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Comment by Symbiote | Hacker News Reader

When I started my undergraduate degree, there was a PhD student everyone knew -- he looked like he ran the Linux User Group, which he did, he coded his own window manager, wrote games in Haskell etc.

At some point, he got some hand injury that meant he couldn't type normally for months. He would only have been 21 or 22.

This scared me, so since then I've followed the standard advice on avoiding computer-related injuries very carefully. I use a desktop computer with an external, adjustable monitor. I use ergonomic keyboards, and use a mouse with either hand. I learned to touch-type with the Dvorak layout, I have an adjustable desk, etc.

I haven't had any problems, and I don't know which (if any) of these actions helped, but I'm surprised when I see other developers apparently happy to hunch over a laptop keyboard for 8 hours, while sitting on an awkward chair in a coffee shop. Why do this to yourself?

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A few years back I started buying disability insurance, in addition to paying more attention to my ergonomics.

My greatest economic asset is the years left in my career. For ~$1500/year I insure that. It's not cheap, but it would pay out until I was 65 at some reasonable percentage of my normal salary in the case I was severely injured, or otherwise unable to work. Anywhere from an ergonomics caused hand/arm injury, a bike-riding caused head injury, a wood-shop caused eye damage, etc.

Consider grabbing it while you're young and working in a lucrative career.

Not sure how old you are but I imagine over the next couple of decades we’ll eventually get more advanced computer interfaces.

Gestures, voice, eye tracking, ...

Being a software developer could be a job for those who physically can’t do other jobs.

Subtle input gestures with Soli would be interesting.

https://atap.google.com/soli/

Assuming physical injury (like RSI or trauma), yes, it's getting easier and easier.

But there are many other ways you could be injured and unable to work. My straw-man injury when I bought the policy was: "I'm a new skier, which is famous for major head trauma". Similarly, cancer, which directly or via treatment, causes exhaustion is another example of disability that is not solved with "if only I could just input text easier".

I'm glad there's so much work in accessibility going on, and that hardware, machine learning, and social awareness has gotten widespread enough to let non-huge companies dive in and make real progress. It's important to open the field to as many people who we can.

I just want to be sure people don't rely on technology being advanced enough at the exact time you may need it. You can easily get unlucky, and insurance exists to pay somebody else to take the risk.

Yes, that makes sense. However, the older I get the more I think society should provide some sort of safety net for the unlucky.

It’s inefficient for everyone to do this and many cannot.

The premiums could jump 50% in a decade, for example. I’ve known situations somewhat like yours where premiums went up a lot.

I have a similar story. When I was in college I got a repetitive stress injury from practicing piano too much. I ended up becoming a programmer but I have followed ergonomic practices religiously in the 40 years since then. My kids make affectionate fun of my perfect posture. But I have worked with the computer keyboard for going on five decades and have never come close to suffering a repetitive stress injury.

I think ..... most people have no idea what they actually look like when hunched over a keyboard. It would do wonders to have a large mirror next to our workspace so one could see just how preposterous they're contorting their body.

I had a bit of a scare around the same time. I was following dual passions of computer science and piano playing, meaning around 12 hours a day of typing and/or piano-ing. I started to develop regular tendinitis in my wrists and fell down a rabbit hole of ergonomics and posture. With computers you can replace keyboards if you have money, but I was a musician in college. Also, you can't really change a piano keyboard all that much (and you really wouldn't want to) so I did a real deep dive into posture and getting the most out of what I already had

Especially the macbook pro keyboards. Those really hurt my hands.

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