw0rted 7y ago
  Could it be that the nature of your day to day programming workload has an impact on your susceptibility to RSI? My current project is full stack dev almost exclusively in Typescript, and I find myself actually hands-on-keyboard typing for much less than half of an average workday. The rest of the time, I'm reading (documentation, library code, blogs / presentations / etc) or debugging. Granted, I drive the debugger with keyboard shortcuts but surely keeping one hand on F8-12 and pressing a key every once in a while is less of a risk than prolonged full-keyboard touch typing. My last gig saw me spending a lot of time writing server-side Java and maintaining the systems it ran on via SSH. More active typing, less reading, mousing, etc. It's just one data point, but I definitely had to take more steps to avoid wrist pain then than I do now. I wonder if risk could scale inversely with the level of language you use. I imagine it most pronounced among kernel hackers who spend their whole day writing hundreds of lines of C, debugging in an editor subshell, hands never leaving the keyboard -- Real Coders Don't Use The Mouse, after all. Is this crazy?