9 ms·

The Workman Keyboard Layout Philosophy (2010)

122 points by caustic 8y ago

QasimK 8y ago
A keyboard layout for programmers, which allowed the use of special characters on the home row, perhaps by using a mixed corpus of source code rather than just novels, would be interesting to see. Recently, I ordered the Ultimate Hacker’s Keyboard because I think typing is quite important for a programmer, especially if you consider health as the author of this article does. I’m a little bit weary of not using QWERTY because of the high cost of switching, so if I did switch, I’d want to select a layout that was basically perfect for me long-term (which sounds very tough to do).
- hobofan 8y ago
  > I’m a little bit weary of not using QWERTY because of the high cost of switching, so if I did switch, I’d want to select a layout that was basically perfect for me long-term (which sounds very tough to do). Similar to programming languages, after learning a second keyboard layout the switching cost will be much lower for each additional one. I switched from QWERTZ (German) to QWERTY (US/international), because it is already much better for programming, and am currently trying out Colemak, and it was much easier to adopt (=get to a reasonable workable speed).
  - QasimK 8y ago
    That is good to hear! I didn’t realise until just now that I just assumed each additional keyboard layout would take an equal amount of effort. Plus, minor variations may be much easier to adapt to.
- lorenzhs 8y ago
  See my other comment in this thread -- this exists for German with a secondary focus on English and programming (neo2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Neo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Neo), and it's what I've been using for at least five years, and I love it. I'm not aware of something similar that is geared towards English and programming, though. It takes a few weeks to learn a layout that is radically different from what you used before, and sadly the most efficient way to switch is to just dive in and use it all the time, even if it's painfully slow and annoying. I switched when I was in university, but it might be difficult to do when there's someone paying you for things that require typing.
- yiyus 8y ago
  > special characters on the home row In my opinion, the best setup would be an ortholinear keyboard with not many keys and multiple layers (let's say something like a Planck), but instead of using key combinations to change layers, use pedals. I know there has been some attempts to do something like this, but I've never tried it. Has anyone here used a similar setup?
- chrismorgan 8y ago
  If you have keyboards with physically different layouts—e.g. one ergonomic, one typical laptop, one swipey touchscreen—and use them all at least occasionally, you’ll be able to develop independent muscle memories for each. Go ahead and learn a different layout on a fancy keyboard, while keeping a stock standard layout (not even remapping Caps Lock to anything!) on a laptop keyboard, and I understand you’ll have little-to-no trouble with it. (I’m only early on in this process myself, but have been told this by others and it makes sense to me. As one small example I have experienced, I automatically switch to using Cmd for shortcuts instead of Ctrl with no thought, as soon as I’m faced with an Apple keyboard—regardless of the OS, which has tripped me up a couple of times!)
  - mauvehaus 8y ago
    I can confirm that having physically different keyboards makes it much easier to switch back and forth. Many years ago, I worked for a company that had a mess of old Sun hardware in the lab with the old Sun-layout[0] keyboards. After about a week of using them, I was pretty comfortable using them, and had no trouble switching back and forth the the customary layout keyboard at my desk. One day, I discovered the one Sun machine that had a Sun-manufactured keyboard in the customary layout. I was incapable of functioning because I expected it to be in the Sun layout. I had to switch it for a Sun-layout keyboard so I could get some work done. As an aside, I decided I prefer the Sun layout, and so I've remapped the 6 or so keys via software on basically every computer I've used since. The only issue is the `~ key, which ends up on [ESC], since I haven't yet found a keyboard that has the [backspace] key split in two. In practice, this isn't much of an annoyance to me. My wife, however goes nuts any time she needs to use the computer for "just a second" and doesn't log me out. I've since gotten better at switching, and if I have to type something when she's logged in, I usually flip the switch pretty quickly. [0] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Sun_Type_5#Layout https://deskthority.net/wiki/Sun_Type_5#Layout
    - acheron 8y ago
      Sun keyboards are nice for pair programming, since when your partner does something good you can press the 'props' key.
- jerf 8y ago
  "which allowed the use of special characters on the home row" Unless you're programming in something very symbol-heavy, even by programming language standards, I suspect you'll find that it's hard for any symbol (other than space) to break into the top-10 non-space symbols; not impossible, but hard. I just did a 200KB perl file here, and the top 12 symbols are space, e, a, r, s, i, t, o, n, newline, l, and d. The first symbol, underscore, shows up in position 13, then it's u, then finally, $. Underscore is less than half as popular as the e. As you may guess, the naming convention of this code is mostly underscore_based. If this code was camelcase instead, you'd have to go down to position 14 with $. The other problem is that languages will significant differ, so you can't really create "a programming layout". If you did nothing but type Perl, that list of symbols may suggest that perhaps $ should be on the u or i key or something valuable like that, but if you run the same process over your C# you're not going to see $ popping up nearly as high and now you've got a huge wasted key. Parentheses are in the 22nd and 23rd slot on this count, the only thing that I would be comfortable saying is really generic. (And then there's still Haskell, where they are used, but much, much less often.)
  - kalleboo 8y ago
    There's also the difference between what's in the code and what you type. My code is full of colons and commas between named arguments, but those are all inserted by autocomplete in my IDE.
- SkyPuncher 8y ago
  Oh! I have an answer for this one on Mac. https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements It let's you software remap keys. I've entirely disabled my caps locks key (I barely ever used it) and turned it into a combo esc/modifier key. Holding caps plus a home row key types the corresponding symbol (e.g. "a" is "!", and ";" is ")". I also have u,i,o,p mapped to arrow keys (similar to vim). Then some misc. combos for things I commonly program (e.g. caps + m = "() => {}" - very helpful for JS)
amelius 8y ago
Given that micro-movements can lead to RSI, shouldn't the goal be to make the hands move as much as possible instead?
- ObscureScience 8y ago
  That's an interesting question. Then, dvorak or similar (alternating hand) layout would probably be a good starting point.
tezza 8y ago
A large portion of coding is moving the cursor left, right, up, down, page up, page down, home, end The arrow keys are not even shown on the layout. And the selection of prose corpus (es?) is again not related to programming [Tom Sawyer]. We need underscores, braces, semicolon, context menu. Perhaps a better metric would be the hoc compiler source from The Unix Programming Environment.
- EduardoBautista 8y ago
  > A large portion of coding is moving the cursor left, right, up, down, page up, page down, home, end > The arrow keys are not even shown on the layout Nothing that learning Vim keybindings can't solve.
  - leg100 8y ago
    What about using a browser, terminal usage outside of vim, and insert-mode in vim? Do you use vimium in chrome and vim-mode in bash?
    - QasimK 8y ago
      I suspect the answers would be: use non-arrow keybindings for browsers (e.g. vim-like plug-ins, or alternative keyboard shortcuts), remap your terminals keys (maybe, use a different terminal entirely?), use insert mode for only inserting text. I use a “vimium” plug-in for Firefox and I quite like being able to go up/down with j/k. Though I still use the arrow keys for my terminal.
      - leg100 8y ago
        Yup I've just installed vimium on chrome, and it seems to do the job. I've tried out vim-mode bash in the past, but much prefer the default emacs-mode on the command line, despite being a vim user. Either way I'm suspecting a ton of exceptions which necessitate resorting often to the cursor keys, however (like another commenter has mentioned w.r.t various GUI apps).
  - 8y ago
AprilArcus 8y ago
The Colemak Mod-DH family of layouts incorporates the major insight of Workman (that QWERTY v and n are lower-effort positions than QWERTY g and h) without abandoning the better elements of Colemak (common left hand shortcut keys QWAZXC remain unmoved, good hand alternation, emphasis on inward rolls). http://colemakmods.github.io/mod-dh/ http://colemakmods.github.io/mod-dh/
- nicolas_t 8y ago
  Thanks for this. I've used colemak for many years but the position of the dh is definitely not ideal. I'll try it out and see how it fares.
- gedy 8y ago
  While I don't use the DH change, the angle mod mentioned where zxcv are shifted left one key has been amazingly helpful for me. It makes standard staggered keyboards a lot more comfortable to use correct fingers for left bottom row
lorenzhs 8y ago
This looks interesting but the symbol still look very qwerty-ish. I type on Neo-2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Neo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Neo), which uses ISO keyboards and primarily targets German, even though the majority of my typing is in English. Its entire third layer is for symbols that are common in programming. Layer 3 is activated via either caps-lock or the key above Right Shift, and has \/{}* ?()-:@ as the home row, …_[]^ !<>=& above it and #$|~` +%"'; below it (there's a picture in the Wikipedia article linked above). Layer 4 (right alt or the key to the right of left shift) is also pretty cool, it has lots of navigation keys and a numblock in convenient positions, but I somehow never got around to learning that. All the layers are shown on https://neo-layout.org/ https://neo-layout.org/ (in German, but that doesn't matter for the pictures). With a Trackpoint (Thinkpad USB keyboard), this means that my hands don't have to leave the home row at all. It's super convenient.
- scns 8y ago
  Can not recommend this layout highly enough. Every time i am forced to use qwertz shows me how bad a standard layout is. Qwerty was developed at the times of the first typewriters to prevent jamming by slowing typists down
  - jstanley 8y ago
    This is a common but enduring myth. It was designed to separate the levers for common digraphs, to prevent jams. It was not designed to slow the typist down, but to ensure typing at full speed did not cause jams.
    - scns 8y ago
      You are pedantically correct, the best kind of correct. Or just better at expressing what i meant.
- eigengrau 8y ago
  German users might also be interested in the AdNW layout (http://www.adnw.de/ http://www.adnw.de/). They started out with Neo’s excellent and logical arrangement of the non-alphabetical layers, but replaced the alphabetic layers with a layout created by running an optimization algorithm on a text corpus of 50% English and 50% German text (whereas in Neo the key arrangement was created manually, based on intuition). The metrics they used were largely inspired by Dvorak’s research.
fooblat 8y ago
As a full time developer who used to suffer terrible RSI pain, I solved the problem without changing keyboard layouts. After consulting with my doctor and an ergonomics expert, I realized my problems were cause by the setup of my workstation and the bad posture habits I had developed. 1. I would rest my palms as I typed. This turned out to be a major source of pain. Retraining myself to "float" my hands over the keyboard was a massive improvement. 2. My desk was too high / my chair was too low. Setting up my desk so that my keyboard is as close to my lap as possible was the next big improvement. When in a seated position, my hands are very comfortable when resting on my thighs. Putting my keyboard in a drawer that is just above my thighs helped a lot. 3. I also switched to a trackpad instead of a mount and a split keyboard. I found this allowed a more comfortable angle for my hands and less temptation to rest my wrist while mousing. After making these changes, I have been pain free for over 10 years.
- lbj 8y ago
  You hover? Doesnt that just move the strain to your upper arms?
  - fooblat 8y ago
    The key to this for me is having the keyboard as close to my lap as possible. The effort to hover seems to go up with the height of the keyboard relative to my thighs.
    - lbj 8y ago
      Right, that makes sense, thanks.
- eggie 8y ago
  Did you consider using an isomorphic layout like the typematrix? I find the anachronistic skew in keyboards to be a source of discomfort.
  - fooblat 8y ago
lbj 8y ago
I love how inclusive this comment is "a difference of 696 meters. It doesn’t sound like much, however if we convert it to centimeters, that’s equal to 69,600 cm" :D
roenxi 8y ago
It is interesting, given that the corpuses are available, that keyboard design isn't framed as some sort of linear or nonlinear optimising problem. Choose a set of tasks -> plug into an optimiser -> get a keyboard mapping tuned to the task you are doing. There'd be people who find that useful. The maths isn't at all hard, the data is there. EDIT Maybe it would be a fun project to take something like top 100 C libraries from github and build up an optimised keyboard layout for C coding. It is an interesting idea.
- toyg 8y ago
  The problem is generalizing the corpus enough to make it viable for more tasks than "writing C libraries", so that it can achieve mainstream support. The parameters to consider are also contentious - are we optimising for travel, finger stretching, speed, etc ...? It's not just about data.
Loic 8y ago
If you are looking at alternative keyboards, I have been using the TypeMatrix 2030[0] with a transparent cover for about 10 years. I am using the Dvorak layout, but I think that the main reason it is so comfortable to use is the ortho-linear layout of the keys and that it is totally flat. I would recommend anybody with RSI to test first ortho-linear physical layout of the keys with your standard Qwerty or Azerty or whatever you use right now before moving to something else. [0]: http://www.typematrix.com/ http://www.typematrix.com/
reacweb 8y ago
He uses the wrong test. Testing on "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" is meaningless for developpers: tests should be performed using real usages like "source code of linux kernel" or "mailing list of linux kernel" to have a better balance between code and text.
- jstanley 8y ago
  Even better, it should be performed using a recorded vim session, rather than a full file. The keystrokes you use while editing are not the same as those that end up in the finished file.
  - citation_please 8y ago
    But this brings up that some Vim hotkeys are more positional than mnemonic (J-down, K-up), while others are more mnemonic than positional (I-insert, X-exterminate(?)). Food for thought.
    - tjoff 8y ago
      This is why I believe that qwerty is the best layout. All applications have designed all shortcuts to be sensible on it. Any other layout is just going to be a disaster and negate any benefits and more during actual use. You can of course use whatever layout you like and then while ctrl/alt/meta is pressed it switches to qwerty, doesn't save vim users though (or other applications where shortcuts don't need to be prefixed). I'm not convinced switching from qwerty is that beneficial, I believe (but have not yet tried it) an orthogonal keyboard will do more than any layout will. But I admit that I don't have experience to back that up.
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        The idea would be to optimize the keyboard around English (which you can't remap,) and then to optimize your editor keybindings around the keyboard (which are easy to remap.)
alpeshrathod 8y ago
> Workman Keyboard Layout
eggie 8y ago
The author doesn't even learn dvorak before deciding that it doesn't work for them. They mention don't like how it behaves on the consonant-heavy, qwerty-optimized commands used in unix. (I have to say this is a fair evaluation, but in practice the layout somehow doesn't encourage RSI despite the apparent awkwardness of typing unix commands on it.) In result they don't seem to understand that the dvorak layout is optimized for alternation between hands (they do mention this) and inward rolling motion (they don't seem to understand this). You can really feel this when typing, and it makes typing downright enjoyable. I wouldn't be surprised if much of the added distance relative to colemak and workman is probably reaching for the "i" with the left pointer finger. These are the easiest movements to make repeatedly, and in my experience the home row horizontal movement that they try to optimize out of workman isn't really important. People should be free and encouraged to make their own layouts to beat RSI. But, scientific measurement of what is better seems basically impossible...
- etatoby 8y ago
  Yes, that was my impression too. I find Dvorak so natural, with the alternation and the inwards rolling motion. Plus it's already supported by every OS ever.
- rlkf 8y ago
  > dvorak layout is optimized for alternation between hands and inward rolling motion True; Dvorak seems to always score worse on tests that don't weight distance by ease.
- cityroasted 8y ago
  In the author's defense, I came to the same conclusion using Dvorak when I was a teenager learning unix and programming. I switched back to QWERTY for a while, but around 8 years ago I learned about Colemak and switched and have been very happy with it since. One thing I like about Colemak is that it is close enough to QWERTY that I can still type on QWERTY by looking at the keys and not look like a complete fool. Dvorak is so different that it completely rewires the brain and it's very difficult to switch between it and QWERTY. That's been my experience at least.
sscarduzio 8y ago
This is an excellent solution to a problem no programmer has. After 10 years of programming I can safely tell that, if you type the majority of your time until you make your wrists sick, you are writing shit code and you should spend more time thinking.
- erfgh 8y ago
  Everyone is built differently. Some people will get tendonitis with just a small amount of typing.
- adrianm 8y ago
  Do you not write emails, search the web, or do writing on a computer of any kind? I wouldn’t be so quick to judge here. You don’t know what they are really doing on their keyboard all day. Maybe typing is all we have due to a physical disability that limits mobility and communication in other ways. There are a lot of possibilities beyond “writing shit code”.
  - sscarduzio 8y ago
    yeah, yeah, I guess there's multiple edge cases.
diimdeep 8y ago
Kudos for effort. But changing layout is not enough. Current mainstream keyboards design is fundamentally flawed [1] and IMO obsolete because of [4]. Hopefully there is science [2] and much alternatives to choose from [3] [1] http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_problems.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_problems.html [2] http://xahlee.info/kbd/ergonomic_keyboard_science.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/ergonomic_keyboard_science.html [3] https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence
- bitofhope 8y ago
  The first link references the myth of QWERTY being meant for slowing typists down. It merely spreads most common letters out so them being pressed together doesn't jam the typewriter.
  - diimdeep 8y ago
    Yeah agree, except that error, didn't find better article to link to.
- chx 8y ago
  > much alternatives to choose from [3] You can turn a few of those alternatives to vertical. I've been using a QWERTY vertical keyboard since 2009 and which I had some wrist pains before, not since. Current setup https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79810.0 https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79810.0
floatboth 8y ago
> Try typing “The” with the T capitalized on Colemak and hopefully you’ll see what I mean. Your right hand will move somewhat like this: you swing to the right to get the SHIFT key with your pinky, then you swing back to the left to get the letter ‘H’, and then you move to the right again to get the letter ‘E’. Why would you use the right shift here?? I shift with the left pinky in this situation and it feels fine. Colemak is just fine, and it's already included in most operating systems.
- cammil 8y ago
  I think there is a theory that one "should" use the _other_ hand for any modifiers. Presumably and primarily so that the letter key is always pressed using the same finger and position of the hand.
  - floatboth 8y ago
    I never cared about using the "correct" shift key.
    - hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
      I think it matters most for those with smaller hands. That said, if you were transcribing stuff all day long (i.e. typing way more than a programmer), you might notice less fatigue if you shifted "properly".
  - flyingfences 8y ago
    > Presumably and primarily so that the letter key is always pressed using the same finger and position of the hand. But it is. Hitting the left shift in the scenario described literally just takes pulling the left pinky down.
- SkyPuncher 8y ago
  I shift this way too on Colemak. I much prefer the slight shift down of the pinky than the whole arm/wrist shift to tackle the rights shift in many cases.
INTPnerd 8y ago
What a stubborn Emacs user, all they had to do was switch to Vim..
StreakyCobra 8y ago
Anything other than [AQ]WERT[YZ] layout-based keyboard is already a big improvement for your fingers. The differences between Workman / Colemak / Dvorak and so on is mostly a matter of taste. One thing to note is that widely used layouts have more chances to be supported by software and by keyboard manufacturers (e.g. http://www.typematrix.com/ http://www.typematrix.com/). So it may be wiser to choose mainstream layouts that creating your own or using niche ones. There is probably not a definitive answer for which one is better ("better" would have to be defined for this), so go ahead, read a bit about them and do your choice. Be aware though that once you have choose one, you will be stuck with it for a looong time, because switching layout is hard. You have to remap all your brain an muscle memory before being able to reach your previous efficiency. Spoiler alert: it takes months to years for this. PS: For french speaking people, you may want to have a look at https://bepo.fr https://bepo.fr
- lorenzhs 8y ago
  Agreed. I use neo2, which is the German equivalent of bépo. It's shipped with pretty much every Linux distro, which means that all I need to do is "setxkbmap de neo". It definitely takes several months to achieve a decent speed on a new layout, but I wouldn't say years. I did a full switch after deciding I wanted to learn neo. That means that from that day on, I didn't use qwertz at all, and forced myself to type everything in neo. Also, don't use stickers. They teach you to look at the keyboard. Put a printout of the layout next to your keyboard and look at that. Otherwise you'll just form bad habits. It took me around a month to get to a point where my neo typing speed was reasonable, and maybe another month until I had managed to get to the point where it wasn't annoying any more. Of course I was in university back then, and not paid to develop software.
  - 0XAFFE 8y ago
    Best thing is to print this https://neo-layout.org/grafik/aufsteller/neo20-aufsteller.pdf https://neo-layout.org/grafik/aufsteller/neo20-aufsteller.pd... and put it behind your keyboard or somewhere where you can look with ease. I think speed it no so much important when coding, but don't have to think about how and what you have to type.
rezeroed 8y ago
We need keyboards with digital keys, not printed, so we can change the layouts at the click of a button.
- joemccall86 8y ago
  I recalled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard from years ago. It looks like the successor uses an LCD screen: http://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/popularis/ http://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/popularis/.
  - rezeroed 8y ago
    Bingo.
- flyingfences 8y ago
  Or just use blank keycaps... the legends shouldn't matter because you shouldn't be looking down at the board while you type.
  - rezeroed 8y ago
    For learning and trying out new layouts.
    - flyingfences 8y ago
      Still, you shouldn't be looking down. In addition to taking your eyes off the screen, it also builds a dependence on seeing your finger positions instead of building muscle memory. The recommended method (if you aren't willing to go cold-turkey trial-and-error) is to print out a map of the layout and tape it on the _top_ of your monitor for a few days.
petepete 8y ago
I'm glad that alternative keyboard layouts seem to be gaining traction but I just can't go cold turkey and move away from QWERTY. The biggest annoyances for me with regular keyboards are that caps lock is a wasted key in a prime position and the F keys are too far out of the way. These were solved by the HHKB and that's what I'll be using for the foreseeable future.
vemv 8y ago
I left Colemak for Qwerty some 5 years ago. Keyboard layout matters much less than your typing technique. Same thing for ergonomic keyboards - they can be a dangerous sign that you're focusing on the wrong thing, on micro-optimizations rather than on the root cause. I have no guide to share unfortunately but I'd recommend observing one's movements, and try to figure out what's the most natural way of doing a given thing. Also, regardless of what you do, typing many hours will tire you / be painful. Act accordingly.
- xupybd 8y ago
  I went for a kenesis advantage and it solved all my problems. I think a big part was it forced me to type better. It’s too hard to use the wrong fingers.
- hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
  Same thing for ergonomic keyboards - they can be a dangerous sign that you're focusing on the wrong thing, on micro-optimizations rather than on the root cause. I disagree. It depends on the keyboard, of course. For example, the Microsoft Natural I had in the 90s was a complete POS that exacerbated my tendinitis. It was a cheap sliding-post keyboard. If your finger hit anywhere but dead-on, the resistance was tremendous. A good mechanical keyboard will provide perfectly consistent resistance, which will be a huge improvement over a poorly designed, cheaper keyboard. A more advanced option like the Kinesis or Ergodox completely eliminates many of the fundamental problems with traditional keyboards that create pain in the first place.
edpichler 8y ago
My thoughts: - if the author of the article is moving his fingers laterally, probably he is doing something wrong (must use other fingers instead of moving, this is typewriting). Independent of the layout, this cannot happen. - I believe that there is no silver bullet for keyboard layout if you write code and text, more than one language, statistics of your typing are unique for the languages you currently use.
edpichler 8y ago
I moved to Dvorak year ago. Very very happy with this. The pain of my hands, especially on the weakest fingers, just ended. The sad is that there are no available keyboards to buy in my country, so I always need to manually change and 'fix' my new laptops, risking to break it, and I always do it very worried and careful.
- edpichler 8y ago
  I use Windows and Mac OS, so years ago I create a layout and software to use your Apple Keyboard with Dvorak under Windows. https://github.com/edpichler/Apple-Dvorak-on-Windows https://github.com/edpichler/Apple-Dvorak-on-Windows I wish some movement of better layouts start, so people would engage, and the market would start to produce laptops coming ready for our use.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
deno 8y ago
Sit up straight (fix your posture) and stop gluing your wrists to the desk or wrist “support” and the layout doesn’t matter unless you’re going for typing records. There is no magical layout that can eliminate the tension you’re artificially creating by stretching your fingers into unnatural positions instead of just moving the entire hand. What healthy typing looks like (on a horrible keyboard no less): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs2B5XRtr6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs2B5XRtr6k Imagine you tried playing a piano the way you type on your keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InqmH-o1cX0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InqmH-o1cX0 The pain is letting you know you’re doing something wrong.
- brennebeck 8y ago
  Huh. I had no idea I typed pretty healthily. Thank you. But... references? (It does make sense, though)
  - deno 8y ago
    Practically all ergonomic studies start from the position of compromised wrist placement and measure what angle does least damage. That’s how you end up with split “ergonomic” keyboards. This is the height you need for your monitor to not encourage slouching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S467Ck8uIsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S467Ck8uIsc . You also need to touch type which not everyone can. As a result most office workers have terrible postures. I bet you would run into trouble just trying to find enough people that can both touch type and have good enough posture to do such study. But I would start with piano players.
    - melling 8y ago
      I’ve got dozens of stories about people with RSI here: https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/README.org https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/README... There doesn’t seem to be one cause or one solution.
      - deno 8y ago
mherrmann 8y ago
I feel Carpalx has a less arbitrary, more rigorous solution to this [1]. I've been using its QFMLWY for years. It is hugely better than QWERTY. Though as a programmer, I'm still not fully happy with the Ctrl and Shift keys being in their standard location, and thus at the weakest (pinky) finger. If anyone would like to give QFMLWY a go, let me know. I have scripts to install it on Win, Mac and Ubuntu. [1] http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization
- ken 8y ago
  > the weakest (pinky) finger A lot of keyboard layout enthusiasts (including the linked article) make this claim, but is there any evidence for it? As someone who as trained in various arts that use the hand, I've always been told by all of my teachers that the pinky is the strongest finger. This article rates the first two fingers "very strong" and "strong", while ring and pinky are both "weak", yet a ring/pinky pull-up doesn't seem any more difficult than an index/middle pull-up. Strong enough to lift my body weight, but too weak to press keys on a modern keyboard? I'm skeptical. The most believable answer I've found so far, as to the relative strength of the fingers, is [1], which is a multi-faceted "it depends". There's no standard way to measure strength, and there are many different kinds of strength a finger can exert. How exactly are we defining "finger strength" for typing, and how are we measuring it? [1] https://100hourboard.org/questions/52873/ https://100hourboard.org/questions/52873/ The Dvorak layout has many advantages (I've been using it for over 25 years myself) but the idea that it's better because it uses your "stronger" fingers is just a canard.
  - mherrmann 8y ago
    The pinky being the weakest perfectly matches my subjective experience. My wrist pain is at the outside of my wrist. The more I use my pinky, the worse it gets.
    - ken 8y ago
      That doesn't sound like strength at all to me. Just because it hurts to use a body part doesn't automatically mean the muscles attached to it are weak.
waldfee 8y ago
check out QMK keyboard firmware at https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware do whatever you want with layouts, macros and layers without any need for software or driver on the host machine
zafiro17 8y ago
I don't have any RSI issues but I love the idea of alternative/improved keyboards and layouts and have accidentally become kind of an aficionado/collector. I have on permanent rotation and have written reviews of a Kinesis Ergo [0], Truly Ergonomic (TEK) [1], TypeMatrix [2], and Happy Hacker [3] and I'm looking seriously at buying an Ergodox one of these days. I happen to like and dislike each of those keyboards: each has advantages and disadvantages. Same goes for Dvorak (which I use regularly) and Colemak, etc. I'm hard pressed to say which is my favorite, but I like each for different reasons and conclude it would be impossible to combine them into any "perfect," ultimate keyboard. One thing that almost never comes up in these discussions is the need to change or rotate keyboards. I love the Kinesis but eventually get tired of it, and am happy to move to the TEK, which then starts to bother me until I move to the TypeMatrix, etc. Every keyboard and layout improves some part of typing while exacerbating another. Switching keeps you nimble. I suspect it's like bicycles, of which there are infinite variations. If one bike hurts your wrists and another hurts your legs and another bothers your neck, switch every few rides. [0] http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/167-Typing-in-Style-with-the-Kinesis.html http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/167-Typing-in-Sty... [1] http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/290-The-Truly-Ergonomic-Keyboard-TEK-Review.html http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/290-The-Truly-Erg... [2] http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/295-The-TypeMatrix-2030-Ergonomic-Keyboard.html http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/295-The-TypeMatri... [3] http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/304-Review-of-the-Happy-Hacker-2-Keyboard.html http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/304-Review-of-the...
jimmy1 8y ago
> I didn’t like the way Dvorak was laid out especially for the weak fingers of the right hand. I am not sure if I only know this from playing piano and guitar, but it is surprisingly easy to strengthen those fingers. The exercise is very simple and all it takes is a couple minutes a day, it can be done anywhere (even better if you have a piano or guitar!): 1. Lay your fingers on a table, and curl them like you were at a keyboard or holding a small ball in your hand. 2. Keeping all of your other fingers on the table, lift your weaker finger, typically the ring as high as you possibly can without causing the other fingers to rise. 3. Bring it down as hard as you comfortably can. 4. Repeat 1-3 until you can lift higher and bring it down harder without affecting the other fingers.
- bena 8y ago
  Thanks for that. I've started playing guitar a few years ago and my ring fingers are pretty weak and dependent. I can't do the Vulcan salute for instance, my ring finger is kind of "tied" to my pinky.
  - sixstringtheory 8y ago
    I’ve done a similar one that might help you. Same starting position with all fingertips on the table, fingers curled in piano position. Do the lift with pinky and middle finger at the same time, then down, then lift ring and index finger, then down and repeat. My goal for this is speed instead of strength, but you’ll definitely feel yourself working on that tie between your ring and pinky finger.
ubercow13 8y ago
I have been using this for ~4 years. So far I like it, it is extremely comfortable to type on and instantly felt better than eg. colemak to me, though I never learned to touch type as quickly on any other layout. However, I wish I had just stuck to qwerty in the end, as I use vim keybindings wherever possible and the extra steps needed to customise the keybinds in each application is a hassle, and sometimes not even possible.
bnewton149 8y ago
My biggest issue with traditional keyboards is using non-alpha keys like the arrow keys, modifier keys, punctuation, numbers, escape, and function keys. I (sorta) solved this issue by getting an Ergodox and designing a qwerty layout[1] that made the modifier keys thumb accessible and other non-alpha keys close to the home row through layers: - navigation layer: arrow keys and tab navigation on the home row. - number and symbol layer: numbers on the home row, function keys one row above and punctuation one row below. Its still a work in progress but I think it has helped me. [1] https://configure.ergodox-ez.com/keyboard_layouts/zjdlgd/edit https://configure.ergodox-ez.com/keyboard_layouts/zjdlgd/edi...
rhlala 8y ago
I always type faster with one hand, It is common for me to type thnak you for exemple... I guess i should look at a layout with little hand alternance, Dvorak? Thanks
rhlala 8y ago
I always type faster with one hand, It is common for me to type thnak you for exemple Should I be using an layout with low hand switching? Dvorak? Thanks
hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
If you're having tendinitis related to programming, here's my advice, having gone from basically crippled and nearly crying in pain trying to drive my stick-shift car home to virtually pain-free for nearly two decades: (Ordered from most to least important) 1) physical therapy and exercise. They'll show you stretches, which are probably the single most important part of healing. Later, I got into rock climbing and never had another tendinitis issue related to typing. Go easy, though, and use anti-inflammatories regularly and responsibly. Wrist braces help by giving your tendons a break and keeping them warm, but they don't solve anything on their own. 2) get a better keyboard. A true mechanical keyboard with a light touch will greatly reduced the irritation to your tendons. Lucky you, there are more on the market than ever before. 3) get a smarter keyboard. The Kinesis Classic changed my life. The Ergodox is very similar (both rooted in the Maltron, IIRC). The traditional 87/104 keyboard layout is absolutely absurd. Moving your entire hand to reach navigation keys and using your pinkies for return and tab? Lunacy. Yes, vim helps, but why reprogram your brain when you can just buy hardware that's not rooted in 19th century constraints? 4) keyboard layout. This is the least impactful change. It also takes the most time and will actually increase pain until you reprogram your muscle memory. It has the least payoff. It took about two weeks to type Dvorak with basic competency. About two months to reach what you'd call reasonably fast. And easily a year to get to a reliable 80+ WPM. On the plus side, I can fluently switch between Dvorak and QWERTY. A lot of the talk online about keyboard layouts is just alpha-geek mental masturbation. Don't think a keyboard remap is going to save you if you're in pain.
carapace 8y ago
One neat trick (for programmers) is to switch your number row to use the symbols normally and shift to get the digits. As a programmer you type those symbols way more often than digits. It's easy to get used to and it can make a difference if you have RSI issues.

122 points by caustic 8y ago

A keyboard layout for programmers, which allowed the use of special characters on the home row, perhaps by using a mixed corpus of source code rather than just novels, would be interesting to see. Recently, I ordered the Ultimate Hacker’s Keyboard because I think typing is quite important for a programmer, especially if you consider health as the author of this article does. I’m a little bit weary of not using QWERTY because of the high cost of switching, so if I did switch, I’d want to select a layout that was basically perfect for me long-term (which sounds very tough to do).

hobofan 8y ago
> I’m a little bit weary of not using QWERTY because of the high cost of switching, so if I did switch, I’d want to select a layout that was basically perfect for me long-term (which sounds very tough to do). Similar to programming languages, after learning a second keyboard layout the switching cost will be much lower for each additional one. I switched from QWERTZ (German) to QWERTY (US/international), because it is already much better for programming, and am currently trying out Colemak, and it was much easier to adopt (=get to a reasonable workable speed).
- QasimK 8y ago
  That is good to hear! I didn’t realise until just now that I just assumed each additional keyboard layout would take an equal amount of effort. Plus, minor variations may be much easier to adapt to.
lorenzhs 8y ago
See my other comment in this thread -- this exists for German with a secondary focus on English and programming (neo2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Neo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Neo), and it's what I've been using for at least five years, and I love it. I'm not aware of something similar that is geared towards English and programming, though. It takes a few weeks to learn a layout that is radically different from what you used before, and sadly the most efficient way to switch is to just dive in and use it all the time, even if it's painfully slow and annoying. I switched when I was in university, but it might be difficult to do when there's someone paying you for things that require typing.
yiyus 8y ago
> special characters on the home row In my opinion, the best setup would be an ortholinear keyboard with not many keys and multiple layers (let's say something like a Planck), but instead of using key combinations to change layers, use pedals. I know there has been some attempts to do something like this, but I've never tried it. Has anyone here used a similar setup?
chrismorgan 8y ago
If you have keyboards with physically different layouts—e.g. one ergonomic, one typical laptop, one swipey touchscreen—and use them all at least occasionally, you’ll be able to develop independent muscle memories for each. Go ahead and learn a different layout on a fancy keyboard, while keeping a stock standard layout (not even remapping Caps Lock to anything!) on a laptop keyboard, and I understand you’ll have little-to-no trouble with it. (I’m only early on in this process myself, but have been told this by others and it makes sense to me. As one small example I have experienced, I automatically switch to using Cmd for shortcuts instead of Ctrl with no thought, as soon as I’m faced with an Apple keyboard—regardless of the OS, which has tripped me up a couple of times!)
- mauvehaus 8y ago
  I can confirm that having physically different keyboards makes it much easier to switch back and forth. Many years ago, I worked for a company that had a mess of old Sun hardware in the lab with the old Sun-layout[0] keyboards. After about a week of using them, I was pretty comfortable using them, and had no trouble switching back and forth the the customary layout keyboard at my desk. One day, I discovered the one Sun machine that had a Sun-manufactured keyboard in the customary layout. I was incapable of functioning because I expected it to be in the Sun layout. I had to switch it for a Sun-layout keyboard so I could get some work done. As an aside, I decided I prefer the Sun layout, and so I've remapped the 6 or so keys via software on basically every computer I've used since. The only issue is the `~ key, which ends up on [ESC], since I haven't yet found a keyboard that has the [backspace] key split in two. In practice, this isn't much of an annoyance to me. My wife, however goes nuts any time she needs to use the computer for "just a second" and doesn't log me out. I've since gotten better at switching, and if I have to type something when she's logged in, I usually flip the switch pretty quickly. [0] https://deskthority.net/wiki/Sun_Type_5#Layout https://deskthority.net/wiki/Sun_Type_5#Layout
  - acheron 8y ago
    Sun keyboards are nice for pair programming, since when your partner does something good you can press the 'props' key.
jerf 8y ago
"which allowed the use of special characters on the home row" Unless you're programming in something very symbol-heavy, even by programming language standards, I suspect you'll find that it's hard for any symbol (other than space) to break into the top-10 non-space symbols; not impossible, but hard. I just did a 200KB perl file here, and the top 12 symbols are space, e, a, r, s, i, t, o, n, newline, l, and d. The first symbol, underscore, shows up in position 13, then it's u, then finally, $. Underscore is less than half as popular as the e. As you may guess, the naming convention of this code is mostly underscore_based. If this code was camelcase instead, you'd have to go down to position 14 with $. The other problem is that languages will significant differ, so you can't really create "a programming layout". If you did nothing but type Perl, that list of symbols may suggest that perhaps $ should be on the u or i key or something valuable like that, but if you run the same process over your C# you're not going to see $ popping up nearly as high and now you've got a huge wasted key. Parentheses are in the 22nd and 23rd slot on this count, the only thing that I would be comfortable saying is really generic. (And then there's still Haskell, where they are used, but much, much less often.)
- kalleboo 8y ago
  There's also the difference between what's in the code and what you type. My code is full of colons and commas between named arguments, but those are all inserted by autocomplete in my IDE.
SkyPuncher 8y ago
Oh! I have an answer for this one on Mac. https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements https://github.com/tekezo/Karabiner-Elements It let's you software remap keys. I've entirely disabled my caps locks key (I barely ever used it) and turned it into a combo esc/modifier key. Holding caps plus a home row key types the corresponding symbol (e.g. "a" is "!", and ";" is ")". I also have u,i,o,p mapped to arrow keys (similar to vim). Then some misc. combos for things I commonly program (e.g. caps + m = "() => {}" - very helpful for JS)

amelius 8y ago

Given that micro-movements can lead to RSI, shouldn't the goal be to make the hands move as much as possible instead?

ObscureScience 8y ago
That's an interesting question. Then, dvorak or similar (alternating hand) layout would probably be a good starting point.

tezza 8y ago

A large portion of coding is moving the cursor left, right, up, down, page up, page down, home, end The arrow keys are not even shown on the layout. And the selection of prose corpus (es?) is again not related to programming [Tom Sawyer]. We need underscores, braces, semicolon, context menu. Perhaps a better metric would be the hoc compiler source from The Unix Programming Environment.

EduardoBautista 8y ago
> A large portion of coding is moving the cursor left, right, up, down, page up, page down, home, end > The arrow keys are not even shown on the layout Nothing that learning Vim keybindings can't solve.
- leg100 8y ago
  What about using a browser, terminal usage outside of vim, and insert-mode in vim? Do you use vimium in chrome and vim-mode in bash?
  - QasimK 8y ago
    I suspect the answers would be: use non-arrow keybindings for browsers (e.g. vim-like plug-ins, or alternative keyboard shortcuts), remap your terminals keys (maybe, use a different terminal entirely?), use insert mode for only inserting text. I use a “vimium” plug-in for Firefox and I quite like being able to go up/down with j/k. Though I still use the arrow keys for my terminal.
    - leg100 8y ago
      Yup I've just installed vimium on chrome, and it seems to do the job. I've tried out vim-mode bash in the past, but much prefer the default emacs-mode on the command line, despite being a vim user. Either way I'm suspecting a ton of exceptions which necessitate resorting often to the cursor keys, however (like another commenter has mentioned w.r.t various GUI apps).
- 8y ago

AprilArcus 8y ago

The Colemak Mod-DH family of layouts incorporates the major insight of Workman (that QWERTY v and n are lower-effort positions than QWERTY g and h) without abandoning the better elements of Colemak (common left hand shortcut keys QWAZXC remain unmoved, good hand alternation, emphasis on inward rolls). http://colemakmods.github.io/mod-dh/ http://colemakmods.github.io/mod-dh/

nicolas_t 8y ago
Thanks for this. I've used colemak for many years but the position of the dh is definitely not ideal. I'll try it out and see how it fares.
gedy 8y ago
While I don't use the DH change, the angle mod mentioned where zxcv are shifted left one key has been amazingly helpful for me. It makes standard staggered keyboards a lot more comfortable to use correct fingers for left bottom row

lorenzhs 8y ago

This looks interesting but the symbol still look very qwerty-ish. I type on Neo-2 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Neo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Neo), which uses ISO keyboards and primarily targets German, even though the majority of my typing is in English. Its entire third layer is for symbols that are common in programming. Layer 3 is activated via either caps-lock or the key above Right Shift, and has \/{}* ?()-:@ as the home row, …_[]^ !<>=& above it and #$|~` +%"'; below it (there's a picture in the Wikipedia article linked above). Layer 4 (right alt or the key to the right of left shift) is also pretty cool, it has lots of navigation keys and a numblock in convenient positions, but I somehow never got around to learning that. All the layers are shown on https://neo-layout.org/ https://neo-layout.org/ (in German, but that doesn't matter for the pictures). With a Trackpoint (Thinkpad USB keyboard), this means that my hands don't have to leave the home row at all. It's super convenient.

scns 8y ago
Can not recommend this layout highly enough. Every time i am forced to use qwertz shows me how bad a standard layout is. Qwerty was developed at the times of the first typewriters to prevent jamming by slowing typists down
- jstanley 8y ago
  This is a common but enduring myth. It was designed to separate the levers for common digraphs, to prevent jams. It was not designed to slow the typist down, but to ensure typing at full speed did not cause jams.
  - scns 8y ago
    You are pedantically correct, the best kind of correct. Or just better at expressing what i meant.
eigengrau 8y ago
German users might also be interested in the AdNW layout (http://www.adnw.de/ http://www.adnw.de/). They started out with Neo’s excellent and logical arrangement of the non-alphabetical layers, but replaced the alphabetic layers with a layout created by running an optimization algorithm on a text corpus of 50% English and 50% German text (whereas in Neo the key arrangement was created manually, based on intuition). The metrics they used were largely inspired by Dvorak’s research.

fooblat 8y ago

As a full time developer who used to suffer terrible RSI pain, I solved the problem without changing keyboard layouts. After consulting with my doctor and an ergonomics expert, I realized my problems were cause by the setup of my workstation and the bad posture habits I had developed. 1. I would rest my palms as I typed. This turned out to be a major source of pain. Retraining myself to "float" my hands over the keyboard was a massive improvement. 2. My desk was too high / my chair was too low. Setting up my desk so that my keyboard is as close to my lap as possible was the next big improvement. When in a seated position, my hands are very comfortable when resting on my thighs. Putting my keyboard in a drawer that is just above my thighs helped a lot. 3. I also switched to a trackpad instead of a mount and a split keyboard. I found this allowed a more comfortable angle for my hands and less temptation to rest my wrist while mousing. After making these changes, I have been pain free for over 10 years.

lbj 8y ago
You hover? Doesnt that just move the strain to your upper arms?
- fooblat 8y ago
  The key to this for me is having the keyboard as close to my lap as possible. The effort to hover seems to go up with the height of the keyboard relative to my thighs.
  - lbj 8y ago
    Right, that makes sense, thanks.
eggie 8y ago
Did you consider using an isomorphic layout like the typematrix? I find the anachronistic skew in keyboards to be a source of discomfort.
- fooblat 8y ago

lbj 8y ago

I love how inclusive this comment is "a difference of 696 meters. It doesn’t sound like much, however if we convert it to centimeters, that’s equal to 69,600 cm" :D

roenxi 8y ago

It is interesting, given that the corpuses are available, that keyboard design isn't framed as some sort of linear or nonlinear optimising problem. Choose a set of tasks -> plug into an optimiser -> get a keyboard mapping tuned to the task you are doing. There'd be people who find that useful. The maths isn't at all hard, the data is there. EDIT Maybe it would be a fun project to take something like top 100 C libraries from github and build up an optimised keyboard layout for C coding. It is an interesting idea.

toyg 8y ago
The problem is generalizing the corpus enough to make it viable for more tasks than "writing C libraries", so that it can achieve mainstream support. The parameters to consider are also contentious - are we optimising for travel, finger stretching, speed, etc ...? It's not just about data.

Loic 8y ago

If you are looking at alternative keyboards, I have been using the TypeMatrix 2030[0] with a transparent cover for about 10 years. I am using the Dvorak layout, but I think that the main reason it is so comfortable to use is the ortho-linear layout of the keys and that it is totally flat. I would recommend anybody with RSI to test first ortho-linear physical layout of the keys with your standard Qwerty or Azerty or whatever you use right now before moving to something else. [0]: http://www.typematrix.com/ http://www.typematrix.com/

reacweb 8y ago

He uses the wrong test. Testing on "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" is meaningless for developpers: tests should be performed using real usages like "source code of linux kernel" or "mailing list of linux kernel" to have a better balance between code and text.

jstanley 8y ago
Even better, it should be performed using a recorded vim session, rather than a full file. The keystrokes you use while editing are not the same as those that end up in the finished file.
- citation_please 8y ago
  But this brings up that some Vim hotkeys are more positional than mnemonic (J-down, K-up), while others are more mnemonic than positional (I-insert, X-exterminate(?)). Food for thought.
  - tjoff 8y ago
    This is why I believe that qwerty is the best layout. All applications have designed all shortcuts to be sensible on it. Any other layout is just going to be a disaster and negate any benefits and more during actual use. You can of course use whatever layout you like and then while ctrl/alt/meta is pressed it switches to qwerty, doesn't save vim users though (or other applications where shortcuts don't need to be prefixed). I'm not convinced switching from qwerty is that beneficial, I believe (but have not yet tried it) an orthogonal keyboard will do more than any layout will. But I admit that I don't have experience to back that up.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      The idea would be to optimize the keyboard around English (which you can't remap,) and then to optimize your editor keybindings around the keyboard (which are easy to remap.)

alpeshrathod 8y ago

> Workman Keyboard Layout

eggie 8y ago

The author doesn't even learn dvorak before deciding that it doesn't work for them. They mention don't like how it behaves on the consonant-heavy, qwerty-optimized commands used in unix. (I have to say this is a fair evaluation, but in practice the layout somehow doesn't encourage RSI despite the apparent awkwardness of typing unix commands on it.) In result they don't seem to understand that the dvorak layout is optimized for alternation between hands (they do mention this) and inward rolling motion (they don't seem to understand this). You can really feel this when typing, and it makes typing downright enjoyable. I wouldn't be surprised if much of the added distance relative to colemak and workman is probably reaching for the "i" with the left pointer finger. These are the easiest movements to make repeatedly, and in my experience the home row horizontal movement that they try to optimize out of workman isn't really important. People should be free and encouraged to make their own layouts to beat RSI. But, scientific measurement of what is better seems basically impossible...

etatoby 8y ago
Yes, that was my impression too. I find Dvorak so natural, with the alternation and the inwards rolling motion. Plus it's already supported by every OS ever.
rlkf 8y ago
> dvorak layout is optimized for alternation between hands and inward rolling motion True; Dvorak seems to always score worse on tests that don't weight distance by ease.
cityroasted 8y ago
In the author's defense, I came to the same conclusion using Dvorak when I was a teenager learning unix and programming. I switched back to QWERTY for a while, but around 8 years ago I learned about Colemak and switched and have been very happy with it since. One thing I like about Colemak is that it is close enough to QWERTY that I can still type on QWERTY by looking at the keys and not look like a complete fool. Dvorak is so different that it completely rewires the brain and it's very difficult to switch between it and QWERTY. That's been my experience at least.

sscarduzio 8y ago

This is an excellent solution to a problem no programmer has. After 10 years of programming I can safely tell that, if you type the majority of your time until you make your wrists sick, you are writing shit code and you should spend more time thinking.

erfgh 8y ago
Everyone is built differently. Some people will get tendonitis with just a small amount of typing.
adrianm 8y ago
Do you not write emails, search the web, or do writing on a computer of any kind? I wouldn’t be so quick to judge here. You don’t know what they are really doing on their keyboard all day. Maybe typing is all we have due to a physical disability that limits mobility and communication in other ways. There are a lot of possibilities beyond “writing shit code”.
- sscarduzio 8y ago
  yeah, yeah, I guess there's multiple edge cases.

diimdeep 8y ago

Kudos for effort. But changing layout is not enough. Current mainstream keyboards design is fundamentally flawed [1] and IMO obsolete because of [4]. Hopefully there is science [2] and much alternatives to choose from [3] [1] http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_problems.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/keyboard_problems.html [2] http://xahlee.info/kbd/ergonomic_keyboard_science.html http://xahlee.info/kbd/ergonomic_keyboard_science.html [3] https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence

bitofhope 8y ago
The first link references the myth of QWERTY being meant for slowing typists down. It merely spreads most common letters out so them being pressed together doesn't jam the typewriter.
- diimdeep 8y ago
  Yeah agree, except that error, didn't find better article to link to.
chx 8y ago
> much alternatives to choose from [3] You can turn a few of those alternatives to vertical. I've been using a QWERTY vertical keyboard since 2009 and which I had some wrist pains before, not since. Current setup https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79810.0 https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79810.0

floatboth 8y ago

> Try typing “The” with the T capitalized on Colemak and hopefully you’ll see what I mean. Your right hand will move somewhat like this: you swing to the right to get the SHIFT key with your pinky, then you swing back to the left to get the letter ‘H’, and then you move to the right again to get the letter ‘E’. Why would you use the right shift here?? I shift with the left pinky in this situation and it feels fine. Colemak is just fine, and it's already included in most operating systems.

cammil 8y ago
I think there is a theory that one "should" use the _other_ hand for any modifiers. Presumably and primarily so that the letter key is always pressed using the same finger and position of the hand.
- floatboth 8y ago
  I never cared about using the "correct" shift key.
  - hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
    I think it matters most for those with smaller hands. That said, if you were transcribing stuff all day long (i.e. typing way more than a programmer), you might notice less fatigue if you shifted "properly".
- flyingfences 8y ago
  > Presumably and primarily so that the letter key is always pressed using the same finger and position of the hand. But it is. Hitting the left shift in the scenario described literally just takes pulling the left pinky down.
SkyPuncher 8y ago
I shift this way too on Colemak. I much prefer the slight shift down of the pinky than the whole arm/wrist shift to tackle the rights shift in many cases.

INTPnerd 8y ago

What a stubborn Emacs user, all they had to do was switch to Vim..

StreakyCobra 8y ago

Anything other than [AQ]WERT[YZ] layout-based keyboard is already a big improvement for your fingers. The differences between Workman / Colemak / Dvorak and so on is mostly a matter of taste. One thing to note is that widely used layouts have more chances to be supported by software and by keyboard manufacturers (e.g. http://www.typematrix.com/ http://www.typematrix.com/). So it may be wiser to choose mainstream layouts that creating your own or using niche ones. There is probably not a definitive answer for which one is better ("better" would have to be defined for this), so go ahead, read a bit about them and do your choice. Be aware though that once you have choose one, you will be stuck with it for a looong time, because switching layout is hard. You have to remap all your brain an muscle memory before being able to reach your previous efficiency. Spoiler alert: it takes months to years for this. PS: For french speaking people, you may want to have a look at https://bepo.fr https://bepo.fr

lorenzhs 8y ago
Agreed. I use neo2, which is the German equivalent of bépo. It's shipped with pretty much every Linux distro, which means that all I need to do is "setxkbmap de neo". It definitely takes several months to achieve a decent speed on a new layout, but I wouldn't say years. I did a full switch after deciding I wanted to learn neo. That means that from that day on, I didn't use qwertz at all, and forced myself to type everything in neo. Also, don't use stickers. They teach you to look at the keyboard. Put a printout of the layout next to your keyboard and look at that. Otherwise you'll just form bad habits. It took me around a month to get to a point where my neo typing speed was reasonable, and maybe another month until I had managed to get to the point where it wasn't annoying any more. Of course I was in university back then, and not paid to develop software.
- 0XAFFE 8y ago
  Best thing is to print this https://neo-layout.org/grafik/aufsteller/neo20-aufsteller.pdf https://neo-layout.org/grafik/aufsteller/neo20-aufsteller.pd... and put it behind your keyboard or somewhere where you can look with ease. I think speed it no so much important when coding, but don't have to think about how and what you have to type.

rezeroed 8y ago

We need keyboards with digital keys, not printed, so we can change the layouts at the click of a button.

joemccall86 8y ago
I recalled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimus_Maximus_keyboard from years ago. It looks like the successor uses an LCD screen: http://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/popularis/ http://www.artlebedev.com/optimus/popularis/.
- rezeroed 8y ago
  Bingo.
flyingfences 8y ago
Or just use blank keycaps... the legends shouldn't matter because you shouldn't be looking down at the board while you type.
- rezeroed 8y ago
  For learning and trying out new layouts.
  - flyingfences 8y ago
    Still, you shouldn't be looking down. In addition to taking your eyes off the screen, it also builds a dependence on seeing your finger positions instead of building muscle memory. The recommended method (if you aren't willing to go cold-turkey trial-and-error) is to print out a map of the layout and tape it on the _top_ of your monitor for a few days.

petepete 8y ago

I'm glad that alternative keyboard layouts seem to be gaining traction but I just can't go cold turkey and move away from QWERTY. The biggest annoyances for me with regular keyboards are that caps lock is a wasted key in a prime position and the F keys are too far out of the way. These were solved by the HHKB and that's what I'll be using for the foreseeable future.

vemv 8y ago

I left Colemak for Qwerty some 5 years ago. Keyboard layout matters much less than your typing technique. Same thing for ergonomic keyboards - they can be a dangerous sign that you're focusing on the wrong thing, on micro-optimizations rather than on the root cause. I have no guide to share unfortunately but I'd recommend observing one's movements, and try to figure out what's the most natural way of doing a given thing. Also, regardless of what you do, typing many hours will tire you / be painful. Act accordingly.

xupybd 8y ago
I went for a kenesis advantage and it solved all my problems. I think a big part was it forced me to type better. It’s too hard to use the wrong fingers.
hfdgiutdryg 8y ago
Same thing for ergonomic keyboards - they can be a dangerous sign that you're focusing on the wrong thing, on micro-optimizations rather than on the root cause. I disagree. It depends on the keyboard, of course. For example, the Microsoft Natural I had in the 90s was a complete POS that exacerbated my tendinitis. It was a cheap sliding-post keyboard. If your finger hit anywhere but dead-on, the resistance was tremendous. A good mechanical keyboard will provide perfectly consistent resistance, which will be a huge improvement over a poorly designed, cheaper keyboard. A more advanced option like the Kinesis or Ergodox completely eliminates many of the fundamental problems with traditional keyboards that create pain in the first place.

edpichler 8y ago

My thoughts: - if the author of the article is moving his fingers laterally, probably he is doing something wrong (must use other fingers instead of moving, this is typewriting). Independent of the layout, this cannot happen. - I believe that there is no silver bullet for keyboard layout if you write code and text, more than one language, statistics of your typing are unique for the languages you currently use.

edpichler 8y ago

I moved to Dvorak year ago. Very very happy with this. The pain of my hands, especially on the weakest fingers, just ended. The sad is that there are no available keyboards to buy in my country, so I always need to manually change and 'fix' my new laptops, risking to break it, and I always do it very worried and careful.

edpichler 8y ago
I use Windows and Mac OS, so years ago I create a layout and software to use your Apple Keyboard with Dvorak under Windows. https://github.com/edpichler/Apple-Dvorak-on-Windows https://github.com/edpichler/Apple-Dvorak-on-Windows I wish some movement of better layouts start, so people would engage, and the market would start to produce laptops coming ready for our use.
deleted 8y ago
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deno 8y ago

Sit up straight (fix your posture) and stop gluing your wrists to the desk or wrist “support” and the layout doesn’t matter unless you’re going for typing records. There is no magical layout that can eliminate the tension you’re artificially creating by stretching your fingers into unnatural positions instead of just moving the entire hand. What healthy typing looks like (on a horrible keyboard no less): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs2B5XRtr6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs2B5XRtr6k Imagine you tried playing a piano the way you type on your keyboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InqmH-o1cX0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InqmH-o1cX0 The pain is letting you know you’re doing something wrong.

brennebeck 8y ago
Huh. I had no idea I typed pretty healthily. Thank you. But... references? (It does make sense, though)
- deno 8y ago
  Practically all ergonomic studies start from the position of compromised wrist placement and measure what angle does least damage. That’s how you end up with split “ergonomic” keyboards. This is the height you need for your monitor to not encourage slouching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S467Ck8uIsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S467Ck8uIsc . You also need to touch type which not everyone can. As a result most office workers have terrible postures. I bet you would run into trouble just trying to find enough people that can both touch type and have good enough posture to do such study. But I would start with piano players.
  - melling 8y ago
    I’ve got dozens of stories about people with RSI here: https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/README.org https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/README... There doesn’t seem to be one cause or one solution.
    - deno 8y ago

mherrmann 8y ago

I feel Carpalx has a less arbitrary, more rigorous solution to this [1]. I've been using its QFMLWY for years. It is hugely better than QWERTY. Though as a programmer, I'm still not fully happy with the Ctrl and Shift keys being in their standard location, and thus at the weakest (pinky) finger. If anyone would like to give QFMLWY a go, let me know. I have scripts to install it on Win, Mac and Ubuntu. [1] http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization

ken 8y ago
> the weakest (pinky) finger A lot of keyboard layout enthusiasts (including the linked article) make this claim, but is there any evidence for it? As someone who as trained in various arts that use the hand, I've always been told by all of my teachers that the pinky is the strongest finger. This article rates the first two fingers "very strong" and "strong", while ring and pinky are both "weak", yet a ring/pinky pull-up doesn't seem any more difficult than an index/middle pull-up. Strong enough to lift my body weight, but too weak to press keys on a modern keyboard? I'm skeptical. The most believable answer I've found so far, as to the relative strength of the fingers, is [1], which is a multi-faceted "it depends". There's no standard way to measure strength, and there are many different kinds of strength a finger can exert. How exactly are we defining "finger strength" for typing, and how are we measuring it? [1] https://100hourboard.org/questions/52873/ https://100hourboard.org/questions/52873/ The Dvorak layout has many advantages (I've been using it for over 25 years myself) but the idea that it's better because it uses your "stronger" fingers is just a canard.
- mherrmann 8y ago
  The pinky being the weakest perfectly matches my subjective experience. My wrist pain is at the outside of my wrist. The more I use my pinky, the worse it gets.
  - ken 8y ago
    That doesn't sound like strength at all to me. Just because it hurts to use a body part doesn't automatically mean the muscles attached to it are weak.

waldfee 8y ago

check out QMK keyboard firmware at https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware do whatever you want with layouts, macros and layers without any need for software or driver on the host machine

zafiro17 8y ago

I don't have any RSI issues but I love the idea of alternative/improved keyboards and layouts and have accidentally become kind of an aficionado/collector. I have on permanent rotation and have written reviews of a Kinesis Ergo [0], Truly Ergonomic (TEK) [1], TypeMatrix [2], and Happy Hacker [3] and I'm looking seriously at buying an Ergodox one of these days. I happen to like and dislike each of those keyboards: each has advantages and disadvantages. Same goes for Dvorak (which I use regularly) and Colemak, etc. I'm hard pressed to say which is my favorite, but I like each for different reasons and conclude it would be impossible to combine them into any "perfect," ultimate keyboard. One thing that almost never comes up in these discussions is the need to change or rotate keyboards. I love the Kinesis but eventually get tired of it, and am happy to move to the TEK, which then starts to bother me until I move to the TypeMatrix, etc. Every keyboard and layout improves some part of typing while exacerbating another. Switching keeps you nimble. I suspect it's like bicycles, of which there are infinite variations. If one bike hurts your wrists and another hurts your legs and another bothers your neck, switch every few rides. [0] http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/167-Typing-in-Style-with-the-Kinesis.html http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/167-Typing-in-Sty... [1] http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/290-The-Truly-Ergonomic-Keyboard-TEK-Review.html http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/290-The-Truly-Erg... [2] http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/295-The-TypeMatrix-2030-Ergonomic-Keyboard.html http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/295-The-TypeMatri... [3] http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/304-Review-of-the-Happy-Hacker-2-Keyboard.html http://therandymon.com/index.php?/archives/304-Review-of-the...

jimmy1 8y ago

> I didn’t like the way Dvorak was laid out especially for the weak fingers of the right hand. I am not sure if I only know this from playing piano and guitar, but it is surprisingly easy to strengthen those fingers. The exercise is very simple and all it takes is a couple minutes a day, it can be done anywhere (even better if you have a piano or guitar!): 1. Lay your fingers on a table, and curl them like you were at a keyboard or holding a small ball in your hand. 2. Keeping all of your other fingers on the table, lift your weaker finger, typically the ring as high as you possibly can without causing the other fingers to rise. 3. Bring it down as hard as you comfortably can. 4. Repeat 1-3 until you can lift higher and bring it down harder without affecting the other fingers.

bena 8y ago
Thanks for that. I've started playing guitar a few years ago and my ring fingers are pretty weak and dependent. I can't do the Vulcan salute for instance, my ring finger is kind of "tied" to my pinky.
- sixstringtheory 8y ago
  I’ve done a similar one that might help you. Same starting position with all fingertips on the table, fingers curled in piano position. Do the lift with pinky and middle finger at the same time, then down, then lift ring and index finger, then down and repeat. My goal for this is speed instead of strength, but you’ll definitely feel yourself working on that tie between your ring and pinky finger.

ubercow13 8y ago

I have been using this for ~4 years. So far I like it, it is extremely comfortable to type on and instantly felt better than eg. colemak to me, though I never learned to touch type as quickly on any other layout. However, I wish I had just stuck to qwerty in the end, as I use vim keybindings wherever possible and the extra steps needed to customise the keybinds in each application is a hassle, and sometimes not even possible.

bnewton149 8y ago

My biggest issue with traditional keyboards is using non-alpha keys like the arrow keys, modifier keys, punctuation, numbers, escape, and function keys. I (sorta) solved this issue by getting an Ergodox and designing a qwerty layout[1] that made the modifier keys thumb accessible and other non-alpha keys close to the home row through layers: - navigation layer: arrow keys and tab navigation on the home row. - number and symbol layer: numbers on the home row, function keys one row above and punctuation one row below. Its still a work in progress but I think it has helped me. [1] https://configure.ergodox-ez.com/keyboard_layouts/zjdlgd/edit https://configure.ergodox-ez.com/keyboard_layouts/zjdlgd/edi...

rhlala 8y ago

I always type faster with one hand, It is common for me to type thnak you for exemple... I guess i should look at a layout with little hand alternance, Dvorak? Thanks

rhlala 8y ago

I always type faster with one hand, It is common for me to type thnak you for exemple Should I be using an layout with low hand switching? Dvorak? Thanks

hfdgiutdryg 8y ago

If you're having tendinitis related to programming, here's my advice, having gone from basically crippled and nearly crying in pain trying to drive my stick-shift car home to virtually pain-free for nearly two decades: (Ordered from most to least important) 1) physical therapy and exercise. They'll show you stretches, which are probably the single most important part of healing. Later, I got into rock climbing and never had another tendinitis issue related to typing. Go easy, though, and use anti-inflammatories regularly and responsibly. Wrist braces help by giving your tendons a break and keeping them warm, but they don't solve anything on their own. 2) get a better keyboard. A true mechanical keyboard with a light touch will greatly reduced the irritation to your tendons. Lucky you, there are more on the market than ever before. 3) get a smarter keyboard. The Kinesis Classic changed my life. The Ergodox is very similar (both rooted in the Maltron, IIRC). The traditional 87/104 keyboard layout is absolutely absurd. Moving your entire hand to reach navigation keys and using your pinkies for return and tab? Lunacy. Yes, vim helps, but why reprogram your brain when you can just buy hardware that's not rooted in 19th century constraints? 4) keyboard layout. This is the least impactful change. It also takes the most time and will actually increase pain until you reprogram your muscle memory. It has the least payoff. It took about two weeks to type Dvorak with basic competency. About two months to reach what you'd call reasonably fast. And easily a year to get to a reliable 80+ WPM. On the plus side, I can fluently switch between Dvorak and QWERTY. A lot of the talk online about keyboard layouts is just alpha-geek mental masturbation. Don't think a keyboard remap is going to save you if you're in pain.

carapace 8y ago

One neat trick (for programmers) is to switch your number row to use the symbols normally and shift to get the digits. As a programmer you type those symbols way more often than digits. It's easy to get used to and it can make a difference if you have RSI issues.