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Comment by pmcollins | Hacker News Reader

I got an RSI injury on my left hand and was unable to type normally for a few years. I went so far as to learn Dvorak RH which, even though I got reasonably good at it after a couple of years, was still crappy for programming.

After a very dark period of taking jobs that required less typing (Kafkaesque jobs at mega-corps involving mostly fixing other people's bugs), I'm better now because of:

1) Using an Apple keyboard, which even though it doesn't look ergonomic, the reduced key travel has helped immensely. 2) Using JetBrains' IDEs instead of vim. If you are a bash/vim/tmux (or equivalent) user like I was, try coding in your favorite language in a JetBrains IDE. Automated refactoring and code completion are your friends. 3) Try drinking red wine. The resveratrol in red wine is a natural anti-inflammatory.

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> Using an Apple keyboard, which even though it doesn't look ergonomic, the reduced key travel has helped immensely.

I thought the conventional wisdom was that Apple keyboards caused RSI?

Maybe for some? I had been using an "ergonomic" Microsoft keyboard for years, but found that it was the amount of force and distance to depress a key that was causing me problems.

I'm using the Microsoft Sculpt keyboard at work at the moment, which has a similar ergonomic layout but less travel than my old Natural. It's also really nicely made (magnetic stand + battery cover, and fairly sleek design).

However, one fairly significant issue is that the top row uses buttons instead of keys. It doesn't bother me too much, but I can imagine that would mess with some people's workflows. Also the corresponding "ergonomic" mouse was the worst I've ever used. It's like a large ball that forces me to stretch and grip constantly to keep my fingers on the buttons. I replaced it almost immediately.

Their laptop keyboards in particular tear my hands up pretty good.

It is, but I had the same experience as GP FWIW. For me mechanical keyboards are the absolute worst; light touch, short travel, and switching to Dvorak are what saved me.

It's not so much the key travel as the overall 'feel' relative to how your muscles learned to type. Everyone's different and react differently to different keyboards. What's most likely the issue is the not-conscious feedback loop that tells your fingers when to stop pressing. With some keys you type lightly, other types of keyswitches lead you to mash the keys with a high force until you're bottoming out on the pcb. It's that impact that generates high forces.

Does that mean that if I type very hard and I feel there's no hope for me to learn not to bang on the keyboard, the most, well, healthy keyboard for me will be the one with the longest key travel?

wow I thought becoming better at vim would help. do you use vim keybindings still?

I use them in bash, but not in IntelliJ. The number of keystrokes per line of code using IntelliJ ends up being delightfully small.

If the problem is typing, using vim will make you type more rather than use the mouse and cause problems.

If mousing is the problem, then using vim will help IMO

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