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I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but this is just ridiculous. Typing isn't piano or weaving, folks. Lots of keys on a keyboard! You never need to pre

I know I'm going to get downvoted for this, but this is just ridiculous. Typing isn't piano or weaving, folks. Lots of keys on a keyboard! You never need to press 10 keyboard keys at once => you don't need a pedal. VIM also has more tricks than one person could ever learn.

bobkazamakis 5y ago
You don't need 10 keys! You just need 1s and 0s! >You never need to press 10 keyboard keys at once https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard Do you just hate everyone without 10 fingers? There's more than one reason to alter your keyboard setup.
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  > Do you just hate everyone without 10 fingers? There's more than one reason to alter your keyboard setup. No, they do not hate people with less than 10 fingers. As you typed that out, and before you pressed send, this should have been obvious to you. This sort of comment flagrantly breaks the HN guidelines, which is very disappointing because it could have easily been reasonable. Find a more mature way to disagree.
cinntaile 5y ago
People with ache or other issues can definitely benefit from not having to use all keys on a keyboard.
honkycat 5y ago
My buddy works at Intel and in his onboarding they asked: where do the most workplace injuries happen? The office. Carpel tunnel is a PLAGUE for older engineers. We all have a ticking clock. So for me a pedal is about saving my hands from stretching and mmoving and delegating that to a larger, stronger muscle/skeleton group.
- LosWochosWeek 5y ago
  I know this sounds ridiculous, but my left pinky is a hot head that doesnt want to play nice with the rest of it's siblings. Its crazy how often I try to convince myself that one day I'll buy a foot pedal and use it as a shift key.
egypturnash 5y ago
When you're deep in a program, it's not uncommon to have a ton of keyboard shortcuts. More than just command-x can cover. More than adding in command-shift-x will cover. Maybe even more than three-modifier commands will cover. And hitting, say, command-alt-shift-d is a heck of a finger twister. So you start looking for more keys. I use Karabiner to turn capslock into command-alt-shift and fn-anything-but-a-function-key into command-shift. Or you make a keyboard with more keys - look up the "Space Cadet Keyboard" for a classic example. Or you get a couple of foot pedals. (Foot pedals have other uses, too - transcriptionists have pedals designed to act as transport controls for the playback of the audio they're typing, so they never have to take their hands off the keyboard. I'm told they help speed things up a lot.) You also don't necessarily have all those keyboard shortcuts memorized. But if you operate on a principle of "anything I need to do twice in ten minutes probably needs a shortcut so I can do it a ton faster next time I gotta do it a lot" it's easy to accumulate them, in any tool.
- nicodjimenez 5y ago
  Interesting about transcriptionists that makes perfect sense to me but still very unique to a particular task just like piano.
- nicodjimenez 5y ago
  What program do you need more than say 20 shortcuts for?
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    Adobe Illustrator. I’ve been using it as my main art medium since 2000 and I run it with one hand on the keyboard and one on the Wacom stylus.

bobkazamakis 5y ago

You don't need 10 keys! You just need 1s and 0s! >You never need to press 10 keyboard keys at once https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard Do you just hate everyone without 10 fingers? There's more than one reason to alter your keyboard setup.

DiggyJohnson 5y ago
> Do you just hate everyone without 10 fingers? There's more than one reason to alter your keyboard setup. No, they do not hate people with less than 10 fingers. As you typed that out, and before you pressed send, this should have been obvious to you. This sort of comment flagrantly breaks the HN guidelines, which is very disappointing because it could have easily been reasonable. Find a more mature way to disagree.

cinntaile 5y ago

People with ache or other issues can definitely benefit from not having to use all keys on a keyboard.

honkycat 5y ago

My buddy works at Intel and in his onboarding they asked: where do the most workplace injuries happen? The office. Carpel tunnel is a PLAGUE for older engineers. We all have a ticking clock. So for me a pedal is about saving my hands from stretching and mmoving and delegating that to a larger, stronger muscle/skeleton group.

LosWochosWeek 5y ago
I know this sounds ridiculous, but my left pinky is a hot head that doesnt want to play nice with the rest of it's siblings. Its crazy how often I try to convince myself that one day I'll buy a foot pedal and use it as a shift key.

egypturnash 5y ago

When you're deep in a program, it's not uncommon to have a ton of keyboard shortcuts. More than just command-x can cover. More than adding in command-shift-x will cover. Maybe even more than three-modifier commands will cover. And hitting, say, command-alt-shift-d is a heck of a finger twister. So you start looking for more keys. I use Karabiner to turn capslock into command-alt-shift and fn-anything-but-a-function-key into command-shift. Or you make a keyboard with more keys - look up the "Space Cadet Keyboard" for a classic example. Or you get a couple of foot pedals. (Foot pedals have other uses, too - transcriptionists have pedals designed to act as transport controls for the playback of the audio they're typing, so they never have to take their hands off the keyboard. I'm told they help speed things up a lot.) You also don't necessarily have all those keyboard shortcuts memorized. But if you operate on a principle of "anything I need to do twice in ten minutes probably needs a shortcut so I can do it a ton faster next time I gotta do it a lot" it's easy to accumulate them, in any tool.

nicodjimenez 5y ago
Interesting about transcriptionists that makes perfect sense to me but still very unique to a particular task just like piano.
nicodjimenez 5y ago
What program do you need more than say 20 shortcuts for?
- egypturnash 5y ago
  Adobe Illustrator. I’ve been using it as my main art medium since 2000 and I run it with one hand on the keyboard and one on the Wacom stylus.