> One week or so ago I switched from Colemak to typing on QWYRFM due to the reduced load it places on the pinkies.
I typed Dvorak for 10 years before I started getting RSI again in my right ulna. It turns out that the 'S' key being hit by the pinky in Dvorak caused me a lot of pain.
I ended up switching to BEAKL, a pretty obscure layout which is specifically made to alleviate stress on the pinky. It moves the relatively common S key to the right hand pointer finger, for instance.
It turns out that the theory underpinning the dvorak layout assumes that homerow hits are strictly better than upper and lower row, but the pinky and ring finger are such weak fingers that it's often better to move the index or middle fingers up or down a row than hit a key on the home row with the pinky.
A friend of mine used his pinky and ring finger to open the door of his pickup truck. But it was frozen shut and he snapped the tendons (ligaments?) and that was that, he couldn't curl them shut on his hand anymore.
> but the pinky and ring finger are such weak fingers that it's often better to move the index or middle fingers up or down a row than hit a key on the home row with the pinky.
Spot on, I would go as far as saying that using the pinky at all is poor technique because it indicates one reaches keys by stretching the fingers, rather than hovering the hand over the keyboard, allowing each finger to remain in its natural position, and using only the fingers that are naturally strong and precise.
That’s interesting. I guess I never really thought about it, but on dvorak `ls` is a double tap with the right pinky, and it’s often immediately followed by [enter] with the same pinky… I type that key sequence a lot
I fixed my one case of budding RSI with Two Weird Tricks.
The important one was to make my home row on laptop and other 'standard' keyboard layouts into (approximately) QSDV-POKJ. That is to say, my palms are angled relative to the keyboard angle. Without this, the wrists are squished the whole time one is typing: that's bad and no layout can fix it, it's pure posture.
The other one was to move backspace to the cap's lock position. Turns out I delete a lot and i was doing it with a rather extreme wrist rotation and my pinky finger.
I use an ErgoDox when I can these days, but can easily spend an hour or two typing on a laptop keyboard, my spine needs a break well before my wrists would.
Interesting. I use Dvorak too and find it much easier than qwerty. But I have been wondering about that right pinky. I broke mine when I was much younger (skulls are harder than knuckles, kids). I guess I will try your BEAKL suggestion.
Thanks for sharing this. As a Dvorak typist of 6 years, I have often wondered what my next frontier will be. Stenography seems to have a fast growing community around it, but I'm open to alternative layouts as well. BEAKL has always been on the edge of my radar holding the position of interesting, but probably no. This however is the first time I've seen someone compare it favorably to Dvorak. Seems it could be worth trying out based on what you said! While I feel like Dvorak has strengthened my right pinky finger, it's L, /, and = keys are notably tedious. I wouldn't want to have RSI as a result of that.
Did you ever try Colemak? I've been Colemak for probably 5 years now, I can't speak to pinkie specific pain but I get much less tired on long typing sessions. It's interesting to me how everyone seems to know of Dvorak over Colemak. But I never heard of BEAKL, thanks. For me the issue with Dvorak was that I wasn't ready to give up my function keys (control x, c).
I used BEAKL as well for a few months but in combination with a 5-column split keyboard (so you don't press enter, shift etc with your pinky) there was too little for my pinky to do (which caused other fingers to do more than needed).
Of others have similar issues I would recommend you to look at a split keyboard first (but switching layout is great too).
Interesting. I've never trained or practiced my typing, but I've always naturally typed using only my thumb, pointer and middle finger, no pinky or ring fingers at all, but still manage to hit 80-100WPM without them on QWERTY. Good instincts I guess.
I just use query, but I only type with 3 fingers on each hand and move my hand if I need to. I've always felt holding my hands rigidly over the keyboard was going to give me rsi no matter what the layout.
I self taught myself to type and so don't really follow whatever is "proper" technique, so with WASD I tend to use my left pinky for SHIFT and nothing else.
I switched to Dvorak in my 20's. I don't think i got faster, but my right-hand wrist which would irritate me and was one reason for the switch, definitely was more comfortable after, and hasn't given me any problems since.
That said, switching was a huge pain in the ass.... like horrible for the first two months, and i promised myself i'd keep typing in both. However, i eventually lost the ability to type in qwerty, after about two years, but i honestly don't care, i genuinely love Dvorak.
The biggest concern most people probably don't think about is keeping shortcuts like CTRL+X/C/V/S/F, which apple thankfully has a layout for "Dvorak-CMD-Qwerty." The shortcuts are very obviously put where they are so you can toggle them quickly. Many programs don't account for this layout, which is why I wrote an Intellij IDE key mapping for it: https://github.com/scoofy/Intellij-IDEA-Dvorak-QwertyCMD-key...
The layouts that i think don't get enough love, are the one-handed dvorak layouts designed for amputees.
The idea that, in the end, the author suggests yet another standard seems a bit absurd to me.
I switched to Dvorak from QWERTY without any special control/cmd mapping. As it turns out, it works out fine. I even vim'ed with it. It's just finger memory. The hjkl all in a row might help you remember/initially learn, but once you know which keys on Dvorak move you the right direction, it doesn't take any more time or concern you any more than hjkl on QWERTY do. You know which direction you want to move, and your fingers hit the keys to make it happen without respect to them not having any meaning by keyboard position.
I switched after developing hand injuries at work (in a job that didn't involve computer use). Since then, whenever I've had to use QWERTY for whatever purpose I've started getting pain in my tendons after a few hours which goes away almost as soon as I'm able to switch back to Dvorak. Like you, though, I found that picking up Dvorak was a total pain in the ass. A while ago I saw a YouTube video in which a guy was telling his viewers that learning it was easy and that the effort was a small price to pay. When I commented that I had had a period of months when I couldn't type anything spontaneously, he suggested that maybe this was due to my age. I was all of thirty at the time I learned it.
I've switched to Dvorak twice, first in my teens and again in my 20s. I'd never been great at typing with Qwerty (a lot of hunt and peck) so it was a low bar. I can absolutely relate to the terrible two months (at least) but I at least retained what little ability I had in Qwerty.
Both times I've switched back after a few years because of needing to share computers with other people and not wanting to deal with switching the layout (either physically or in the OS). I also had trouble with vintage computers and phone keyboard layouts which couldn't be switched. For some time I was faster at Dvorak and I really enjoyed that, but I think learning Dvorak and switching back has at least made me better at Qwerty. I love Dvorak and will almost certainly start using it again someday. Right now I've accepted I just need to go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing.
I've never had issues with typing. It's the mouse that irritates my wrist. I swap it from side to side to alleviate the problem. i do have wider hands...
I tried it too and lost qwerty skills. That and the shortcuts are the main reason I gave up. I work with other people and was surprised by how often I type on other people's keyboards. A nightmare if you mainly use Dvorak.
My initial motivation was also wrist pain. Dvorak helped a bit. I also tried crazy split vertical keyboards which didn't help at all.
What fixed it in the end was a bigger desk and a good chair (I have a HM Mirra 2 now; worth the extortionate price). You need your keyboard far enough onto the desk that you can properly rest your forearm on it.
> In other words, the idea is that QWERTY was designed so that humans would type as slowly as possible in order to prevent mechanical jamming.
Nope. That's an oft cited story but it's not true. The point of QWERTY was actually to increase typing speed. The debunking of this is pretty well documented these days (there even a note on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#Properties) so it's disappointing an article as researched as the one submitted here has made such an easy to check mistake.
But I think the bigger trap it falls into, and the same trap many on HN fall into when posting their anecdotes too, is that RSI isn't universally equivalent. It depends on hand sizes, the keyboards you use, any other hand exercises one might do, underlying health conditions, and even just how you hold your hands at the keyboard. So what might help alleviate RSI for one person could easily make it much worse for another person.
Anecdotally, some years back I started developing pretty bad RSI from typing. I was also a pretty mediocre typist. So I switched to Dvorak and got serious about touch-typing. I found it much more comfortable and since then I've never had any problems with typing-induced RSI.
With QWERTY, I was doing all sorts of things to try to stop the RSI. I tried to control the position of my wrists, the angle of my hands, how I hit the keys. I experimented with wrist rests. Since I switched to Dvorak I found I didn't need to pay attention to any of that. I can type virtually continuously for hours at a time at >100wpm, and while my speed will drop from my hands and the muscles in my forearms getting tired, even at that point I don't get RSI.
I had another set of RSI not that long ago, but I determined that was due to using my pinky on the ctrl key in emacs. That's a pretty well known problem, but I had used emacs for quite a few years without it being an issue. At that time, though, I had started using org-mode in a big way and was using a lot of C- bindings, and hitting it that often turned out to be a problem after all. Swapping ctrl and caps lock (and using my ring finger for it) fixed it entirely.
Even if the studies say that the difference in speed is marginal, I'm convinced based on my subjective experience that Dvorak is much more comfortable. That's difficult to quantify, though, and conducting a high-quality study to conclusively demonstrate it is extraordinarily difficult.
Personal anecdote, but I know a few people who got RSI/CTS and had a chance to watch them type --- and what they all had in common was how "stiff" their typing posture was, and the strength at which they hit the keys. They weren't fast either, probably in the 50-70wpm range. One of them, before he got RSI, even commented on how bad my posture was and how it'd "make it easier to injure myself".
I find that relaxing, as counterintuitive as it may sound at first, actually helps with typing speed and comfort. To me it makes sense that if you tense up all your muscles and punch the keys really hard, you're much more likely to injure yourself, slow down, and tire more quickly. I think the vast majority of keyboards also have too high of an actuation force, which also adds to the strain of typing. If you look at videos of fast typists (150wpm+), they don't look like they're exerting much effort at all; many of them aren't using the "standard" key-to-finger mapping, and a lot of them "smear" their hands all over the keyboard. Here's one example (not me):
Back when I was still an intern, I noticed that i was getting wrist pain and was instantly worries about getting carpel tunnel later so I went out and got a Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard.
I've since stuck with them and one of the things that I love about them is how they force you to use more of your fingers because it restricts what keys each hand has access to. I found that the way I typed changed, the 't', 'g', 'r' and 'f' keys I could no longer reach over with my left hand and vice versa for the other hand. This meant I had to switch my how I typed which inevitably switched which fingers I used to hit some fingers and forced me to use more of my hand for the typing (the "smear" as you call it)
> they all had in common was how "stiff" their typing posture was, and the strength at which they hit the keys.
Yeah! Its what I want to be researched. I play piano and guitar, and to do it successfully I had spent a lot of time learning to not apply more force than needed. Somtimes it needs to change a posture. I learned piano being a kid under a supervision of a teacher, so probably I don't remember the most of my learning troubles. But I learned guitar at my late teens and I remember clearly how I was corrected by a teacher, then corrected again and again. I oftentimes needed a break because of pain in muscles.
And I wonder might it be that in the most cases RSI is the consequences of the wrong posture or too much force applied. If it so, I suppose, switching layouts would help because of breaking a muscle memory and learning it anew, not because the new layout is better. The very RSI could influence learning: pain is a good teacher, it forces student to seek for painless ways to do things.
I'm just gonna say that as someone typing 120+wpm for years now, I hate to see high actuation force vilified like this. It's my preference and I quite enjoy the higher force needed. Fewer accidental presses, and you can even lightly drum on your keys without them activating, which is fun and relaxing.
I went from cherry mx blues to cherry mx greens to kailh box navies and I love them to pieces.
I find that the people who swear by very light linear switches rarely type as fast as me, take that as you will. I think they fell down a strange rabbit hole.
I switched to Colemak 4 years ago or so, and I think it is one of the best investments of my time ever made. Yes, you will feel similar to that feeling you get when you write with your left hand (something like, why tf I'm doing this, if i'm perfectly capable of living my life as I have been doing before), but it is a skill that will benefit you all your life and I would recommend you to do so.
Still, it is not perfect. The pinky getting tired is something that happens, but it is still so much better than QWERTY. I don't think I will try that QWYRFM layout, as I haven't felt big pain since switching (before switching I felt some pain, but after, I slightly feel something, but after a lot of effort, and not enough to feel worried). And I think if I start feeling something to worry, there are some things I could do before, like using a split keyboard, or optimizing the desk height, before switching to another layout.
Again, try Colemak (or if you want to try any other layout, welcome). It will do good for you.
In my modest experience, most people who have issues with RSI and especially carpal problems, they almost universally use Emacs! It is such obvious thing.
I know you can remap keys or whatnot, but if you look at people experimenting with layouts and trying to resolve RSI problems, it is always Emacs.
I used emacs briefly, not long enough to say, but it seems pretty obvious where the problem is. I understand why people don't want to change their favorite editor.
The bigger problem is not the layout it’s the keyboard itself, if you have rsi switching to an ergodox can improve the situation, if this is not enough something like a dactyl manuform or a kinesis advantage 360 should do the trick.
This combined with light switches like tactile (MX brown) or linear (red) will reduce your pain immensely.
I wonder if anyone has studied the effects of different weights of switches. Personally I've always liked the lighter ones. The heavier ones felt uncomfortable and tiring. But I see people in the mechanical keyboard community praise the heavier switches, so I've always assumed that my hands are just weak.
The worst ones I used were ones that I got because the MK community doesn't consider browns to be able to be in the same class as other tactile switches because the bump is so weak. I ended up getting Zealio V2s, but I had to take them off my board after only a few days of use. The tactile bump is stupidly strong, but once you pass it there's almost no force pushing back. You're basically guaranteed on each press to bottom out with a ton of force. It was jarring and I was very afraid of what kind of damage that would do to my hands long term.
It is absolutely the layout, but ergonomic keyboards are still great. I built a Pinky4 split keyboard and it didn't solve pain in my right hand caused by Dvorak. After learning Workman (50/50 balanced hand usage unlike any other layout I know of), the pain is gone.
The split helps by moving stuff like modifiers, space, and backspace to thumb keys, it just wasn't "enough" on its own.
Any keyboard layout that leads to more ulnar deviation is simply a no-go for me. So Dovrak and Colemak are out, evidently (never tried them, but TFA says they use the pinky more, so if I believe that then I must not use them). Ideally the pinky should not be used at all for typing.
I've had to teach myself to not use one-handed modifier keystrokes that involve ulnar deviation. The key to this, for me, has been the sticky keys accessibility feature -- it works fantastically well for me. If you've never heard of sticky keys before then I highly recommend you look it up and try it. It's not that that I type every modifier combination keystroke using sticky keys, but that using sticky keys helped me unlearn bad habits.
Another key to this, for me, is to use vim and not emacs. Modal editing means not relying on modifier keys -- conversely, non-modal editing means being extremely dependent on modifier keys. IMO reaching for modifier keys is probably half the RSI picture, with resting wrists while typing being the other half.
I think if you rule out Dvorak and Colemak due to pinky use, you should also rule out Qwerty. The best option would be to buy a keyboard with multiple thumb keys, so you can press e.g. enter and backspace with your thumb.
(Not using one-handed combinations is the general advice on any typing course -- A and M should use the shift keys on the right and left hand, respectively, as should ^A and ^M.)
> In Pan & Schleifer (1996), subjects experienced more arm discomfort/pain/fatigue the more keys they pressed while doing a data entry task.[23] Finally, Feng et al. is a recent (2021) cross-sectional study that found that “prolonged computer use time and working without breaks were associated with presence of wrist/hand symptoms”.[24] But of course correlation is not causation, and there are many potential confounders here, e.g. maybe people who spend lots of time at the computer exercise little, and it is the lack of exercise, not computer use, that causes problems.
I generally agree with this. I've found that I have less wrist pain now that (1) I've gotten a better mouse and (2) I work out my wrists and forearm occasionally. I think the keyboard is a much smaller cause, especially since a lot of repetitive stress comes more from gaming and use of mice for me.
I am a 100% laptop keyboard/trackpad user for both work & play for 10 years now and I haven't had any RSI since I stopped using a mouse (and paid close attention to overall posture, including having wrists straight but relaxed in both X and Y axis).
To your first citation, purely anecdotal but - over the years when I click on articles by programmers with serious RSI - the ones who identify their text editor are more often die-hard Emacs users (like Stallman). I don't think continual chording is a biologically respectful use of our analog digits. :-)
My own experiments with this point to similar conclusions. QWERTY is not laid out that badly, really, and for me (with no RSI problems, yet) the benefits of using the default, especially being able to type on other people's computers, far outweighed any benefit from the alternate layout (Workman). However, the excursion was completely worth it for me - I switched in the first place because I never learned to touch type properly, and figured it would be easier and more fun to learn from scratch on a new layout. That was true, and soon I found I'd entirely forgotten QWERTY, so I re-learned that from scratch, touch-typing, and am about as fast and accurate as I was on the alternate layout. Blog post after all that: https://patricksanan.org/personal/adventures-in-keyboarding-...
I've been typing english and only english on Dvorak for 6 years. For my needs, I am very happy with it. There is one point I would like to make that the author misses (and it's not unique to Dvorak).
Learning an alternative layout can make you a better typist for the sole reason of requiring effort to learn it. When most of us type with QWERTY, it is effortless, however we also carry with us all of the bad typing habits we've accumulated over time - all of the stuff we did wrong on a QWERTY board out of habit that our typing classes tried to condition out of us but it still remains. When you try to learn a new layout, you're putting in more effort than ever before into typing with correct form. That alone is a big factor for why non-QWERTY typists perform better.
I had an RSI issue where it was uncomfortable to reach for the H key and I was convinced existing layouts didn’t take this into account. I also thought that learning new keys was overrated so I attempted to generate keyboard changes with the least number of key changes from qwerty and with significantly less side-to-side motion. The results were very promising and then after trying them out for a bit it turned out Minimak-8 felt better to type on. Big shoutout to Minimak even if it didn’t help my H key :)
What the author may be missing is that keyboards are much, much better now than they were in the 1990s, when RMS was having problems. The touch is much lighter, the amount of force needed to depress the keys is much less. Hitting control-alt-meta-cokebottle-Q for everything to make Emacs work on an early 90s keyboard was a recipe for pain.
I've been typing on computers for almost as long as RMS has, don't have those problems.
I guess I should mention that I have my own self-taught touch typing style. I only use eight fingers, except for using my left pinky finger for the shift key. Works for me.
It's amazing how there seems to be more talk about layouts than ways to type less in the first place.
What we really need is a study on RSI and productivity vs overall workflow.
We already know Vim guys can edit code fast, what we need to know is who does best on a real world project with more debugging, research, and documentation reading than coding, how much IDE autocomplete helps, whether the 10 clicks and 2 minutes it takes me to do something is healthier than the 3 lines and 30 seconds it takes a CLI user, etc.
Myself, I had already switched to Colemak when I developed RSI due to heavy typing at my work. What did it for me was the unnatural position of my hands, wrists bent upwards and outwards in order to fit onto the "tiny" laptop keyboard.
The solution was simply to switch to a run-of-the-mill ergonomic keyboard (ERGO K860) and surprise, surprise, my RSI lessened and eventually disappeared in 2 weeks or so.
So, for me it was definitely the hand posture, NOT the layout that caused the problems!
[+] [-] chillacy|4 years ago|reply
I typed Dvorak for 10 years before I started getting RSI again in my right ulna. It turns out that the 'S' key being hit by the pinky in Dvorak caused me a lot of pain.
I ended up switching to BEAKL, a pretty obscure layout which is specifically made to alleviate stress on the pinky. It moves the relatively common S key to the right hand pointer finger, for instance.
It turns out that the theory underpinning the dvorak layout assumes that homerow hits are strictly better than upper and lower row, but the pinky and ring finger are such weak fingers that it's often better to move the index or middle fingers up or down a row than hit a key on the home row with the pinky.
[+] [-] ericbarrett|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vemv|4 years ago|reply
Spot on, I would go as far as saying that using the pinky at all is poor technique because it indicates one reaches keys by stretching the fingers, rather than hovering the hand over the keyboard, allowing each finger to remain in its natural position, and using only the fingers that are naturally strong and precise.
[+] [-] rsfern|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samatman|4 years ago|reply
The important one was to make my home row on laptop and other 'standard' keyboard layouts into (approximately) QSDV-POKJ. That is to say, my palms are angled relative to the keyboard angle. Without this, the wrists are squished the whole time one is typing: that's bad and no layout can fix it, it's pure posture.
The other one was to move backspace to the cap's lock position. Turns out I delete a lot and i was doing it with a rather extreme wrist rotation and my pinky finger.
I use an ErgoDox when I can these days, but can easily spend an hour or two typing on a laptop keyboard, my spine needs a break well before my wrists would.
[+] [-] irthomasthomas|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1MachineElf|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cupcake-unicorn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lawn|4 years ago|reply
Of others have similar issues I would recommend you to look at a split keyboard first (but switching layout is great too).
[+] [-] Zircom|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jay_kyburz|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] p1necone|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhanschoo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] srcreigh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scoofy|4 years ago|reply
That said, switching was a huge pain in the ass.... like horrible for the first two months, and i promised myself i'd keep typing in both. However, i eventually lost the ability to type in qwerty, after about two years, but i honestly don't care, i genuinely love Dvorak.
The biggest concern most people probably don't think about is keeping shortcuts like CTRL+X/C/V/S/F, which apple thankfully has a layout for "Dvorak-CMD-Qwerty." The shortcuts are very obviously put where they are so you can toggle them quickly. Many programs don't account for this layout, which is why I wrote an Intellij IDE key mapping for it: https://github.com/scoofy/Intellij-IDEA-Dvorak-QwertyCMD-key...
The layouts that i think don't get enough love, are the one-handed dvorak layouts designed for amputees.
The idea that, in the end, the author suggests yet another standard seems a bit absurd to me.
[+] [-] theonemind|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xhevahir|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drewzero1|4 years ago|reply
Both times I've switched back after a few years because of needing to share computers with other people and not wanting to deal with switching the layout (either physically or in the OS). I also had trouble with vintage computers and phone keyboard layouts which couldn't be switched. For some time I was faster at Dvorak and I really enjoyed that, but I think learning Dvorak and switching back has at least made me better at Qwerty. I love Dvorak and will almost certainly start using it again someday. Right now I've accepted I just need to go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing.
[+] [-] pnutjam|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IshKebab|4 years ago|reply
My initial motivation was also wrist pain. Dvorak helped a bit. I also tried crazy split vertical keyboards which didn't help at all.
What fixed it in the end was a bigger desk and a good chair (I have a HM Mirra 2 now; worth the extortionate price). You need your keyboard far enough onto the desk that you can properly rest your forearm on it.
[+] [-] hnlmorg|4 years ago|reply
Nope. That's an oft cited story but it's not true. The point of QWERTY was actually to increase typing speed. The debunking of this is pretty well documented these days (there even a note on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY#Properties) so it's disappointing an article as researched as the one submitted here has made such an easy to check mistake.
But I think the bigger trap it falls into, and the same trap many on HN fall into when posting their anecdotes too, is that RSI isn't universally equivalent. It depends on hand sizes, the keyboards you use, any other hand exercises one might do, underlying health conditions, and even just how you hold your hands at the keyboard. So what might help alleviate RSI for one person could easily make it much worse for another person.
[+] [-] erwald|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkbrk|4 years ago|reply
Anecdotally, some years back I started developing pretty bad RSI from typing. I was also a pretty mediocre typist. So I switched to Dvorak and got serious about touch-typing. I found it much more comfortable and since then I've never had any problems with typing-induced RSI.
With QWERTY, I was doing all sorts of things to try to stop the RSI. I tried to control the position of my wrists, the angle of my hands, how I hit the keys. I experimented with wrist rests. Since I switched to Dvorak I found I didn't need to pay attention to any of that. I can type virtually continuously for hours at a time at >100wpm, and while my speed will drop from my hands and the muscles in my forearms getting tired, even at that point I don't get RSI.
I had another set of RSI not that long ago, but I determined that was due to using my pinky on the ctrl key in emacs. That's a pretty well known problem, but I had used emacs for quite a few years without it being an issue. At that time, though, I had started using org-mode in a big way and was using a lot of C- bindings, and hitting it that often turned out to be a problem after all. Swapping ctrl and caps lock (and using my ring finger for it) fixed it entirely.
Even if the studies say that the difference in speed is marginal, I'm convinced based on my subjective experience that Dvorak is much more comfortable. That's difficult to quantify, though, and conducting a high-quality study to conclusively demonstrate it is extraordinarily difficult.
[+] [-] userbinator|4 years ago|reply
I find that relaxing, as counterintuitive as it may sound at first, actually helps with typing speed and comfort. To me it makes sense that if you tense up all your muscles and punch the keys really hard, you're much more likely to injure yourself, slow down, and tire more quickly. I think the vast majority of keyboards also have too high of an actuation force, which also adds to the strain of typing. If you look at videos of fast typists (150wpm+), they don't look like they're exerting much effort at all; many of them aren't using the "standard" key-to-finger mapping, and a lot of them "smear" their hands all over the keyboard. Here's one example (not me):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4NUqoXI8Xw
[+] [-] _fat_santa|4 years ago|reply
I've since stuck with them and one of the things that I love about them is how they force you to use more of your fingers because it restricts what keys each hand has access to. I found that the way I typed changed, the 't', 'g', 'r' and 'f' keys I could no longer reach over with my left hand and vice versa for the other hand. This meant I had to switch my how I typed which inevitably switched which fingers I used to hit some fingers and forced me to use more of my hand for the typing (the "smear" as you call it)
[+] [-] ordu|4 years ago|reply
Yeah! Its what I want to be researched. I play piano and guitar, and to do it successfully I had spent a lot of time learning to not apply more force than needed. Somtimes it needs to change a posture. I learned piano being a kid under a supervision of a teacher, so probably I don't remember the most of my learning troubles. But I learned guitar at my late teens and I remember clearly how I was corrected by a teacher, then corrected again and again. I oftentimes needed a break because of pain in muscles.
And I wonder might it be that in the most cases RSI is the consequences of the wrong posture or too much force applied. If it so, I suppose, switching layouts would help because of breaking a muscle memory and learning it anew, not because the new layout is better. The very RSI could influence learning: pain is a good teacher, it forces student to seek for painless ways to do things.
[+] [-] jmcdl|4 years ago|reply
This is a nice video of some elite level relaxed hands: https://youtu.be/Ray6knVCsp8?t=115
[+] [-] opan|4 years ago|reply
I went from cherry mx blues to cherry mx greens to kailh box navies and I love them to pieces.
I find that the people who swear by very light linear switches rarely type as fast as me, take that as you will. I think they fell down a strange rabbit hole.
[+] [-] boterock|4 years ago|reply
Still, it is not perfect. The pinky getting tired is something that happens, but it is still so much better than QWERTY. I don't think I will try that QWYRFM layout, as I haven't felt big pain since switching (before switching I felt some pain, but after, I slightly feel something, but after a lot of effort, and not enough to feel worried). And I think if I start feeling something to worry, there are some things I could do before, like using a split keyboard, or optimizing the desk height, before switching to another layout.
Again, try Colemak (or if you want to try any other layout, welcome). It will do good for you.
[+] [-] desireco42|4 years ago|reply
I know you can remap keys or whatnot, but if you look at people experimenting with layouts and trying to resolve RSI problems, it is always Emacs.
I used emacs briefly, not long enough to say, but it seems pretty obvious where the problem is. I understand why people don't want to change their favorite editor.
[+] [-] ericbarrett|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xjrp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ziml77|4 years ago|reply
The worst ones I used were ones that I got because the MK community doesn't consider browns to be able to be in the same class as other tactile switches because the bump is so weak. I ended up getting Zealio V2s, but I had to take them off my board after only a few days of use. The tactile bump is stupidly strong, but once you pass it there's almost no force pushing back. You're basically guaranteed on each press to bottom out with a ton of force. It was jarring and I was very afraid of what kind of damage that would do to my hands long term.
[+] [-] opan|4 years ago|reply
The split helps by moving stuff like modifiers, space, and backspace to thumb keys, it just wasn't "enough" on its own.
[+] [-] lawn|4 years ago|reply
Plenty of alternatives though.
[+] [-] cryptonector|4 years ago|reply
Any keyboard layout that leads to more ulnar deviation is simply a no-go for me. So Dovrak and Colemak are out, evidently (never tried them, but TFA says they use the pinky more, so if I believe that then I must not use them). Ideally the pinky should not be used at all for typing.
I've had to teach myself to not use one-handed modifier keystrokes that involve ulnar deviation. The key to this, for me, has been the sticky keys accessibility feature -- it works fantastically well for me. If you've never heard of sticky keys before then I highly recommend you look it up and try it. It's not that that I type every modifier combination keystroke using sticky keys, but that using sticky keys helped me unlearn bad habits.
Another key to this, for me, is to use vim and not emacs. Modal editing means not relying on modifier keys -- conversely, non-modal editing means being extremely dependent on modifier keys. IMO reaching for modifier keys is probably half the RSI picture, with resting wrists while typing being the other half.
[+] [-] Symbiote|4 years ago|reply
(Not using one-handed combinations is the general advice on any typing course -- A and M should use the shift keys on the right and left hand, respectively, as should ^A and ^M.)
[+] [-] arciini|4 years ago|reply
I generally agree with this. I've found that I have less wrist pain now that (1) I've gotten a better mouse and (2) I work out my wrists and forearm occasionally. I think the keyboard is a much smaller cause, especially since a lot of repetitive stress comes more from gaming and use of mice for me.
[+] [-] Optimal_Persona|4 years ago|reply
To your first citation, purely anecdotal but - over the years when I click on articles by programmers with serious RSI - the ones who identify their text editor are more often die-hard Emacs users (like Stallman). I don't think continual chording is a biologically respectful use of our analog digits. :-)
[+] [-] psanan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bclnr|4 years ago|reply
[...]
> What If You’re Bilingual?
On that topic some might be interested in this little analysis:
https://github.com/bclnr/kb-layout-evaluation
[+] [-] 1MachineElf|4 years ago|reply
Learning an alternative layout can make you a better typist for the sole reason of requiring effort to learn it. When most of us type with QWERTY, it is effortless, however we also carry with us all of the bad typing habits we've accumulated over time - all of the stuff we did wrong on a QWERTY board out of habit that our typing classes tried to condition out of us but it still remains. When you try to learn a new layout, you're putting in more effort than ever before into typing with correct form. That alone is a big factor for why non-QWERTY typists perform better.
[+] [-] evanmoran|4 years ago|reply
http://www.minimak.org/
[+] [-] not2b|4 years ago|reply
I've been typing on computers for almost as long as RMS has, don't have those problems.
I guess I should mention that I have my own self-taught touch typing style. I only use eight fingers, except for using my left pinky finger for the shift key. Works for me.
[+] [-] GoOnThenDoTell|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eternityforest|4 years ago|reply
What we really need is a study on RSI and productivity vs overall workflow.
We already know Vim guys can edit code fast, what we need to know is who does best on a real world project with more debugging, research, and documentation reading than coding, how much IDE autocomplete helps, whether the 10 clicks and 2 minutes it takes me to do something is healthier than the 3 lines and 30 seconds it takes a CLI user, etc.
[+] [-] terracottage|4 years ago|reply
Type with your hands at an angle, and your wrists inline with your arms and palms. Problem solved.
[+] [-] chr86|4 years ago|reply
The solution was simply to switch to a run-of-the-mill ergonomic keyboard (ERGO K860) and surprise, surprise, my RSI lessened and eventually disappeared in 2 weeks or so.
So, for me it was definitely the hand posture, NOT the layout that caused the problems!
[+] [-] marcodiego|4 years ago|reply