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I had severe problems with RSI many years ago, to the point where I thought I had to give up programming alltogether. I also got an ergonomic keyboard, which he

I had severe problems with RSI many years ago, to the point where I thought I had to give up programming alltogether. I also got an ergonomic keyboard, which helped, and an argonomic pen-like mouse. However, I would say that even more important in getting rid of my problems was the use of a break program. It reminds me to take regular breaks, and prompts me to to stretches throuhgout the day. The combination of these things meant that I recovered completely from my problems. More info here: https://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat-rsi/ https://henrikwarne.com/2012/02/18/how-i-beat-rsi/

bartvk 3y ago
It's also my experience that break reminders prevent wrist pain. For macOS, I recommend Time Out. Actively maintained, with all the options you'd want. https://dejal.com/timeout/ https://dejal.com/timeout/
- henrik_w 3y ago
  I'm using MacBreakZ 5. Simple, but works well for me. https://www.publicspace.net/MacBreakZ/ https://www.publicspace.net/MacBreakZ/
  - jacknews 3y ago
    Do they sell eye-strain relief software too? I need it after squinting to read the ultra-fine low contrast font on their website...
- cole-k 3y ago
  Any recommendations for cross-platform apps? I know that I need to take breaks but keeping to it is difficult for me.
smokel 3y ago
When I (or to be more precise, when a colleague I was trying to pair program with) used them, these programs infuriated me to no end. Just when I was on to something, I got smacked in the face with a modal dialog. Perhaps things have improved over the years, but I could not imagine a user interface that would cater to both my physical and mental well-being.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  I personally have it turned off, but smartwatches are good at notifying you with a slight vibration.
jay_kyburz 3y ago
Apparently I just don't work very hard and take lots of breaks all the time without an app needing to remind me. Also, my colleagues find it very annoying when I stand up and start pacing around when I am thinking something through.
atoav 3y ago
As someone who sits in front of computers way above the average and never had any issues with eyes or hands (while others my age had issues there) I think this is the key: Try to get into the habit to stretch your wrists/fingers when you are not using them and try to do the same thing with your eyes (eyes are muscles too), by e.g. focusing onto something far away, rolling your eyes, etc. If you are of the type that gets lost in work some reminder can help, but I think it is better to form habits of using thinking breaks to do the stretching. Nobody types regularily for 3 hours straight without interrupting to think at least for a bit once every few minutes. If you use these breaks to stretch, you will be fine. Ultimately a person with good habits will be able to work healthy with seemingly unergonomic setups, while a person with bad habits will be able to use even the most ergonomic setup in unhealthy ways. Everybody knows that collegue who has that incredibly expensive ergonomic chair and sits on it like a bored prototypical teenager. Habits will always trump tools, unless your tools are so incredibly bad, it will be self evident that they are.
- d4rkp4ttern 3y ago
  Curiously, unlike many, my wrists and fingers have been fine but I have tight/frozen shoulder and neck issues. Keeping the UHK halves apart and Magic Trackpad in the middle has probably been helpful, I can’t say yet.
  - Agingcoder 3y ago
    I developed shoulder pain because my chair armrest was too high so was propping my shoulder up ever so slightly. It took me a while to figure out, and my pain went away quite quickly once I’d understood the problem. More recently, someone took my chair and moved the head rest by a few centimeters. This pushed my head forward a bit - bam ! Neck pain. You might want to check your chair/posture ( or it might be unrelated).
  - atoav 3y ago
    Sounds like an issue with chair/desk height and/or monitor height. Anyways there are stretches and exercises that you can do that target that neck and shoulder portions specifically. If you are otherwise healthty, doing those exercises 15 to 30 minutes per day will have you pain gone in a week. And if you get a feeling for which muscles they are targeting you might be able to find variations of those stretches that you can do inbetween while sitring at your computer.
ahoka 3y ago
How much do you type a day to have problems? I have never felt limited by my typing speed or comfort during my career, but I understand that different people might have different workflows. For me it’s thinking, writing a few lines and start thinking again. One programmer guy I know who had RSI problems was actually writing way too much and overly verbose code and also literally banged on the keys instead of pressing them.
- justapcgamer 3y ago
  I think its just genetics, some people are more inclined to experience RSI due to structure of wrists. I'm 22 and I started experiencing wrist pain during college and found that split keyboards are the solution for me to be able to do my work without pain.
  - toyg 3y ago
    Shoulders too. The wider the shoulders, the more awkward your posture becomes on fixed keyboards. Also length of legs, length of spine, etc etc.
- onetom 3y ago
  I'm 46, programming since I was 6 years old and started having wrist and even lower-arm pain ~2-3 years ago. Even the tips of my fingers hurt sometimes. I never would have imagined I will have such problems... It's probably the combination of many factors, probably age mostly, but I'm also experimenting with Emacs, with Ctrl being on Caps-Lock and I think that has triggered the problem. Thumb-tip pain is probably from the SpaceFn layout, but the other finger-tips, no idea. My main keyboard is a Leopold FC M660 with Cherry blues, but IIRC the problems has already started on a stock 60% Cherry MX with linear red switches. I've also experimented with vegetarian diet for 11 months, which fucked up my guts and ass, plus I always felt super tired, then a beef + potato only diet for 6 months, but that made my joints hurt. Pretty much caused gout, which is also supposed to be worsened by drinking high-fat milk, which I do drink about a liter a day, like I did most of my life. But then the problems has slowly subsided. Not sure what has changed though; I only got older...
waynesonfire 3y ago
I'm a huge fan of the Goldtouch V1 keyboard. I have been using it along with their fantastic pads my entire career. I have accumulated a surplus of these keyboards as I intend to use them until I'm unable to type. I discovered them when I started my first job at HP-UX in Cupertino, CA and a bunch of people there were using them. I also switched to Dvorak a few years before than. I don't like their V2 offering, as an emacs user the caps lock key is gimped and I don't need the windows key near the ctrl / alt keys.
d4rkp4ttern 3y ago
The pen-like mouse is intriguing.
- henrik_w 3y ago
  I'm still using a Penclic mouse. I love it, works great for me.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  While I have not used a Penclic mouse, I am pretty sure that it is inferior to using a small Wacom Intuos graphic tablet instead of a mouse, like I do. The tablet is no larger than a traditional mouse pad, it is even somewhat smaller. The stylus, i.e. the pen, is much lighter than any pen-like mouse can be, and it has better resolution and accuracy. Because the pen works contactless and it is very light, you can move it very fast. You can point to any location on the screen faster than with anything else. Because the pen is so light, I usually retain it between my fingers while I am touch typing, without noticing that I still keep it, which shortens a lot the transitions between typing and using the graphic pointer. I leave the pen on the tablet only before starting to type a long text. The tablet is switched to "relative" mode at startup, so it behaves as an ordinary mouse. I use it under Linux, where it has excellent support. The equivalent of the mouse buttons is configurable. I have chosen to touch the tablet with the pen for left click, and to use the two thumb buttons for right click and for double left click. After I have begun to use a graphic tablet instead of a mouse, trackball, trackpoint or touchpad a couple of years ago, my only regret is that I have not thought to try this earlier, because at least for me it is much more comfortable than the alternatives, and it is also much more precise, being easy to use for drawings or signatures.
  - djbusby 3y ago
    How did you configure the Wacom? Like in xorg.conf? Any tips?
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      My .bashrc script (when logging on, which is checked by the fact that no GUI session is running) starts X Window (actually it starts an XFCE session, because that is what I use), then it remaps the keyboard to a custom Dvorak variant and it configures Wacom thus: WACOM_ID=$(xsetwacom list | grep STYLUS | cut -f 2 | cut -d " " -f 2) xsetwacom set "$WACOM_ID" "Button" "2" "button +3 " xsetwacom set "$WACOM_ID" "Button" "3" "button +1 -1 +1 -1 " xsetwacom set "$WACOM_ID" "Mode" "Relative" The line that discovers WACOM_ID is necessary because the Wacom device driver does not always use the same device numbers, even when nothing has been inserted or extracted in or from the USB ports. Moreover, even the Wacom subdevices are not always listed in the same order, hence the need to use grep for row select. There are many other ways to execute a script on startup, where you can add these lines. The acceleration of the Wacom mouse cursor is configured in the standard desktop settings. "button +3 " means that the associated action is right click. "button +1 -1 +1 -1 " means that the associated action is left double click. I have left the default action for touching the tablet with the pen, which is left click. Selection by pointing and touching is even more natural than with a mouse or other alternatives.

bartvk 3y ago

It's also my experience that break reminders prevent wrist pain. For macOS, I recommend Time Out. Actively maintained, with all the options you'd want. https://dejal.com/timeout/ https://dejal.com/timeout/

henrik_w 3y ago
I'm using MacBreakZ 5. Simple, but works well for me. https://www.publicspace.net/MacBreakZ/ https://www.publicspace.net/MacBreakZ/
- jacknews 3y ago
  Do they sell eye-strain relief software too? I need it after squinting to read the ultra-fine low contrast font on their website...
cole-k 3y ago
Any recommendations for cross-platform apps? I know that I need to take breaks but keeping to it is difficult for me.

smokel 3y ago

When I (or to be more precise, when a colleague I was trying to pair program with) used them, these programs infuriated me to no end. Just when I was on to something, I got smacked in the face with a modal dialog. Perhaps things have improved over the years, but I could not imagine a user interface that would cater to both my physical and mental well-being.

bobthepanda 3y ago
I personally have it turned off, but smartwatches are good at notifying you with a slight vibration.

jay_kyburz 3y ago

Apparently I just don't work very hard and take lots of breaks all the time without an app needing to remind me. Also, my colleagues find it very annoying when I stand up and start pacing around when I am thinking something through.

atoav 3y ago

As someone who sits in front of computers way above the average and never had any issues with eyes or hands (while others my age had issues there) I think this is the key: Try to get into the habit to stretch your wrists/fingers when you are not using them and try to do the same thing with your eyes (eyes are muscles too), by e.g. focusing onto something far away, rolling your eyes, etc. If you are of the type that gets lost in work some reminder can help, but I think it is better to form habits of using thinking breaks to do the stretching. Nobody types regularily for 3 hours straight without interrupting to think at least for a bit once every few minutes. If you use these breaks to stretch, you will be fine. Ultimately a person with good habits will be able to work healthy with seemingly unergonomic setups, while a person with bad habits will be able to use even the most ergonomic setup in unhealthy ways. Everybody knows that collegue who has that incredibly expensive ergonomic chair and sits on it like a bored prototypical teenager. Habits will always trump tools, unless your tools are so incredibly bad, it will be self evident that they are.

d4rkp4ttern 3y ago
Curiously, unlike many, my wrists and fingers have been fine but I have tight/frozen shoulder and neck issues. Keeping the UHK halves apart and Magic Trackpad in the middle has probably been helpful, I can’t say yet.
- Agingcoder 3y ago
  I developed shoulder pain because my chair armrest was too high so was propping my shoulder up ever so slightly. It took me a while to figure out, and my pain went away quite quickly once I’d understood the problem. More recently, someone took my chair and moved the head rest by a few centimeters. This pushed my head forward a bit - bam ! Neck pain. You might want to check your chair/posture ( or it might be unrelated).
- atoav 3y ago
  Sounds like an issue with chair/desk height and/or monitor height. Anyways there are stretches and exercises that you can do that target that neck and shoulder portions specifically. If you are otherwise healthty, doing those exercises 15 to 30 minutes per day will have you pain gone in a week. And if you get a feeling for which muscles they are targeting you might be able to find variations of those stretches that you can do inbetween while sitring at your computer.

ahoka 3y ago

How much do you type a day to have problems? I have never felt limited by my typing speed or comfort during my career, but I understand that different people might have different workflows. For me it’s thinking, writing a few lines and start thinking again. One programmer guy I know who had RSI problems was actually writing way too much and overly verbose code and also literally banged on the keys instead of pressing them.

justapcgamer 3y ago
I think its just genetics, some people are more inclined to experience RSI due to structure of wrists. I'm 22 and I started experiencing wrist pain during college and found that split keyboards are the solution for me to be able to do my work without pain.
- toyg 3y ago
  Shoulders too. The wider the shoulders, the more awkward your posture becomes on fixed keyboards. Also length of legs, length of spine, etc etc.
onetom 3y ago
I'm 46, programming since I was 6 years old and started having wrist and even lower-arm pain ~2-3 years ago. Even the tips of my fingers hurt sometimes. I never would have imagined I will have such problems... It's probably the combination of many factors, probably age mostly, but I'm also experimenting with Emacs, with Ctrl being on Caps-Lock and I think that has triggered the problem. Thumb-tip pain is probably from the SpaceFn layout, but the other finger-tips, no idea. My main keyboard is a Leopold FC M660 with Cherry blues, but IIRC the problems has already started on a stock 60% Cherry MX with linear red switches. I've also experimented with vegetarian diet for 11 months, which fucked up my guts and ass, plus I always felt super tired, then a beef + potato only diet for 6 months, but that made my joints hurt. Pretty much caused gout, which is also supposed to be worsened by drinking high-fat milk, which I do drink about a liter a day, like I did most of my life. But then the problems has slowly subsided. Not sure what has changed though; I only got older...

waynesonfire 3y ago

I'm a huge fan of the Goldtouch V1 keyboard. I have been using it along with their fantastic pads my entire career. I have accumulated a surplus of these keyboards as I intend to use them until I'm unable to type. I discovered them when I started my first job at HP-UX in Cupertino, CA and a bunch of people there were using them. I also switched to Dvorak a few years before than. I don't like their V2 offering, as an emacs user the caps lock key is gimped and I don't need the windows key near the ctrl / alt keys.

d4rkp4ttern 3y ago

The pen-like mouse is intriguing.

henrik_w 3y ago
I'm still using a Penclic mouse. I love it, works great for me.
adrian_b 3y ago
While I have not used a Penclic mouse, I am pretty sure that it is inferior to using a small Wacom Intuos graphic tablet instead of a mouse, like I do. The tablet is no larger than a traditional mouse pad, it is even somewhat smaller. The stylus, i.e. the pen, is much lighter than any pen-like mouse can be, and it has better resolution and accuracy. Because the pen works contactless and it is very light, you can move it very fast. You can point to any location on the screen faster than with anything else. Because the pen is so light, I usually retain it between my fingers while I am touch typing, without noticing that I still keep it, which shortens a lot the transitions between typing and using the graphic pointer. I leave the pen on the tablet only before starting to type a long text. The tablet is switched to "relative" mode at startup, so it behaves as an ordinary mouse. I use it under Linux, where it has excellent support. The equivalent of the mouse buttons is configurable. I have chosen to touch the tablet with the pen for left click, and to use the two thumb buttons for right click and for double left click. After I have begun to use a graphic tablet instead of a mouse, trackball, trackpoint or touchpad a couple of years ago, my only regret is that I have not thought to try this earlier, because at least for me it is much more comfortable than the alternatives, and it is also much more precise, being easy to use for drawings or signatures.
- djbusby 3y ago
  How did you configure the Wacom? Like in xorg.conf? Any tips?
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    My .bashrc script (when logging on, which is checked by the fact that no GUI session is running) starts X Window (actually it starts an XFCE session, because that is what I use), then it remaps the keyboard to a custom Dvorak variant and it configures Wacom thus: WACOM_ID=$(xsetwacom list | grep STYLUS | cut -f 2 | cut -d " " -f 2) xsetwacom set "$WACOM_ID" "Button" "2" "button +3 " xsetwacom set "$WACOM_ID" "Button" "3" "button +1 -1 +1 -1 " xsetwacom set "$WACOM_ID" "Mode" "Relative" The line that discovers WACOM_ID is necessary because the Wacom device driver does not always use the same device numbers, even when nothing has been inserted or extracted in or from the USB ports. Moreover, even the Wacom subdevices are not always listed in the same order, hence the need to use grep for row select. There are many other ways to execute a script on startup, where you can add these lines. The acceleration of the Wacom mouse cursor is configured in the standard desktop settings. "button +3 " means that the associated action is right click. "button +1 -1 +1 -1 " means that the associated action is left double click. I have left the default action for touching the tablet with the pen, which is left click. Selection by pointing and touching is even more natural than with a mouse or other alternatives.