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Comment by thinkmac | Hacker News Reader

well, it is good that you like the things you do. at your age, we youngsters tend to expect you to be in the management level, not at individual contributor level.

from time to time, i would see our team hiring engineer with gray hair and requiring special mechanical keyboard, and we all thought "mm.. interesting."

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>requiring special mechanical keyboard

Well youngster, you seem to be falling behind the latest trends. Maybe you're not as young as you think. Don't you know all the fashionable programmers/gamers are using mechanical keyboards?

He speaks truth, i am one such youngster programmer/gamer. Mechanical keyboard FTW.

All that clickety-clack must be so satisfying. And annoying to everyone else.

Screw everyone else. Look out for #1 as he said. I like to know when I clickety-clacked the key I was looking for. Mechanical keyboards ftw.

Not all mechanical keyboards are loud or clicky. I use one with Cherry Browns and mostly type without bottoming out the keys, and it's no louder than cheap keyboards.

I love the browns! But Blues are a lot more fun (and loud!) to program on ;)

Because loudness equates to competence?

Just a feeling of productivity, from producing so much noise. But it really is satisfying, if you haven't tried it.

And I've found that you start wanting to type faster, to create even more noise. So it might actually make you more productive, in a weird way.

Hmm I work from home a lot, maybe I'll try one.

Ugh, it's so much noise for your neighbor though. I worked next to someone with an old IBM keyboard for a year and was grumpy the entire time. Couldn't find headphones strong enough to cancel out what sounded like someone shooting an automatic weapon in the office.

I think there's a happy medium with the quieter cherry switches. But yeah, I don't use a mechanical keyboard in settings where I'm right next to other people.

You don't have to get a mech that is loud.

IBM Type F or M - which r3minds me must build that Aurduio Base USB converter of my Type F

The only reason you're not demanding a mechanical keyboard yourself is that you're not old enough to have used one. They have a totally different feel that is more efficient for fast flawless typing. Not by a huge amount, but if you're in a position to specify your tools why would you not choose the best? I'll bet he asked for a big high-resolution monitor too, and you didn't even blink.

Go ahead and aspire to management if you want, but don't assume everybody wants the same as you. And I hope your attitude changes before you achieve it.

Fast touch typist here and I can't say the transition away from mechanical keyboards had any impact on my speed. Shallow travel keys and minimal finger exertion are nice.

I am a "youngster" and I wouldn't mind a 60-years old developer around. Someone who doesn't consider something like Node.js a "new" "technology" and moving code client-side SPA-style a "new" "trend". Even without realising that youth is a temporary state.

PS: mechanical tenkeyless keyboards ROCK!

Hope you don't have to learn this from experience, but even young people can experience RSI and need special keyboards.

They say my generation (millennials) will suffer significantly higher rates of RSI due to more keyboard, game controller, and smartphone use.

RSI is no joke.

The most frustrating thing about it is how hard it is to find knowledgeable people. I went in to the doctor for RSI symptoms that were nothing like carpal tunnel and she insisted I had to have carpal tunnel and started talking about getting surgery to release it within like 5 minutes of us meeting. Perhaps the most galling part of this was where she went "here, let me show you" and had me do the various exercises of holding your hands together that are supposed to lead to tingling if you have CTS and when that didn't work she just said "well anyway, you have carpal tunnel syndrome." Thankfully my physical and occupational therapists were more helpful.

Wow, your experience mirrors mine exactly. Turned out to be a torn ligament.

People wonder why I don't trust doctors, it's not that I don't trust all of them, just most I've dealt with are suspect. There really needs to be a better physician review resource online.

I read some of the literature about RSI and this is a pretty common experience, which certainly does shake your faith in the medical establishment a bit. RSI is not even very rare.

I guess now people think I'm a crank; I posted here that I thought doctors just don't spend enough time with their patients and it's worrying and I was downvoted and mocked pretty hard.

Unfortunately I'm not confident that online resources would allow better decisions. I'm not convinced that patients would, by and large, do a much better job evaluating the quality of their doctors' care. The doctor who just gave patients antibiotics whenever they asked for them, whether or not it was appropriate, would probably be more popular in such a service than the doctor who took the time to understand their condition and explain that that wasn't an appopriate treatment.

Do you also expect engineers to drop like flies as they get older so that their numbers would become more in line with the number of available managerial positions? Cause that sounds like a serious flaw with your thinking.

As a programmer of only 2 years I've found the opposite.

I like when the older programmers are more hands on, because I can learn a lot from them.

I also use mechanical keyboards.

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