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Ask HN: programming with a chording keyboard
A friend of mine has recently been having some difficulties with typing: turns out it isn't his wrists, but rather he's pinching a nerve somewhere in his arm/back whenever he flattens his arms out to type. I've been investigating alternative keyboards and came across the Twiddler chording keyboard (http://tekgear.com/keyboards/chording-keyboards.html). Has anyone used this to program and if so how was your experience? What major drawbacks did you experience? He uses emacs as his primary editor and is mostly in an SSH shell.
- CyberFonic 13y agoI haven't tried the particular keyboard you referenced. But I went through a phase of building and testing such keyboards - mostly variants on Doug Engelbart's design. I could never get decent speed and some chords were harder on my fingers than a regular keyboard. The biggest problem is that with five fingers, the maximum number of chords is 31 before you have "slide" positions, i.e two or more keys to one finger / thumb. Remembering codes for characters took a lot of time too. Might be far easier to investigate exactly how and when the nerve pain arises. I used to have a massive issue with mice. Solved it by using a trackball under right hand and a mouse (with optical sensor for positioning disabled) under the left hand. So I wasn't moving the mouse and clicking at the same time. That was enough to overcome my RSI issue. I also currently use a MS Curve keyboard. It is what works best for me. Some of my colleagues use those weird MS ergonomic keyboards with split areas and funny looking wrist rests.