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Comment by apitman | Hacker News Reader

I started experiencing similar forearm pain a few years ago. The split keyboard seemed to help a ton. I also programmed[0] an Arduino with two foot pedals. Left pedal for CTRL, right for SHIFT, both for ALT. Worked wonders. I mostly have the pain manageable now, but it still flares up sometimes, and it was really scary there for a while wondering if I might have to stop programming. To you young guns out there, an ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure. Invest in an ergonomic setup and stretches/exercises now, and don't push yourself into pain while typing. Take more breaks. Once you push your body over the edge it may never quite be the same.

[0]: https://github.com/anderspitman/ergo-pedals

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I remapped the modifiers on my keyboard such that the bottom row is

Win - Alt - Ctrl - Space - Ctrl - Alt - Win

This is so that I can use my thumbs for Ctrl and index fingers for Alt. I taught myself to use the opposite side modifiers every time (using the right control for Ctrl-S).

This got rid of the vast majority of unergonomic keystrokes for me.

What if you need to press all three "keys" simultaneously?

The same keys still exist on the keyboard. There is also such a thing as a compose key sequence where you press a few things serially rather than all at once. There are countless answers to this question really.

He probably doesn't use Emacs. :)

I know what you mean. I was forced to use emacs for a year. I found it an interesting coincidence the person who forced emacs on us had the worst carpal tunnel syndrome and couldn't type on a standard keyboard without extreme pain.

I know you can remap your keys but there's inertia to just go with what you're given.

I've also noticed myself switching between Mac, Windows, and Linux, that Cmd-C on my Mac is way less stressful on my hand than Ctrl-C on the other 2 machines. I should probably figure out how to remap those.

PS: If you're curious how emacs was forced, it was because the lead built the project's IDE/build/debugging system into emacs

Try a keyboard running QMK firmware. You can map a single key to multiple codes depending on the length of the key press. I use caps lock as escape if released immediately, and control if held down. Putting the modifiers in the bottom corner of the keyboard was a sadistic design choice.

"escape if released immediately, and control if held down"

Elegant.

And I mean for those two particular modifiers with that relationship, not just the idea in general.

Or evil mode.

wow you woke up today and chose violence, didn't ya?

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