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Comment by euroclydon | Hacker News Reader

I had a standing desk once, but after a few months, I found I had to sit to get any serious thinking done. Anyone else experienced this phenomenon?

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I had the same experience, though I've been trying them on-and-off for years now. Walter Murch (demi-god of film editing) has an interesting take on it.

"Unlike most film editors today, Murch works standing up, comparing the process of film editing to "conducting, brain surgery and short-order cooking", since all conductors, cooks and surgeons stand when they work. In contrast, when writing, he does so lying down. His reason for this is that where editing film is an editorial process, the creation process of writing is opposite that, and so he lies down rather than sit or stand up, to separate his editing mind from his creating mind."

Maybe we should refactor standing up and write code sitting down?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Murch

He said lying down, now sitting. I usually code lying down, myself. But I certainly don't stand to refactor; it'd be easy to try, though it seems a little out there.

True, thanks for catching that. I prefer to write code lying on the couch, too, though I never noticed this before. Does anyone else code lying down?

How does the ergonomics of this work? The intellectual part of writing code may be improved, but physically typing the code while on the couch can't be a good thing.

(Typed while laying in bed, in a way that would certainly screw up my wrists if I did this long term.)

Separate keyboard (a Kinesis) on legs slightly bent. I'll prop up the laptop keyboard (like right now) for brief typing, but I agree that'd suck for serious work.

I am not an ergonomics authority.

I use Vim, both for writing code and as a chrome plugin, so I'm usually just hitting a few keys in normal mode, or whatever autocomplete tells me, with the occasional swipe at the trackpad. I've never had any wrist pain on the couch. My macbook air is pretty ancient but it's still super light so I can just prop it wherever.

I have a treadmill desk at home and find I sometimes have to stand still to get serious thinking done. A slow walk (around 1mph) is easier on the feet, though.

This was how it was for me for the first month or two, but now I go nuts unless I can stand and pace while thinking. It's a more alert position for me.

Initially it seemed like my brain was so concerned with the change in routine that I was constantly reminding myself that something was amiss. Fortunately, what is new and novel eventually becomes the norm with enough time.

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