5 ms·
I applaud any effort to rethink keyboards from first principles. After years of shoulder, neck and back pain I discovered that the root cause was the standard
by ruffrey 5y ago
I applaud any effort to rethink keyboards from first principles.
After years of shoulder, neck and back pain I discovered that the root cause was the standard keyboard design. It causes rounded shoulders. Perhaps my shoulders are just too wide. This pinched all sorts of muscles, tendons and nerves. Doctors and physical therapists just failed to identify the issue. Weight lifting didn't help all that much, even with a strong back I had to scrunch and round the shoulders to type.
I finally picked up a second keyboard, and used one for each hand. It was surprisingly easy to convert to. Just added some larger rubber nub things on home row.
It's been life changing. Years of pain was gone in days. No special design necessary.
Each keyboard is arranged at an outward angle, distanced so my shoulders are in a natural position.
I can't recommend this enough.
On Mac it required a system preference tweak (Karibiner app) so each keyboard can share shortcut keys.
- smallpipe 5y agoAre you aware of split keyboards? I use a mistel barrocco (essentially two normal keyboard halves tied together with a USB cable) and j can’t recommend it enough
- ruffrey 5y agoThanks, yep, tried a few but am too addicted to the chiclet style.
- tomcam 5y ago> am too addicted to the chiclet style You sick bastard. Seriously, though, it's most cool that you came up with such a simple solution. Hat's off, and glad you got that pain under control. I started using a keyboard heavily around 40 years ago and knew from carpal tunnel problems as a pianist that I'd have to be careful. My kids love to joke that my posture looks like it's from an ergonomics manual, but no carpal tunnel since 1982! (I'm saying my approach is better than yours or would have helped, just empathizing because I would be super miserable if programming caused physical pain.)
- goodpoint 5y agoWhen you can buy 2 everyday keyboards for 30 euros in total it's difficult to justify the shocking prices of split/mechanical/ergonomic keyboards. I could buy an ErgoDox but it feels too much like a status symbol rather than a working tool.
- smallpipe 5y agoFor me the desk space makes it worth it (but the clackity clack is definitely an added bonus)
- hundchenkatze 5y agoI was experiencing the same – narrow hand position causing lots of back pain. Keeping my arms/shoulders in a natural position seems to have fixed it. There's also tons of split keyboards available now. https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards
- stronglikedan 5y agoAll of those beautiful split keyboards, and not a single one with a proper layout. Shame. Looks like I'm sticking with my Surface Ergonomic, because it's the only one I've found that has super keys on both sides, and a context key on the right side. I just wish they'd make a mechanical version.
- BlueDingo 5y agoThe keys can be remapped, right? My keyboard even saves my configuration itself so it remains when swapped between computers.
- cvak 5y agoA lot of those keyboarda uses QMK fw, you can do a lot of things with layouts with them.
- aidenn0 5y agoYeah every split I've seen puts the arrow keys where the 4 modifier keys go on a typical keyboard. Annoys the heck out of me. The UHK can be mapped to a proper layout easily (it has proper widths for modifier keys on the right, so you just need to move the Fn somewhere else and you can get a standard set), but it's not cheap.