10 ms·

Adjustable, low-impact keeb

90 points by serial_dev 6y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
leetrout 5y ago
I’ve not taken the plunge on any special keyboards. I am afraid of committing to something super custom and losing some of my already low typing speed when switching to use the laptops built in keyboard.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  Which is why we're all using Qwerty keyboards instead of Dvoraks...Switching costs are too high. This low-impact model in the title promises 120WPM (I'm assuming with time commitment to achieve mastery). But yeah, you won't be able to take a device like that everywhere. It makes me wonder if any WPM threshold is enough to convince people to make the switch from Qwerty.
  - jschwartzi 5y ago
    I can type about 70-80 WPM on my qwerty in typing tests. The limiting factor in my work isn't typing speed, it's my ability to form thoughts and to express them to the computer. So switching to a faster keyboard does absolutely nothing for me.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      Indeed. Stenographers regularly hit 200wpm on chorded keyboards, with a record of 375. We haven't adopted that tech en mass because speed isn't the only factor
    - dr_kiszonka 5y ago
      I wonder if there is some sort of ergonomic benchmark for IDEs or keyboard shortcut layouts. What I have in mind is given some representative code sample, how many keystrokes are needed to perform a set of common tasks like duplicate line, reverse the order of function arguments, etc. There could be penalties for uncomfortable shortcuts like CTRL-B on QWERTY.
      - asdff 5y ago
        I definitely think the mac OS cmd based keystrokes are much more ergonomic than the windows ctrl based keystrokes. For windows you have to hit ctrl with your weak pinky, then awkardly stretch your index finger to somewhere on the keyboard. It's an awkard movement that I don't think my hand otherwise ever makes during my life. It seems like a recipe for strain to me, doing something not commonly done by the hand regularly. I think it originally was expected that users would use their other hand to type right ctrl since there wasn't a mouse back then, but these days everyone keeps their right hand hovering the mouse or trackpad rather than hovering over the home row. With cmd based keyboard shortcuts, your hand basically forms the default resting limp hand position, with your thumb on the cmd button, and your index finger lazily and easily finding the other key to complete the shortcut. Your thumb is basically always there anyway due to the spacebar. It's a much more natural movement.
        Symbiote 5y ago
        Using two hands for key combinations is step one to avoiding RSI. If you need to keep your hands on the mouse (for example, CAD or video editing) then get a keyboard with programmable macro keys, or a separate macro pad. For example, a Kinesis Freestyle Pro, or a Koolertron.
    - egypturnash 5y ago
      In the long run, your limiting factor is how much your favorite keyboard layout fucks up your wrist tendons by making them rub against the inside of the bones of your wrist (the “tunnel” of “carpal tunnel syndrome”).
  - LukeShu 5y ago
    > It makes me wonder if any WPM threshold is enough to convince people to make the switch from Qwerty. No. You don't switch for speed. You switch for comfort and to reduce strain. The reason why the 120WPM speed is brought up at all is to (1) demonstrate that the keyboard design isn't totally bunk, and (2) that the person has spent enough time with the keyboard to get to a level of mastery with it that their opinion on the keyboard is coming from a place of knowledge.
  - c618b9b695c4 5y ago
    I tried Dvorak for some time and did find it more comfortable. I even got up to a semi-decent typing speed. My big stumbling block was the number of applications that have non-configurable keybinds.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
      It helps if you plan to toggle; on X11/Linux I just switch to QWERTY when gaming, but I think Windows can do per-program keyboard layout selection, which would make it really easy.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    Given that the leaderboards for typing speed competitions are dominated by qwerty typers, and that I, a qwerty typer, type faster than every single one of my dvorak friends, and that the general pattern of the scholarly work on dvorak is that experimental rigor correlates positively with p-values, I'm inclined to say that the reason for qwerty's continued dominance is not just that people are stuck in their ways. It's absolutely a factor, of course, but another one is that the benefits of dvorak have been greatly exaggerated.
    - hydroxonium 5y ago
      me on dvorak: 110 wpm (10-race average) on typeracer.com If your typing speed is high percentile, odds are you'd be faster than all your friends anyway, regardless of dvorak / qwerty. (E.g. I type faster than every single one of my qwerty friends! ...) Given that <0.1% use dvorak, there's >90% chance you won't see a single dvorak user in a random sample of 100 people. Not hard to see why the leaderboards will be "dominated" by qwerty. Like others have said, dvorak is for comfort, not for speed. Dvorak is MUCH more comfortable than qwerty. Also, Dvorak users almost never complain that they type more slowly than their qwerty days, once they've gotten used to it. Many of us dvorak users also are competent at qwerty in a pinch (80 wpm qwerty here). Cf. http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/Dvorak/ http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/Dvorak/
    - anchpop 5y ago
      I use colemak, and type as fast as I did back when I typed with two fingers. But from people who switched from touch-typing qwerty, I'm told colemak and dvorak are much more comfortable. I don't think anyone should switch because they anticipate better typing speed, but if you type with two fingers, switching can force you to reset your muscle memory and make it easier to learn to touch-type (that's why I switched). If anyone is interested in switching, also check out the Workman layout, which is a slight improvement on Colemak's ergonomics at the cost of messing up some keyboard shortcuts
  - starpilot 5y ago
    Keyboard layout doesn't matter for speed. Here's a guy typing 99 wpm with two fingers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mNu8WnFFa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mNu8WnFFa0 You switch to Dvorak for comfort, not speed.
  - elihu 5y ago
    > Which is why we're all using Qwerty keyboards instead of Dvoraks... Whether the switching costs are worth it is an individual choice, and quite a few people have chosen that it's worth it. They're in the minority, but that's fine as long as people are free to use whatever keyboard layout they like.
  - api_or_ipa 5y ago
    Everyone has a "premature optimization is the root of all evil" story and I'm no different. I learned Dvorak years ago in university and stuck with it, thinking it would make me a better 'professional' programmer since I could type faster. Oh, how naive I was. Over a decade later, I've made the switch between dvorak and qwerty several times, and it really isn't too hard to switch, after an afternoon using a different layout I'll reach a reasonable WPM. Lately I've stuck to dvorak although I'm still reasonably fluent in Qwerty and I do occasionally go back to qwerty to ensure I'm still somewhat fluent. What really does me in when using another computer is the standard staggered keyboard layout since I've been living on an Ergodox Infinity for over a year now. Once you've grown accustomed to an columnar arranged keyboard, it's incredibly difficult to go back to a staggered layout.
- mleonhard 5y ago
  If you're worried about RSI, take action now. Don't wait. Don't get a keyboard like the one in the article. Get one that reduces arm twisting and strain on your tendons. Fifteen years ago, I had RSI pain in my wrists. I switched to a split keyboard [0] and the pain mostly went away. After a few years, the aches came back and slowly got worse, especially when using a mouse. Eight years ago, I switched to a tenting keyboard [1] and vertical mouse [2]. Again, the aching and pain mostly went away. Strength training [3] finally solved my RSI. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_ergonomic_keyboards#Natural_Keyboard_Elite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_ergonomic_keyboards#... [1] https://shop.goldtouch.com/products/goldtouch-v2-adjustable-comfort-keyboard-pc-and-mac-compatible-usb https://shop.goldtouch.com/products/goldtouch-v2-adjustable-... [2] https://evoluent.com https://evoluent.com [3] https://www.lesmills.com/us/workouts/fitness-classes/bodypump/ https://www.lesmills.com/us/workouts/fitness-classes/bodypum...
- pugworthy 5y ago
  I built a 40% keyboard a while back somewhat for the fun of it. I can type on it, but honestly it's difficult. Hunt and peck style, sure - speed typing, not yet.
- qudat 5y ago
  I was worried about this as well but my daily driver is a split ortho 40% keyboard and I can easily switch between it (with multiple layers) and a laptop keyboard. You don’t lose the ability to type on a normal keyboard, you just gain how to type on a 40% split ortho.
gh-throw 5y ago
Please tell me "keeb" isn't "keyboard". Clicks link Yes, it's keyboard, but occurs only in the title. Bad, but could be worse.
- yepthatsreality 5y ago
  And a look at Urban Dictionary seems like a pretty recent piece of slang. Honestly I t’s not like -oard is extra lengthy syllables or there’s an industry that uses this term. It’s very cringe-y web-2.0-like name but maybe that’s hip? Why would it be “keeb” and not “keyb”. Is it pronounced liked “jeeb”?
  - codetrotter 5y ago
    > Why would it be “keeb” and not “keyb”. Is it pronounced liked “jeeb”? Much as I don’t like calling it “keeb”, and therefore personally don’t call it that, writing it as “keeb” makes sense if you’re going to pronounce it that way. If it was written “keyb” then I might have read it as “key be” instead.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - martyvis 5y ago
    I presume by only referring to it with one syllable, it also helps reducing movement of mouth parts just as the "keeb" does for hand parts.
    - YinglingLight 5y ago
      I presumed is was another example of the infantilizing of young adults today. 'Look at my cute pupper!' 'Just got dishy installed today Elon!'
      - kortex 5y ago
        It's not "infantilizing," it's linguistic mutation, and it's what languages do [0], for all manner of reasons. Text lacks intonation, plain text even more so, and internet dialect tends to evolve ways to add emphasis. In this case "pupper" is inflected to suggest endearment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law
amelius 5y ago
Are those minimal movements really ergonomic?
- z5h 5y ago
  This is the question!!! I’ve been coding for 25+ years. In high school my dad would get me summer jobs doing highly repetitive assembly line work. Like, the same motions all summer. I spent years being a pretty serious into rock climbing. And the absolute worst thing for my wrist/arm by far? ... Clicking a mouse button with my index finger.
  - pugworthy 5y ago
    Oddly I've been clicking mice since the early/mid 80's and never have had a problem. It always amazes me I've not had messed up wrists as a result. I'd add though that gaming with typical WASD + Mouse style has caused problems. I think it's mostly the tension one has when gaming - hard to not grip that mouse tight in the moment.
tunesmith 5y ago
As a pianist, everything about that seems wrongheaded and a great way to get RSI. Piano rules are basically don't move your fingers if you can move your hand, don't move your hand if you can move your wrist, don't move your wrist if you can move your forearm, don't move your forearm if you can move your body. The point isn't to exaggerate that and be strict with it, but it is to limit strain. Even when typing at a desk, I keep the heels of my hands in the air.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  I recently bought an ultra-minimalist ergo keyboard that is designed to minimize hand movement, and that seems to be how it is working out for me, too. Keeping my hands in one place all the time is actually more tiring, and all the extra chording I have to do on a keyboard with so few keys is increasing the number of weird positions I put my hands into. I'm hoping that that it's just that I'm using different muscles, and I need to get used to it. But I'm also becoming increasingly prepared to face the possibility that this keyboard is harder on my hands, because it takes work away from my elbows and shoulders, and gives it to my wrists and fingers.
  - CarVac 5y ago
    Which keyboard is that? I find that my Mitosis, which has tons of thumb selection, really alleviates the load on my fingers because the chords only ever involve two digits per hand at the very most. Also I use Dvorak so my fingers move exceedingly little compared to QWERTY; when I first tried to learn to touch-type QWERTY the "right way" with leaving my hands on the home row, my wrists started hurting so I got angry and switched to Dvorak. Using QWERTY but leaving your hands stationary is going to require your fingers to be doing a ton of reaching and increase the strain.
    - helmholtz 5y ago
      Not GP, but I've got the Keyboardio Atreus. And I've even modified that to have ctrl, shift, alt etc on the home row. So keeping 'A' depressed triggers Shift, for instance, but a quick tap is just A. Combined with a Programmer's Dvorak layout. Home row ftw!
loloquwowndueo 5y ago
If you’re really looking to minimize hand movement and type fast while doing it, perhaps a better option would be steno keyboards (http://www.openstenoproject.org/ http://www.openstenoproject.org/) where entire words are produced by specific chords. It’s definitely learning a new way of typing, but the keyboard showcased in the article here also looks alien enough (apparently each finger has a set of letters assigned to it and one types by moving each finger in a particular direction to produce a single letter) that the learning curve is probably substantial as well.
- chrisco255 5y ago
  That's not going to be useful for something like coding though, is it?
  - loloquwowndueo 5y ago
    It is - go have a read in openstenoproject or read/watch this. https://www.fortressofdoors.com/stenography-for-programming/ https://www.fortressofdoors.com/stenography-for-programming/ Also https://keyholesoftware.com/2017/08/14/stenography/ https://keyholesoftware.com/2017/08/14/stenography/ or really a google search for “steno coding” will show you the possibilities.
probotect0r 5y ago
I don't have wrist pain, but I sometimes have pain in my index fingers. I have been trying for a long time to figure out a good solution and have tried several keyboards as a result. It seems like keeping my wrist rested in one spot causes my index fingers to extend to reach keys that are one column/row over. Floating my wrists allows me to move my whole arm for those out of reach keys, reducing the impact on my index fingers. I currently use a low profile Nyquist from keeb.io and while I enjoy it, I don't think it does anything in particular to address my issue other than being split (which I love). Keeping my hands floating is the easiest when I am standing and my desk is leveled with my elbows.
personjerry 5y ago
As a professional software engineer, I always found I generally spent more time thinking than actually typing. I'm curious, what kinds of technical roles require such a large amount of typing?
- tristor 5y ago
  I've found that the more senior I got through my career the more typing I had to do. The more senior you are, the more time you spend writing plans, documentation, designs, and of course copious amounts of emails as part of communication. Now I'm in management, and I type more than I ever did in any of the engineering roles that I held. Perhaps consequently, I've taken ergonomics and keyboard quality really seriously.
- jbaber 5y ago
  Verbose languages like C++.
- myhf 5y ago
  It's not about the number of hours per day that you spend typing. It's about the number of seconds you have to hold an idea in your head.
- asdff 5y ago
  email and slack. I joke, but some fields really do work the computer more than others. My roommate is in design and was sent home with a workstation to do their 3d modelling. It sounds like he is playing starcraft for 8 hours a day, but that's the job. Nonstop clicking and clacking until he clocks out without a single pause.
  - codeyperson 5y ago
    Can confirm. I worked as an animator when I was young and that was very taxing on the hands. I also worked as a designer and developed forearm pain from the Photoshop shortcuts. Now I work as a programmer and things are a lot easier. But I suspect it’s only a matter of time before even this is too much and I’ll need to change it up again.
splithalf 5y ago
Doesn’t look very secure.

90 points by serial_dev 6y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

I’ve not taken the plunge on any special keyboards. I am afraid of committing to something super custom and losing some of my already low typing speed when switching to use the laptops built in keyboard.

chrisco255 5y ago
Which is why we're all using Qwerty keyboards instead of Dvoraks...Switching costs are too high. This low-impact model in the title promises 120WPM (I'm assuming with time commitment to achieve mastery). But yeah, you won't be able to take a device like that everywhere. It makes me wonder if any WPM threshold is enough to convince people to make the switch from Qwerty.
- jschwartzi 5y ago
  I can type about 70-80 WPM on my qwerty in typing tests. The limiting factor in my work isn't typing speed, it's my ability to form thoughts and to express them to the computer. So switching to a faster keyboard does absolutely nothing for me.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Indeed. Stenographers regularly hit 200wpm on chorded keyboards, with a record of 375. We haven't adopted that tech en mass because speed isn't the only factor
  - dr_kiszonka 5y ago
    I wonder if there is some sort of ergonomic benchmark for IDEs or keyboard shortcut layouts. What I have in mind is given some representative code sample, how many keystrokes are needed to perform a set of common tasks like duplicate line, reverse the order of function arguments, etc. There could be penalties for uncomfortable shortcuts like CTRL-B on QWERTY.
    - asdff 5y ago
      I definitely think the mac OS cmd based keystrokes are much more ergonomic than the windows ctrl based keystrokes. For windows you have to hit ctrl with your weak pinky, then awkardly stretch your index finger to somewhere on the keyboard. It's an awkard movement that I don't think my hand otherwise ever makes during my life. It seems like a recipe for strain to me, doing something not commonly done by the hand regularly. I think it originally was expected that users would use their other hand to type right ctrl since there wasn't a mouse back then, but these days everyone keeps their right hand hovering the mouse or trackpad rather than hovering over the home row. With cmd based keyboard shortcuts, your hand basically forms the default resting limp hand position, with your thumb on the cmd button, and your index finger lazily and easily finding the other key to complete the shortcut. Your thumb is basically always there anyway due to the spacebar. It's a much more natural movement.
      - Symbiote 5y ago
        Using two hands for key combinations is step one to avoiding RSI. If you need to keep your hands on the mouse (for example, CAD or video editing) then get a keyboard with programmable macro keys, or a separate macro pad. For example, a Kinesis Freestyle Pro, or a Koolertron.
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    In the long run, your limiting factor is how much your favorite keyboard layout fucks up your wrist tendons by making them rub against the inside of the bones of your wrist (the “tunnel” of “carpal tunnel syndrome”).
- LukeShu 5y ago
  > It makes me wonder if any WPM threshold is enough to convince people to make the switch from Qwerty. No. You don't switch for speed. You switch for comfort and to reduce strain. The reason why the 120WPM speed is brought up at all is to (1) demonstrate that the keyboard design isn't totally bunk, and (2) that the person has spent enough time with the keyboard to get to a level of mastery with it that their opinion on the keyboard is coming from a place of knowledge.
- c618b9b695c4 5y ago
  I tried Dvorak for some time and did find it more comfortable. I even got up to a semi-decent typing speed. My big stumbling block was the number of applications that have non-configurable keybinds.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    It helps if you plan to toggle; on X11/Linux I just switch to QWERTY when gaming, but I think Windows can do per-program keyboard layout selection, which would make it really easy.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  Given that the leaderboards for typing speed competitions are dominated by qwerty typers, and that I, a qwerty typer, type faster than every single one of my dvorak friends, and that the general pattern of the scholarly work on dvorak is that experimental rigor correlates positively with p-values, I'm inclined to say that the reason for qwerty's continued dominance is not just that people are stuck in their ways. It's absolutely a factor, of course, but another one is that the benefits of dvorak have been greatly exaggerated.
  - hydroxonium 5y ago
    me on dvorak: 110 wpm (10-race average) on typeracer.com If your typing speed is high percentile, odds are you'd be faster than all your friends anyway, regardless of dvorak / qwerty. (E.g. I type faster than every single one of my qwerty friends! ...) Given that <0.1% use dvorak, there's >90% chance you won't see a single dvorak user in a random sample of 100 people. Not hard to see why the leaderboards will be "dominated" by qwerty. Like others have said, dvorak is for comfort, not for speed. Dvorak is MUCH more comfortable than qwerty. Also, Dvorak users almost never complain that they type more slowly than their qwerty days, once they've gotten used to it. Many of us dvorak users also are competent at qwerty in a pinch (80 wpm qwerty here). Cf. http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/Dvorak/ http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/Dvorak/
  - anchpop 5y ago
    I use colemak, and type as fast as I did back when I typed with two fingers. But from people who switched from touch-typing qwerty, I'm told colemak and dvorak are much more comfortable. I don't think anyone should switch because they anticipate better typing speed, but if you type with two fingers, switching can force you to reset your muscle memory and make it easier to learn to touch-type (that's why I switched). If anyone is interested in switching, also check out the Workman layout, which is a slight improvement on Colemak's ergonomics at the cost of messing up some keyboard shortcuts
- starpilot 5y ago
  Keyboard layout doesn't matter for speed. Here's a guy typing 99 wpm with two fingers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mNu8WnFFa0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mNu8WnFFa0 You switch to Dvorak for comfort, not speed.
- elihu 5y ago
  > Which is why we're all using Qwerty keyboards instead of Dvoraks... Whether the switching costs are worth it is an individual choice, and quite a few people have chosen that it's worth it. They're in the minority, but that's fine as long as people are free to use whatever keyboard layout they like.
- api_or_ipa 5y ago
  Everyone has a "premature optimization is the root of all evil" story and I'm no different. I learned Dvorak years ago in university and stuck with it, thinking it would make me a better 'professional' programmer since I could type faster. Oh, how naive I was. Over a decade later, I've made the switch between dvorak and qwerty several times, and it really isn't too hard to switch, after an afternoon using a different layout I'll reach a reasonable WPM. Lately I've stuck to dvorak although I'm still reasonably fluent in Qwerty and I do occasionally go back to qwerty to ensure I'm still somewhat fluent. What really does me in when using another computer is the standard staggered keyboard layout since I've been living on an Ergodox Infinity for over a year now. Once you've grown accustomed to an columnar arranged keyboard, it's incredibly difficult to go back to a staggered layout.
mleonhard 5y ago
If you're worried about RSI, take action now. Don't wait. Don't get a keyboard like the one in the article. Get one that reduces arm twisting and strain on your tendons. Fifteen years ago, I had RSI pain in my wrists. I switched to a split keyboard [0] and the pain mostly went away. After a few years, the aches came back and slowly got worse, especially when using a mouse. Eight years ago, I switched to a tenting keyboard [1] and vertical mouse [2]. Again, the aching and pain mostly went away. Strength training [3] finally solved my RSI. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_ergonomic_keyboards#Natural_Keyboard_Elite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_ergonomic_keyboards#... [1] https://shop.goldtouch.com/products/goldtouch-v2-adjustable-comfort-keyboard-pc-and-mac-compatible-usb https://shop.goldtouch.com/products/goldtouch-v2-adjustable-... [2] https://evoluent.com https://evoluent.com [3] https://www.lesmills.com/us/workouts/fitness-classes/bodypump/ https://www.lesmills.com/us/workouts/fitness-classes/bodypum...
pugworthy 5y ago
I built a 40% keyboard a while back somewhat for the fun of it. I can type on it, but honestly it's difficult. Hunt and peck style, sure - speed typing, not yet.
qudat 5y ago
I was worried about this as well but my daily driver is a split ortho 40% keyboard and I can easily switch between it (with multiple layers) and a laptop keyboard. You don’t lose the ability to type on a normal keyboard, you just gain how to type on a 40% split ortho.

gh-throw 5y ago

Please tell me "keeb" isn't "keyboard". Clicks link Yes, it's keyboard, but occurs only in the title. Bad, but could be worse.

yepthatsreality 5y ago
And a look at Urban Dictionary seems like a pretty recent piece of slang. Honestly I t’s not like -oard is extra lengthy syllables or there’s an industry that uses this term. It’s very cringe-y web-2.0-like name but maybe that’s hip? Why would it be “keeb” and not “keyb”. Is it pronounced liked “jeeb”?
- codetrotter 5y ago
  > Why would it be “keeb” and not “keyb”. Is it pronounced liked “jeeb”? Much as I don’t like calling it “keeb”, and therefore personally don’t call it that, writing it as “keeb” makes sense if you’re going to pronounce it that way. If it was written “keyb” then I might have read it as “key be” instead.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- martyvis 5y ago
  I presume by only referring to it with one syllable, it also helps reducing movement of mouth parts just as the "keeb" does for hand parts.
  - YinglingLight 5y ago
    I presumed is was another example of the infantilizing of young adults today. 'Look at my cute pupper!' 'Just got dishy installed today Elon!'
    - kortex 5y ago
      It's not "infantilizing," it's linguistic mutation, and it's what languages do [0], for all manner of reasons. Text lacks intonation, plain text even more so, and internet dialect tends to evolve ways to add emphasis. In this case "pupper" is inflected to suggest endearment. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimm%27s_law

amelius 5y ago

Are those minimal movements really ergonomic?

z5h 5y ago
This is the question!!! I’ve been coding for 25+ years. In high school my dad would get me summer jobs doing highly repetitive assembly line work. Like, the same motions all summer. I spent years being a pretty serious into rock climbing. And the absolute worst thing for my wrist/arm by far? ... Clicking a mouse button with my index finger.
- pugworthy 5y ago
  Oddly I've been clicking mice since the early/mid 80's and never have had a problem. It always amazes me I've not had messed up wrists as a result. I'd add though that gaming with typical WASD + Mouse style has caused problems. I think it's mostly the tension one has when gaming - hard to not grip that mouse tight in the moment.

tunesmith 5y ago

As a pianist, everything about that seems wrongheaded and a great way to get RSI. Piano rules are basically don't move your fingers if you can move your hand, don't move your hand if you can move your wrist, don't move your wrist if you can move your forearm, don't move your forearm if you can move your body. The point isn't to exaggerate that and be strict with it, but it is to limit strain. Even when typing at a desk, I keep the heels of my hands in the air.

mumblemumble 5y ago
I recently bought an ultra-minimalist ergo keyboard that is designed to minimize hand movement, and that seems to be how it is working out for me, too. Keeping my hands in one place all the time is actually more tiring, and all the extra chording I have to do on a keyboard with so few keys is increasing the number of weird positions I put my hands into. I'm hoping that that it's just that I'm using different muscles, and I need to get used to it. But I'm also becoming increasingly prepared to face the possibility that this keyboard is harder on my hands, because it takes work away from my elbows and shoulders, and gives it to my wrists and fingers.
- CarVac 5y ago
  Which keyboard is that? I find that my Mitosis, which has tons of thumb selection, really alleviates the load on my fingers because the chords only ever involve two digits per hand at the very most. Also I use Dvorak so my fingers move exceedingly little compared to QWERTY; when I first tried to learn to touch-type QWERTY the "right way" with leaving my hands on the home row, my wrists started hurting so I got angry and switched to Dvorak. Using QWERTY but leaving your hands stationary is going to require your fingers to be doing a ton of reaching and increase the strain.
  - helmholtz 5y ago
    Not GP, but I've got the Keyboardio Atreus. And I've even modified that to have ctrl, shift, alt etc on the home row. So keeping 'A' depressed triggers Shift, for instance, but a quick tap is just A. Combined with a Programmer's Dvorak layout. Home row ftw!

loloquwowndueo 5y ago

If you’re really looking to minimize hand movement and type fast while doing it, perhaps a better option would be steno keyboards (http://www.openstenoproject.org/ http://www.openstenoproject.org/) where entire words are produced by specific chords. It’s definitely learning a new way of typing, but the keyboard showcased in the article here also looks alien enough (apparently each finger has a set of letters assigned to it and one types by moving each finger in a particular direction to produce a single letter) that the learning curve is probably substantial as well.

chrisco255 5y ago
That's not going to be useful for something like coding though, is it?
- loloquwowndueo 5y ago
  It is - go have a read in openstenoproject or read/watch this. https://www.fortressofdoors.com/stenography-for-programming/ https://www.fortressofdoors.com/stenography-for-programming/ Also https://keyholesoftware.com/2017/08/14/stenography/ https://keyholesoftware.com/2017/08/14/stenography/ or really a google search for “steno coding” will show you the possibilities.

probotect0r 5y ago

I don't have wrist pain, but I sometimes have pain in my index fingers. I have been trying for a long time to figure out a good solution and have tried several keyboards as a result. It seems like keeping my wrist rested in one spot causes my index fingers to extend to reach keys that are one column/row over. Floating my wrists allows me to move my whole arm for those out of reach keys, reducing the impact on my index fingers. I currently use a low profile Nyquist from keeb.io and while I enjoy it, I don't think it does anything in particular to address my issue other than being split (which I love). Keeping my hands floating is the easiest when I am standing and my desk is leveled with my elbows.

personjerry 5y ago

As a professional software engineer, I always found I generally spent more time thinking than actually typing. I'm curious, what kinds of technical roles require such a large amount of typing?

tristor 5y ago
I've found that the more senior I got through my career the more typing I had to do. The more senior you are, the more time you spend writing plans, documentation, designs, and of course copious amounts of emails as part of communication. Now I'm in management, and I type more than I ever did in any of the engineering roles that I held. Perhaps consequently, I've taken ergonomics and keyboard quality really seriously.
jbaber 5y ago
Verbose languages like C++.
myhf 5y ago
It's not about the number of hours per day that you spend typing. It's about the number of seconds you have to hold an idea in your head.
asdff 5y ago
email and slack. I joke, but some fields really do work the computer more than others. My roommate is in design and was sent home with a workstation to do their 3d modelling. It sounds like he is playing starcraft for 8 hours a day, but that's the job. Nonstop clicking and clacking until he clocks out without a single pause.
- codeyperson 5y ago
  Can confirm. I worked as an animator when I was young and that was very taxing on the hands. I also worked as a designer and developed forearm pain from the Photoshop shortcuts. Now I work as a programmer and things are a lot easier. But I suspect it’s only a matter of time before even this is too much and I’ll need to change it up again.

splithalf 5y ago

Doesn’t look very secure.