Re: OT Reptitive Strain Injury

From: Peter Seibel (peter_at_javamonkey.com)
Date: 10/27/04 

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 16:36:08 GMT

M Jared Finder <jared@hpalace.com> writes:

> sj wrote:

>> Hi I am increasingly suffering acute RSI to the point I may be
>> faced to give up coding. So far the doctors have offered nothing
>> and I'm wondering what others have done in similar situation. I'm
>> posting this here because i primarily code in lisp (python and Java
>> also). My preferred working environment is emacs on linux. I am
>> half considering moving to windogh and using voice recognition but
>> it seems to me that vr softaware wouldn't handle lisp too well.
>> Anyone have suggestions other then firring my doctors?
>
> I've been looking for a while at getting a Kinesis ergonomic keyboard,
> but have held back due to pricing. Look at their site at
> http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/. If you end up buying one, please report
> back your experience.

I've been using the Kinesis Classic for about 6-7 years. At the last
two jobs I made them buy me one[1] and I've bought several myself for
home. The best thing about them for emacs users is that all the keys
are reprogrammable and they have a cluster of keys under each thumb. I
use the two big right-thumb keys for their original settings, space
and return. But I remap the two big left-thumb keys to Control and Alt
so I have zero wrist twisting for Emacs key chords. And generally the
shape of the keybord--keys arranged in two cups--is quite comfortable
though it does take a bit of getting used to. Several developers at my
last job ended up switching to Kinesis as well.

I don't have any particular problem switching to a regular keyboard,
such as when I use my iBook. I also typically use Dvorak, and have
been for nearly 15 years. (After going through junior-high and high
school as a Qwerty touch typist.)

Since I've relearned to type several times let me also offer this bit
of advice if you decide to try one of these alternatives: just do it.
Switch and don't look back. You'll be slow in the beginning but if you
just make yourself do it it doesn't take that long to retrain
yourself. (Also be sure to relax, particularly if you already have RSI
coming on--I have found that sometimes when I switch keyboard layouts
(such as when I worked for a few weeks on a Windows box that didn't
have the Dvorak layout installed) my hands get tense because I was
thinking too hard about about my typing. It went away in a day or two
(and these days almost all OS's give an out of the box way to switch
layouts) but if you already have problems you don't want to be tensing
up your hands. So just relax and don't worry about your typing speed.
It'll come back and you'll feel great. Of course, YMMV.

-Peter 

-- 
Peter Seibel                                      peter@javamonkey.com
         Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp

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