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Comment by sodapopcan | Hacker News Reader

I'm not saying this to be snooty or whatever, but RSI is also solvable via a custom keyboard or learning Vim motions (or both). I had really bad RSI and it totally went away after the combo of learning to type properly (which you mentioned in your post) and switching to Vim full time. Vim motions reduce the amount of stretching you need to do by a LOT. Snippets also helped. I am of course talking about in The Before Times.

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I am saying this to be a little snooty. Your take is very dismissive to a large group of people whose experiences you don't know. I agree that split/custom keyboards and vim are awesome; I have used them for 25 years. But the idea that you can reduce RSI treatment and everyone's situation to something so simple just isn't true. It is fine to recommend solutions to people who are suffering, but to dismiss their problems as being "solved" comes across as basically calling them stupid for not helping themselves.

I know you didn't say that, and you softened your language, but many people with disabilities or chronic conditions have to deal with everyone they share their problems with telling them their "cure". Its exhausting.

Thanks for saying this. I already use Vim (in my browser too). I've used it on and off in an editor as well. I've tried reading books (like I mentioned in the post) which is something you only do when you're truly desperate. For some of us, our body will only allow so much.

I am sure the OP was just trying to help. I, too, when I started having such problems chalked it up to "surely some adjustments will help". And they did! But it never quite ceased.

First off, I'm not going for a "gotcha" reply here, I hear all of what you said and I don't see your reply as adversarial.

> but to dismiss their problems as being "solved" comes across as basically calling them stupid for not helping themselves.

Yep, I did kind of say that now that I re-read it. It does come from a point of aggravation (again, in The Before Times) of people expressing, with pride, how little they know of their tools (editor and VCS mainly). And for sure, they probably made/are making a lot more money than I am, so I guess they win?

I must take exception, though, with you bringing up disabilities. This article never mentioned them, so I didn't either. This is a whole other can of worms, but I will say that after working with a couple of people who have pretty extreme disabilities, there are some extremely good (non-"AI"... although of course we know they have some sort of "pre-AI"-AI in them) tools out there are extremely good, and they rocked the f^ck out of them (yes, I intentionally used "extreme" three times there).

So ya, I guess I was being a bit snooty as I was always annoyed how few people learned their tools. Not even just their tools, but their programming language of choice as well! It's all a spectrum, of course. But, as I must admit, it turns out they were right so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Also, as far as exhausting goes, I've never been more exhausted than trying to follow what these awful f^cking companies are doing.

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