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Comment by mwiethoff | Hacker News Reader

I developed an RSI a few years ago, and I had to leave my job. It was devastating to lose both my career and my passion to an injury.

Since then, I've been working with a friend on a new voice coding app called Serenade [1] that aims to enable anyone to program by voice. With Serenade, you can speak natural English voice commands like "delete second function" and "add class person". Not only can this be faster than typing, but it also means you don't have to memorize the syntax details of every language or a bunch of editor keyboard shortcuts.

We found that cloud speech APIs and programs like Dragon weren't accurate enough for common programming words, so we built a custom speech engine (based on Kaldi [2]) that's designed specifically for coding. The app is still early, but we think the future of programming is working with these higher-level inputs rather than typing out code entirely by hand.

We're looking for people to give feedback, so if anyone is interested in giving it a try, you can download Serenade at [3] or email me at matt@serenade.ai.

[1] https://serenade.ai

[2] http://kaldi-asr.org

[3] https://serenade.ai/download

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Definitely interested. I’ll check it out.

Same boat, software engineer, my index and middle finger main knuckles on both hands inflame from the slightest use even after years of therapy, doctors visits, etc. Also tendinitis in both elbows/arms.

Note to those who are pushing off fixing your ergonomics, don’t. If you feel pain, numbing, tingling; do not ignore it. Listen to your body, don’t be like me.

Can you elaborate on somethings you wish you had done.

I get a bit of pain after half a day of coding, mostly my right pinky after hitting enter multiple times. Also get pain after certain activities like rolling food into a ball for my toddlers.

I’ve joint pains here and there and the doctors have not yet found the cause and think it’s early onset of arthritis and have been told to take pain killers.

I’m 39 by the way!

Edit: added age

I (25yo), also had pain in my right pinky and wrist, starting about 2 years ago.

I spoke with a friend who had surgery for Carpel Tunnel Syndrome, and knew a lot more about this than me. What he told me:

* Carpel Tunnel Syndrome affects the thumb/index-finger; pain in the pinky side of your hand could be caused by uthe ulnar tunnel or the cubital tunnel.

* He does sets of 10 of these stretches every hour http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cl-rpkmgPqI/UeUWdH4oMUI/AAAAAAAAAJ... https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/8a/a4/2c/8aa4...

* "One of the biggest things you can do is splint your wrist at night. This is one of the best wrist braces I've found: https://www.amazon.com/Mueller-Fitted-Wrist-Brace-Number/dp/... "

My experience:

- I got a foot pedal, and put Alt, Ctrl, Shift, and Enter on it (and for a while pulled those keycaps off the right side of my keyboard, to force myself to learn to use the foot pedal). This allowed me to keep using a computer while I recovered, and allowed me to avoid stressing my pinky after I recovered. I wrote a bit about that on Reddit https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/7remed/has_anybody_u... .

- The tendon gliding exercises were very helpful. The other stretches didn't seem to make much difference. While I was recovering, I tried to do them hourly. I now only do them if it's acting up.

- I second his endorsement of those wrist braces. When using them, I wear them at night, and when typing if I can (I can use a desk keyboard with them, but can't use my laptop with them). While I was recovering, I used them all the time, now I only use them if it's acting up.

- More recently, I got a Keyboardio Model 01, which puts the modifiers on the thumbs, not the pinkies. The foot pedal is entirely unnecessary with it; it puts much less strain on my hands. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cl-rpkmgPqI/UeUWdH4oMUI/AAAAAAAAAJ...

Nowadays, my wrist acts up maybe once a month or two.

(35 now, this started at 33) I wish I quit my job when it started to get worse instead of continuing while I was doing PT. I was doing 8-10 hour days of coding in a startup, my hands and arms got worse and I started doing 4 hour days 3 times a week and doing physical therapy, dr appointments etc. It continued to get worse. I had a lot of faith in my doctors figuring it out. They kept telling me I’d get better, it’d heal. Well, we’re years from then and none of that came to fruition.

Not only that, the doctors misdiagnosed me multiple times, not able to come to an agreement on what it was. They still don’t. They call it RSI, arthritis, posterior interosseous nerve syndrome, and others that I cannot remember.

My advice, look up an ergonomics diagram, compare your setup to a proper setup. Then make adjustments to areas you’re having trouble with.

I use an ergodox ez keyboard w/ a 3m sort of joystick mouse (it doesn’t tilt though, you move it like a normal mouse).

I can get away with 1 hour working, then icing, stretching then repeat. For about 4 hours total for a day, but I wonder; does doing this cause more damage? I guess I’ll find out when I am older, as I have to pay my bills.

Just be careful with NSAIDS, taking them regularly can cause stomach ulcers.

And taking them for many years can cause kidney damage.

Lots of good advice here. Ergo keyboards (I like the kinesis advantage, and they last decades) and breaks worked for me. Dvorak is mostly useful because you have to relearn it, and might learn it without whatever broken ideas your body has about QWERTY.

Chair adjustments are huge. Get a steelcase chair—I like the leap. Have it adjusted by a pro, whose biggest advantages are being able to see what you really do as you type and knowing all the dials in advance.

And get stronger. A stronger back, shoulders, arms, grip will help you stay working in safe positions longer. Anything from tennis to deadlifts will work here.

Just adding another data point, my Kinesis Advantage only lasted 6 months before it started experiencing phantom key strokes.

Sending it in to get repaired would have costed almost as much as getting a new keyboard since I don’t live in the US.

I replaced it with a Microsoft Sculpt that has lasted for years now.

There is a open source controller for the advantage that makes it fully programable and fixes some problems that the advantage 1 had with some ghost presses and stuck modifiers. I've modified two advantages to use it, it requires a bit of soldering and some willingness to compile your own firmware from qmk.

https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2013-03-21-kinesis_custo...

https://oshpark.com/shared_projects/BwWRYP5c

https://qmk.fm/

I've presonally never managed to get caps/mode leds back to working, but I also don't really care enough to dig in that deeply.

When I was trying to learn 10 finger my wrists started to have pain. I immediately stopped and to this day still do my made up three finger touch typing on each hand. I'm still paranoid, my right elbow and lower arm still feel sensitive. I switched to an ergo mouse that's vertical there. It's crazy to think I could go from XK/year to 0K/year over something so "simple".

Staying strong is a good idea - I will start more core / physical fitness.

you might want to look at the kinesis advantage keyboard, moves the backspace and enter to your thumbs cluster, and greatly improves ergonomics for your pinkie fingers.

I'm 23 and have been using computers very heavily for the last 10 or so years - probably an average of 6 hours a day. During a particularly intensive day of typing last week I started getting pain in my right hand. I had to resort to hunt-and-peck index finger typing to get the feature I was working on finished.

I'm horrified, it feels like I'm way too early in my career for something like this to happen, but I guess that's what happens when you do something so repetitive for tens of thousands of hours.

What in particular have you found success with that helps? I'm kinda in denial right now, it's already gotten better over Saturday but I know I shouldn't be ignoring it.

I learned to use mouse with my other hand. I was literally forced to one day, out of pain.

Took me 2 days to feel normal with it.

Nowadays, I juggle back and forth, depending on comfort.

I'm pretty good at that too, but mostly due to temporary climbing injuries.

I was in the same situation. It is incredibly frustrating to learn but it just takes time.

I kept two mice on each side of the computer for years and alternated between them as required.

Is it really the mice? I don't use a mice, I had the impression that most of the problem was due to typing?

In my case and for many other people, mice are part of the problem.

Been here, done that. This is not a solution:

It was 5 years ago and my right hand was too painful to use so I switched to my left hand. Eventually, last year my left hand started to hurt too, and I started jungling between both. 5 months later, I had to stop completely for 2 months because of the pain.

If you ignore the pains for too long, it will do irrepairable damage to your nerves.

My timeline was this. I've been programming since 15. I've been on the computer for hours a day, making money freelancing in highschool. I didn't have a single issue. Then, at 22, I got a professional gig. My pain started immediately. Within months, the damage was done.

My right hand still isn't 100%, but since I've switched to using my last remaining good hand, I treat it much better than I did my right hand. It's all I got.

Carpal tunnel can absolutely be prevented. It isn't genetic or anything. You just have to monitor the warning signs and address them immediately.

So, yes, switching hands isn't a solution, but the damage is done, so it has to be done. But now I have the insight needed to prevent my left arm from ever falling into the same situation.

Have you tried using an ergonomic keyboard?

I had always used non-ergonomic mice and kbs, until one day I started noticing some wrist pain when in certain positions. After a few months the pain increased and I figured this wasn't right so I bought one of those Microsoft Natural Keyboards, and after a week or so, the pain went away.

Some time later I started with wrist pain again but now in positions related to the mouse use, so I bought an Evoluent mouse and again, after a couple of weeks the pain was noticeably lower, and so I was convinced that the position of my wrists was not ideal for thousands of hours of use.

So, my point is, you don't have to wait until it's too late to try to figure out a way to fix that. I don't think age is the only factor here, so just try out something on the affordable side and see if you get better, regardless of how young you are, begore things get worse.

Use computers less.

Ergonomic keyboard and mouse.

A split keyboard is a huge win. When you sit with your hands in front of you, they don't naturally want to go in towards the center. They want to be offset a bit.

Below the desk keyboard tray -- Look up an ergonomics diagram. You aren't supposed to have your hands going up to get to your desk. It's supposed to be a 90 degree angle.

Going mechanical. I run Kailh Silvers, which are incredibly light and have a 1.1 mm travel distance before the key registers. It's like typing on air. I barely have to move my fingers. This, of course, takes some getting used to.

Going ortholinear. Staggered keys are just a remnant of old typewriters. Your fingers were built to go straight back and forth. Making them go sideways forces _a lot_ of extra wrist movement. Again, this takes some time to learn.

Curved keyboard well. Your fingers aren't all the same length. Couldn't we make something that puts all of the fingers closer to their keys in the resting position? Yes. See below.

After a little time with mechanical keyboards, I ended up just going all out and building myself a Dactyl. That's a split ortholinear keyboard with a curved keywell, and is basically as ergonomic as it gets. If you want advise on how to build one, I can help point you in the right direction. It took probably 10 hours. Otherwise the closest thing is an Ergodox or Kinesis Advantage. It only took a Sunday to get mostly used to it, and my typing speed has actually gotten way faster. I detailed the learning curve here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/azkkpz...

The only disadvantage is that if you bring one of these into work, get ready to catch some flack :D

At this point I've got my own chair, standing desk converter, mouse and keyboard. I plan on coding for a long time, not just for the money but because I love it. So I look like a bit of a dumbass, but in 20 years I'll still be coding.

I should mention my issues have mainly been with wrist and neck pain.

This has completely gotten rid of the wrist pain. The split keyboard opened up my posture and helped a bit with the neck pain.

Since I got a new job that didn't have standing desks, the neck pain has started to come back a little bit. It's mostly because your neck gets weak when you sit for so many hours a day. Getting a standing desk converter can help keep your muscles from atrophying. It's also not great to stand all day. You want to alternate.

Tip. A peptide known as BPC-157 is healing of tendons.

> Staggered keys are just a remnant of old typewriters.

It's true (the Sholes & Glidden introduced that) but just for the record, some quite old typewriters had ortholinear keyboards, like the Smith Premier:

https://www.antikeychop.com/smith-premier-no1

They eventually lost in the market, however.

You can count yourself as one of the lucky ones as I had many classmates in college who lost the ability to type before they graduated because of RSI.

While I’m no medical professional, I’ve thus far avoided serious RSI by 1. Not typing very much. I spend most of my time thinking and a minority of time typing. 2. Periodically change work area. I have the luxury of having the option of typing in an office, a laboratory or outside under a tree and frequently move around. Even if you don’t have this much flexibility, try adjusting your chair up and down, move your monitor around, etc.

EDIT: I make no guarantees these things have any correlation with my avoidance of serious RSI symptoms.

Don't discount resting. I limit my typing to 35 WPM and I try to be as even as I possibly can in my typing. I think while I type. Even then, I type for 30 seconds and rest for 30 seconds. In my rest period I'll read what I typed and think a bit more. I find that I am actually more productive this way because I don't rush.

> What in particular have you found success with that helps?

* I bought two bathroom mats from Krogers, wrapped them around the arms of my office chair, and duct-taped them in place. Looks like hell, feels soft and cushy.

* I bought a bunch of those practice tennis balls (the wimpy kind that don't bounce worth a damn) and have one at home, one at work for squeezing when I take a break or watch TV.

* I wear one of those Ace bandage thingies around my right forearm.

* I have one of those ergonomic keyboards from Microsoft. Huge improvement.

* THE MOST HELPFUL: I do curls and range-of-motion exercises with 10-lb dumbbells when watching TV. Nothing dramatic, a few sets of 30-40 curls plus rotating my wrists, and then some leaning-over pushups against the couch. You wouldn't believe how much better I started feeling.

I had the same problem. I narrowed it down to moving my pinky to type things like (). Default keyboard layouts are awful for programming. You type a lot of symbols and they're on weak fingers that require weird hand movements.

Using a keyboard with a programmable firmware lets you move those keys elsewhere, and then you can type them with strong fingers. I use my left thumb to activate a layer that turns jkl; into ({}), which has helped a lot. (I also moved the shifted numbers down to qweruipo -> !@#$&*`~, and brackets to m, -> [].)

I also have keys for macros like := and !=.

Finally, backspace and common symbols like - and _ are on my pointer finger (ErgoDox EZ, so I get a few extra keys in the middle), and meta, space, and enter are on thumb keys.

It takes a bit of time to get used to, but I type faster than on a traditional keyboard now AND with less pain.

Would still like to completely kill the mouse from my life, however.

This is exactly what’s motivated me to finally learn https://bepo.fr, a lot of special chars are on the left on the keyboard with the altgr key modifier. So you have to use left fingers and right thumb to get things like curlies, pipe etc. So far my pinkeys are much better. Though i must admit that learning to touchtype on bepo was one of the must frustrating thing i ever had to do ^^

I have an ergonomic support for my right arm. My elbow rests on a silk fabric "hammock", which is supported by a linear bearing slide, mounted on a vertical shaft. I bought it too many years ago to remember a brand. And hopefully the description makes sense.

Basically, my right arm feels ~weightless.

Edit: Also, I use a touchpad, not a mouse. If I use a mouse, my hand cramps. And it also helps, I think, that I never learned to type. So I've developed my own style that doesn't hurt me.

Please post a picture of your hammock setup, it sounds very interesting!

OK, found it.

It's a BodyBilt chair, with their Linear Tracking Arm.[0]

The chair has a moderate tractor seat, which forces you to sit properly, and not slouch. But that also means that you can't really relax in the chair, because it hurts in the crotch. There's also an inflatable lumbar support.

I used an Aeron for many years. It's much cooler looking, but the BodyBilt is more comfortable for long term use.

0) https://www.backbenimble.com/bodybilt/closeups/closeup_all_a...

I can't be sure but it feels like a lot of people are discounting exercise here, I don't mean stretches but something more serious.

I've been staring at a desktop screen 6h+ daily for 8y+ and started feeling serious rsi symptoms on my right wrist at the old age of 19.

I tried bandages and wraps in the beginning, but once I started lifting all pains literally disappeared.

Heavy deadlifts (and maybe a press), done with correct form, is something that I'm quite sure will resolve the issue for the majority of people -- when your wrist starts being able to manage 200lbs+ loads then mouse-related issues feel like a joke.

I'd be interested in hearing stories where deadlifts didn't help. Would there be any?

that's solid advice I think. I have pretty much the same story. I mean, I went all out with anabolics and such because I was also trying to get some hot babes, but I never had wrist issues after that.

At what age did you start loading anabolics?

I can vouch for deadlifts. Had wrist tendonitis flare-ups first at age 29 while doing lots of coding for a newly launched product. I'm 43 now and haven't had a flare-up in over 6 years (been doing heavy coding since 28yo). I do deadlifts once heavy a week, sometimes will add in an extra light set during the week. If you're starting out with deadlifts, be sure to check out a program like Starting Strength and practice correct form before adding heavy weight.

Things like bench press and working with heavy dumbbells have probably helped too since the weight forces your hand, wrist, and arm muscles to strengthen. I have also used a hand-held grip squeeze device which has helped over the years when I had flare-ups.

I tried those squeeze devices too, but in my opinion they're too weak unless you specifically shell out for the stronger / adjustable ones. Mine were from China and didn't do jack for the rsi pain.

It's deadlifts that whips forearms into shape, and then getting used to various presses seems to make the wrist more adaptable. I started with Phrak's Greyskull LP which is a modification on SS with less volume.

Back, shoulder, and neck pain disappears too.

Not to mention the many other benefits to exercise, and weightlifting in particular.

Like everything else in life, if you neglect your body it will fail on you eventually.

I started to get pain in my right hand in my mid-20s (early 40s now) when I was spending a full working day programming and then spending most of my time playing fps games on my PC in the evening using KB+M. It progressed to the point that I would get stabbing pains on the top of my hand whenever I right-clicked my mouse.

After a few weeks of trying different layouts and avoiding my mouse as much as possible, I found the source of my issue was not my hand but a nerve in my elbow which was being crushed when using chair arm rests. I was also sleeping with my arms folded up on my chest which kept the nerve under tension when I was sleeping, preventing it from fully healing. I now avoid arm rests whenever possible and sleep with my arms to the side. The pain disappearred after about a week and I've been pain free ever since. I've also naturally reduced the amount of typing/mousing I do as I've got older and my career has progressed.

I came across something similar, I narrowed it down to Ulnar nerve entrapment which sounds particularly similar.

- adapt a time management technique (i.e. pomodoro) to ensure frequent breaks from typing. Listen to it. Your code can wait. Grab some other objects during the breaks (lacrosse ball)

- get light dumbbells, ranging from 2 to 6 kg, and start doing wrist flexor exercises every day. Slow pace, good form, not too heavy weight, stop when it really hurts.

The other posters have brought up a lot of important points, but if you're struggling to change, here's a first, really easy step for the lazy: Go to your nearest electronics store and buy a MS Natural 4000. Do it now.

Yes, I know, it might not be as high-quality, sophisticated and thorough in its design as specialized ergo keyboards. But: It's widely available, it's cheap, and - an often overlooked pro - it adheres to a standard keyboard layout, which means that it only needs minimal adjustment, both initial and when changing computers (if you don't want to lug it around everywhere or switch out every keyboard you are in contact with). All IMO deciding factors for doing that first step and sticking to it. :) And: In my experience it still gets you there most of the way regarding ergonomics - split and curved keyboard, and especially negative tilt(!).

I only wish MS would rerelease a modern, higher-quality version the model (the current model is almost 15 years old now!). It is still servicable, but oh, what could be possible...

PS: The immediate next step should of course be checking and adjusting the geometry of your workplace. An ergonomic keyboard won't help much if you're hunching there like Quasimodo.

Wearing long sleeves while typing, regardless of the weather outside, completely solved my wrist pain problems. I first tried it after reading this post: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/11/18/rsi-solution/

Yes! Me too!

I've noticed that wearing long sleeves when I'm typing helps.

I had RSI and panicked as well. But now that I wear long sleeves while programming (even a heavy sweater sometimes, even though it might be hot outside).

Basically I need to keep everything warm.

Of course, you still need to take regular breaks.

But that let's me go longer with minimal pain.

I'm 38, and have been programming since ~16. I spend > 50 hrs / week typing. I've had several bouts of RSI and here is something to consider:

- It's very possible to go from your current situation to being completely pain free. Have some optimism. I haven't experienced RSI pain in 5 years.

- RSI is usually not _caused_ by typing (there is lots of data supporting this). Lots of typing usually exacerbates some other underlying condition. Don't fall into the attribution error trap or you might not find the underlying cause.

- In my various bouts of RSI I switched to various ergonomic keyboards. These mitigated some of the pain, but did not eliminate it. I went from a standard laptop keyboard to MS natural 4k, to a Kinesis advantage. Each time, pain improved but did not completely subside.

- I solved my RSI by finding the root cause.

Anecdotal stories:

I've had on and off weakness in my left pinky for years (decades). I'm an Emacs user and used to use that pinky heavily as a ctrl/meta activator; I just attributed the pain / weakness to that. I would also have pain in left wrist, which I attributed to having to baby that hand at times and use it in awkward positions. At times, the pain was so bad I could not type for days to weeks.

I'd seen a doctor about this a few times, and they usually advised me to take a week or two away from the keyboard to let it heal and then the usual 'take breaks while typing etc.' Sometimes that worked, sometimes not.

At one point, I started noticing that my grip strength was declining in that hand and I was getting muscle twitches when I had to grip things very tightly (e.g. a hario hand grinder). Twitching and weakness are clinical signs of a motor neuron problem. After researching various nerve compression scenarios... I happened upon a website similar to this: http://www.eatonhand.com/hw/hw007.htm. This described me exactly; habit of sleeping with my arms stretched out in a way that compresses the ulnar nerve.

I got a 15 dollar brace off Amazon and started being careful about what position I slept in. A month later, my hand was completely back to normal and I've been pain free since.

My brother (also a programmer) had a similar situation. RSI to the point he couldn't work. The root cause; a shoulder injury from his teens that wasn't properly addressed. Did PT to work on the shoulder and his RSI resolved within a few months.

The point is, don't focus on typing as the cause; look elsewhere. If you are injury free, you can type all day long and it won't likely cause a problem.

A full list:

* Wear warm clothes that cover your wrists.

* Start going to the gym, and focus especially on free weight exercises. They make your arms and hands stronger, and the growth hormones released after working out promotes healing of any wrist injuries.

* Mouse sensitivity. Which is better, low or high DPI varies on a person-to-person basis but for me what worked was low as it forced me to use my hand to do large movements rather than my wrist.

* Mouse hardware. Again varies on a person-to-person basis, a mouse that is too large or too small for your hand can cause wrist pain.

* Sleep position. Sleeping on your back is probably the safest way, be sure to keep your arms relaxed on the sides. Having a pillow to hug might help as this feels somehow a natural position

* Don't play video games with a mouse. Yes this sucks as some of the best competitive multiplayer games are on the PC, but LoL, CSGO, Overwatch etc are known to cause RSI issues and lots of professional players have ruined their wrists permanently. Switching to a console will stop any wrist problems from gaming

Stop. Seriously stop. Don’t type thru the pain — you’ll do serious and permanent damage. I did that in lectures on an Apple Newton keyboard, and my hands never were the same since.

Install AntiRSI or workrave, and take breaks. But really pay attention and when your body gives out don’t take the chance. No feature or deadline is worth it. Probably even an hour break is enough to finish that feature.

when i stopped studying and started working full time, i began to get pain in my wrists. so i got an ergonomic keyboard and a large trackball. i'm fairly sure it's replacing the mouse with a trackball that makes the most difference to the acute pain, but they both do make a difference. but everyone is different. act fast and change everythin,

I've noticed that wearing long sleeves when I'm typing helps.

I had RSI and panicked as well. But now that I wear long sleeves while programming (even a heavy sweater sometimes, even though it might be hot outside).

Basically I need to keep everything warm.

Of course, you still need to take regular breaks.

But that let's me go longer with minimal pain.

Also same boat.

I've found that a mix of proper ergonomics, regular breaks, CBD oil (for inflammation), wrist braces and physical therapy exercises can do a lot of good.

where do you get your cbd oil / what brand? Thanks

For those in this thread, try mechanical keyboards without much actuation force, like Cherry MX clear.

Also try programmable keyboards or custom keymap layouts, which will allow you to map Return to the caps lock key to balance RSI a bit. I have issues with my right index which I almost completely blame on Diablo 1/2, swapping left + right click helps a lot.

I’ve also tried and wouldn’t recommend: Dvorak (no noticeable difference) Egrodox (extremely hard to learn)

Maaaaybeee tiled window managers, dunno where I stand on that one but it probably doesn’t help a lot ergonomics wise.

I’ll also mention that cherry mx blue are much to heavy for me, and brown hurt after a week of furious typing. My problem with clears is that if I rest my hands too much I press keys because they’re so light

Clears require more force than Browns?

https://ergodox-ez.com/pages/keyswitches

Grantparent poster here. Hrm, you're right, I remember purchasing keys 'lighter' than browns, possibly silvers. They're very light, but I'd probably prefer 'too light' over 'too heavy'.

You may have Gateron Clears, which are lighter than Gateron Browns. Gateron Browns are basically equivalent to Cherry MX Browns, but Gateron Clears are entirely different from Cherry MX Clears. This has tripped me up more than once.

I really like my ergodox. I can't go back to a normal keyboard. The only upgrade I can think of is going to a kinesis advantage or dactyl. It took about a week to get comfortable with mine, longer until I was better with it than a normal keyboard.

My experience is different here... changing to Dvorak + changing mouse to a trackball in the left hand (along with a MS ergonomic keyboard) made a world of difference for me.

I can currently code a whole day without feeling anything... coming from not having enough strenght to hold a glass sometimes due to RSI -- 10 years since I did the switch already... having to type much slower when doing the switch to Dvorak also forces you to be slower and helps in the initial recovery.

As a note for people with issues, don't go to pain killers when you're still typing, you'll only make the problem worse... if you go to pain killers make sure you also stop typing/injuring yourself.

I have the same experience with Dvorak. Haven't got any pain issue anymore since i switched from qwerty to dvorak. My typing speed really suffer for the first week though. Also, now i can't type on qwerty anymore except on a phone on-screen keyboard.

I didn't have too much trouble learning the Dactyl. Detailed my experience here: https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/azkkpz...

It took 4 hours or so of constant typing tests to get up to 60 wpm. It took another week or so of working with the keyboard programming 8+ hours a day to stop having stupid mistakes.

It seems like it's going to be extremely hard to learn at first. Especially when you're hitting 5 WPM every time, but trust me, your brain will adapt. I was helped out by the fact that after spending a few days _building_ the keyboard, I wasn't about to back down. I was pleasantly surprised when it only took 4 hours.

Since then, my productivity is through the roof. Tons of thumb keys that are entirely programmable = heaven for an Ergoemacs user like me.

Had a similar issue.

Then I went zerocarb and it faded fairly quickly.

0 carb is the thing!

If what you have is actually tendinitis in your elbows then that's fixable through physical therapy (progressively heavier slow loading of the joint in the form of concentric-only single-joint movements).

I worked with a guy in 1999 who had severe RSI. He had spent a ton of time training whatever the highest pro version of Dragon Dictate was at the time, and then even more time setting up a bunch of macros to do complicated/repetitive tasks. It was impressive how fast he could 'type' (that is to say, it was really, really fast - faster than a keyboard) for the things he had trained it for. But, 20 years ago, none of the non-RSI people were tempted to follow his lead having seen how much work it took to get it set up.

But, fast forwarding 20 years, I can totally imagine that a product such as yours that is designed from the ground up for programmer types could be significantly faster for text input, but hopefully without all of that burdensome training and setup before you can be productive.

Reading the docs it struck me that your not far off from a vim or emacs like abstraction around text processing. Hopefully you are building this so it's easy to add commands in other languages and not a ton of specialized code. thinking something like command + regex matcher... Or really if you can integrating with the language server spec you'd have a quite powerful system if you just have users learn the ast parts of that spec as commands.

Didn't get to play with it as my computer died again right after I installed it. Not your fault, main ssd desoldered and cracked connector a week back while I'm in a month long road trip. I've been hobbling along on live USB distros (surprisingly fast) until last night when the boot USB torched.

I have rsi flare-ups that cause my fingertips and blades of hands to go somewhat numb or hurt. Usually goes away when I use my good ergo setup (appeared when I played about 40 hours of pubg over a weekend) and get some exercise around my hands / forearms.

Is this open source? I’d love to play with it and see what it would take to support C# in Visual Studio.

I gave it a shot. Here is my feedback:

1- It doesn't recgonize my voice very well. I know that my accent is not that good, but Google has around 9~% accuracy. This had maybe 10%!

2- Why a VSCode plugin? Why not make it at the OS level. So I can type with my voice anywhere I want.

3- Being able to customize the commands myself.

Thanks for the feedback! We’re actively working on improving the speech engine, apologies it didn’t work well for you. We’re starting with editor plugins, but eventually want to expand to other apps as well. Definitely want to support customization down the line too.

Just today I heard about this guy with motor issues who can play competitive fighting games using only his tongue (not directly, using it to push his cheeks/skin) I would imagine combining something like that with voice recognition would be the best approach, something like press X before saying (on your mic) a variable name, or press Y before saying a control structure, such approach would remove a lot of ambiguity because the number of possible interpretations by the speech recognition software would be greatly reduced.

The snippets feature looks quite powerful and particularly like the enumeration conversion example. Are there any plans of making these kinda of transformations extensible?

I've recently gone into speech assisted video editing and came across Kald about a month ago, was interested specifically in its diarization feature ... it's quite daunting. How did you get up to speed on it ... I've talked to a few people who've worked with it but it took them months to feel comfortable with it.

Doing the good work. It keeps me up at night thinking that I might be in this position. So little has to go wrong.

I was actually VERY close to being in this same boat, one of my nerves in my shoulder was pinched so badly that it started to take damage. Took me a few months to regain full use of my left (dominant) hand with lots of physical therapy.

Seeing this gives me real hope that there is hope for everyone regardless of a sudden life altering possibility.

Currently I’m in Language Design Hell trying to devise a syntax that is as easy to speak as it is to type, but if/when I get that cracked I’ll take a look as this looks very relevant to my interests.

I was thinking along these lines. Wish i had time but good that you have made considerable progress.

My motivation was different though. I wanted to break barrier to code, make cleaner/efficient/consistent code, automated tests ingestion and for the ability to port code to other languages from metadata. If you could focus also on those lines too - it would be useful for the general community too.

What's the licensing for this? I feel very strongly that accessibility technologies must be free/open source software, so that the already disadvantaged community which relies on them can work together on improving them to give each other a leg up, or to adapt it to their specific circumstances.

There is no license listed in the github repos for the VSCode and Atom plugins[0]. As such they are not currently open source.

Open source seems like a major advantage with assistive technologies and something that the community should insist on in the products it uses.

However, insisting that only free (as in beer) software is acceptable seems to unnecessarily restrict the potential new software that is needed.

[0] https://github.com/serenadeai

I meant free as in freedom in this case, sorry for the confusion.

That's incredible! Does it work with any programming language?

Right now it works best for python. We’ve got early versions of JavaScript and Java out too. We’re also releasing HTML and CSS soon.

It would be easier to implement something like this for Lisp.

Emacs programmer here, any chance it would be available there?

I just emailed you, this definitely looks promising!

Sounds like the foundation to building Jarvis.

little constructive criticism... no where on the site or in the document does it mention what the supported languages are. After a little bit I saw that this was only for python, but I think it would be better for you cause if you not only said what languages are supported, but maybe also how you can add other languages.

It's directly on home page:

    Multiple languages.
    Use the same commands across multiple languages: Python, JavaScript, Java, and more on the way.

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