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Comment by courtewing | Hacker News Reader

As a programmer that suffers from RSI-related wrist issues at only 26, all I can think of when I see all of these workspaces is "how on earth are all of these people still able to move their hands?" Most, if not all of them look like they're trying to stick it to ergonomics.

I'm secretly just jealous, of course.

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26 y/o here with RSI-related issues as well. I constantly wonder how my +30 y/o co-workers with less ergonomically set-up workstations than I have are able to survive.

I am also jealous! :(

I approach all computer usage as if it's inherently harmful to my body, and I must minimize that harm if I expect to work with them the rest of my life. I have had excellent results avoiding repetitive strain from the following two products:

3M Ergo Mouse: http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/ergonomics/home/...

Kinesis Keyboard: http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/

I have no relationship, commercial or otherwise, with either vendor. Just worked well for me, as a professional software engineer. I highly recommend them. Both are designed to shift common movements away from smaller muscles toward larger muscles. Where a regular mouse relies on the small muscles of your wrist, the 3M mouse shifts that movement to the larger muscles of your arm. Kinesis moves the most common keys (space, enter, delete, modifiers) to one's (stronger) thumbs, and places keys to avoid the "stretch" of one's hand common with key combinations like ctrl+shift+T.

I should also mention that I use a standing desk. I think that's an important benefit to non-harmful mouse & keyboard posture. My experience from working while sitting in chairs is that your body tends to lean from side to side, extend one's arms to a degree that will cause repetitive strain, or put weight on the wrong places (like armrests). I have had an easier time adopting correct (least harmful, according to modern ergonomics research) posture while standing.

That posture is: let your arms fall limp to your sides. Now, bending at the elbow (and without moving your elbow), raise your arms in front of you to be parallel with the ground. That's where your keyboard should be. Your mouse should be in reach by rotating your arm, again without moving the elbow. This is the best posture for both chairs and standing (according to the ergonomics expert paid by my company to examine my working space -- I find this to be true in practice). As you can see, it is difficult to achieve this posture in a chair. The height of your desk is probably wrong, and you probably need a keyboard tray. It's more easily achieved with a standing setup.

I have had virtually no RSI issues since switching to these two products and a standing desk about 1.5 years ago. Both devices are fairly different from a normal input, and took a long time to learn to use effectively. The 3M mouse trades away accuracy, but with experience you can get almost as good as a normal mouse for regular desktop applications. I still use a regular mouse and keyboard for PC gaming, however.

Hope this is helpful to other intensive computer-users out there! Give standing a try -- your health will probably benefit.

My biggest RSI issue has been mouse usage. I'm right handed, but switching to mousing left handed has been a huge help. Plus, since I'm more awkward mousing left handed, it's helped me become more keyboard-centric, and thus more productive.

It's anecdotal, and maybe it's just me, but I've been a computer junkie, at work and at home for a good 20 years, i touch-type, somewhere in the top 5%, my posture sucks (other than where my hands sit relative to the keyboard) and I've had no RSI related issues that I can recall, ever. That's a mix of apple keyboards, buckling spring keyboards, and barely tolerable dell keyboards. (There's a few along the way I threw out because they were too mushy... but other than that)

Perhaps it's something I do without intention - small breaks due to short attention span or somthing...... but not everyone gets injuries.

That said - your advice is all perfectly sound.

You might want to check out an Apple 'Magic Trackpad' (there are Windows drivers as I think you're on a PC).

I've previously used the 3M mouse you refer to as well as all manner of trackballs, larger mice, etc and nothing has done more to alleviate my mouse hand issues than the Magic Trackpad.

I think this is mostly because it removes the need to clench your hand around anything and it can be much more relaxed, yet you still have very fine control (I regularly use it with Photoshop).

Luck of the draw. Some, people's bodies are just better able to absorb punishment. My wrists will occasionally give me trouble but for the most part if I keep the keyboard low enough they're good. On the other hand, I can't do a significant amount hammer work because it fucks my wrists. They're just not heavily built enough to take that kind of punishment.

Just a wild guess - not sure, but do you touch-type properly posture wise (all other considerations aside). I don't mean do you use the exact proper keys - but hands lifted from table, not resting on anything, etc etc?

Real coding - it's mostly planning and then writing code. A small workspace can help one focus, and if you are really into whatever environment you are using and it supports term/tmux and the usual unix stuff, you don't need a bunch of monitors at all - you can context switch just fine.... but that's hightly individual.

OTOH - when it comes to debugging and troubleshooting, give me tons of monitors so I can have proxies and remote debuggers and packet sniffers and who knows what else insturmented all over the place to find out what's wrong - but that's a different task.

And I will admit - lots of monitors can be a distraction, which is the killer of many a good programmer.

>>Real coding - it's mostly planning and then writing code.

>> OTOH - when it comes to debugging and troubleshooting [...] but that's a different task.

I code and debug at the same time. Real coding for me is making sure it does what it's supposed to at the start so I'm always in a code/debug configuration and frame of mind.

>> And I will admit - lots of monitors can be a distraction, which is the killer of many a good programmer.

They are also the facilitator of many a good programmer.

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