Difficulty in performing repetitive keyboard actions due to awkward key placements, leading to physical pain and inefficiency

Signals over time

2 observed signals across 1 sources, tracked for 0 days. Confidence: low.

What people are saying Observed

• “> I set up a custom keyboard in software years ago and it’s much better than the terrible European layout family for coding. So I can type all code comfortably. I can also type all the special characters that I want comfortably. All those “typographic” characters that make technical people go “that must be LLM, 95% confidence”. Been doing this for years as well, "in software" being a custom layout in xkb in my case. Though for me the concern was limited to making it easy and quick to type []{}|<> . The only downside I've ran into more frequently than you would expect is that I feel more than a little lost without the xkb config. Still suffer from RSI but I have to assume that it would be a lot worse with the Swedish/Finnish layout I'd be using otherwise. The placement of AltGr practically ensures that typing say [ is torturous, and RSI etc. aside, for sure this has to have had at least some sort of economical impact over the years across Europe.”

  Hacker News · complaint

• “Two things helped me. First is easiest to explain: cutting back or eliminating caffeine. Seriously. And my carpal was fairly bad, so I know what a troubling (literal) pain it can be. I found it was made much worse by my 4 cups a day habit back then. Number two is more complicated to explain, but it is a mighty powerful keyboard skill that can sometimes go a long way to reducing the "awkward reach" keystrokes. Specifically, copy and paste! Read on: (TLDR: learn Ctrl-Ins, Shift-Ins, and Shift-Del, maybe. Instead of Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, and Ctrl-X): In the past I often found myself doing long sessions of paging up and down documents and source files, and doing complex copy and paste actions, for reasons. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V were not so awkward on the original IBM-PC keyboard, because Control was right where it should have stayed, ha (where your CapsLock key is now.) When they moved it to the lower left and lower right spots, it made it a tough reach with just your left hand. You could learn to do RightControl + LeftC for copy, but I never did. Instead, when I need to do a lot of copy and paste with paging up and down also, I get my right hand at the home position on the (full sized”

  Hacker News · frustration