If you're asking about ergonomics overall, I'd say Vim, definitely. Though a lot in both cases can be mitigated with useful remappings (use Caps Lock as Ctrl, o

If you're asking about ergonomics overall, I'd say Vim, definitely. Though a lot in both cases can be mitigated with useful remappings (use Caps Lock as Ctrl, or as Esc! Or as both! https://github.com/alols/xcape https://github.com/alols/xcape or KeyboardRemap4Macbook). Also I find Dvorak a lot more pleasant on my fingers than good ole QWERTY. I have at various different times felt a lot of strain hit some of my fingers, especially the pinkies. My right pinky complained first, and I realized how much it was used for. I first switched from Dvorak to Programmer Dvorak so that my pinky wouldn't have to do curly braces and square brackets anymore, and so that both those and parens no longer required a shift press (also helping the other pinky), since Programmer Dvorak switches numbers with symbols (the latter of which I use far more as a coder.) I also got used to Ctrl-H instead of Backspace and Ctrl-M instead of Enter, wherever I could. They didn't work in the editor's command mode, so I created mappings so that they would. The issues went away. More recently, more than a year after that, I started feeling my other pinky, the left one. I severely reduced my Tab usage and began using the Left Alt as a Left Ctrl more, so my pinky shares Ctrl usage (which was already on Caps Lock, but still..) with my thumb. Also worked. An ergonomic keyboard would also be a fine acquisition. By the way, trouble in the "ulnar nerve which emanates from the neck" leading to "mild muscle wastage" sounds quite sci-fi to me (not disbelieving, just thought it sounded rather exotic.)