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Comment by throwaway61292 | Hacker News Reader

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

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(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.

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.

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

And taking them for many years can cause kidney damage.

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.

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.

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.

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