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Comment by jamestomasino | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't look like anyone has yet addressed my biggest PRO for switching to Dvorak. It has pretty much healed my RSI. QWERTY had caused a huge drain on my ability to type. I was at risk for being unable to continue my work if the pain progressed.

I made the admittedly-difficult switch to Dvorak and that went away almost immediately. My typing speed is on-par with what it was with QWERTY. I can type out conversational English in real time, and that's about my functional limit. I don't consider that a selling point, but for those of you with wrist pain I can wholeheartedly recommond Dvorak.

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I have observed many others who complained about their hands hurting after typing for a short time, and the one thing that stands out is they all seem to have an unusually "tense" posture and almost "attack" the keyboard whenever they type, striking the keys much harder than they need to and making excessively abrupt movements. They also wonder why they can't type very fast and tire quickly, while others like me can type all day at 130WPM on a standard QWERTY board without getting tired.

What I've found to be most important is to relax. Press the keys smoothly and deliberately, without tensing your fingers and trying to maintain a stiff posture. Use a softer keyboard if you can. Your comfort and speed will go up.

> Use a softer keyboard if you can

This. I dislike mechanical keyboards largely for this reason. Apple's "modern" laptop keyboards (pre-butterfly) are the best I've ever used. For me, they have the right amount of pressure required and key travel to be able to type very fast (>100wpm) at very low effort.

Ever tried topre?

Topre are really nice, but for softer keys, Cherry MX reds are possibly even better.

> butterfly

Using this worries me so much that I'm just planting a ticking time bomb of RSI. I a slight ache every time I use it because you have to hit the keys so hard to ensure they register and the stop is so abrupt as paper thin plastic smacks against the metal.

Previous gen feels so gentle compared to it, and this is coming from someone who likes tactile mech keyboards.

because you have to hit the keys so hard to ensure they register and the stop is so abrupt as paper thin plastic smacks against the metal

I've heard others similarly complaining that the key travel being too low is like the feeling of running barefoot on a hard surface, and I agree --- on a good keyboard the actuation travel has to be very low to not tire the fingers, and a small tactile bump there is not bad, but the total travel should be relatively long and "bouncy" at the end to cushion the momentum of the fingers.

All rubber-dome keyboards are not alike either; some are stiffer than others, and some have higher actuation travel --- contrary to common advice, you don't have to "bottom out" a rubber dome switch if the inner membrane-actuating protrusion is long and "squishy" enough. Once it touches the membrane the switch actuates, but there's still a cushioning end-stop effect as the protrusion continues to deform.

Imho, this is were alternative layouts really shine: comfort, health.

Typing speed is an overrated fad (and in the worst cases an e-penis length contest) as in most cases when writing stuff (be it fiction, reports, code) your throughput isn't limited by typing speed.

Avoiding injuries on the other hand is invaluable.

saying it doesn't affect code writing speed is incorrect imo- after you've laid out your algorithm in pseudo code being able to quickly type it out is invaluable time savings. even if you try and automate it all away with shortcuts and refactors it still takes time to press those shortcuts for someone who's familiar with the keys and able to maximise their APM(actions per minute)

I have a similar anecdote, and I've decided that forcing myself to relearn typing was more important than the specific layout. I can definitely say that I was beginning to get some pain in my wrists, and since becoming competent in Dvorak, I haven't had any wrist pain.

Came here to say this. I'm 27, and 3 years ago started to get some pain in my hands when typing for extended periods of time. Given that I'm a software engineer, I'm likely to need to type for a very significant portion of my life. Barring new input technologies, I might be doing this in my career for another 40+ years. I switched to Dvorak to head-off future RSI issues, and it has made typing far more comfortable for me.

Through my 20years of typing and texting with terrible posture and exercise habits, and bouts of debilitating RSI where I immobilized my arm, and experimenting with Dvorak, I found that the main way to reduce my RSI symptoms was to stop hanging out in areas where people talked about RSI.

Even now, just getting into the thread makes my wrists tingle

Yeah, a lot of that seems to be anecdotal evidence. Similar to people claiming mechanical keyboards are better for your wrists, which I find very hard to believe, given how long is the key distance in such keyboards and how much pressure you need to press the keys in such.

> [...] given how long is the key distance in such keyboards and how much pressure you need to press the keys in such.

This very much depends per switch. For example, Cherry MX Red require far less pressure than Cherry MX Blue. There's also the issue of noise (which is annoying for other people, and allows for a TEMPEST attack).

Optical switches, such as the Wooting (2) require also less travel.

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