Emacs Users: I'm Okay, I Promise (2022)

I've been using Emacs for 20+ years and counting. Over the years I had all the usual programmers health-related problems, and saw my friends getting the same kind of problems as well.

I no longer have these problems, but I see people around me going full steam ahead towards getting these.

Here's some boring dad-level wisdom:

1. Vim/Emacs/VSCode/favourite editor have nothing to do with the correct, least straining way to use the keyboard. Spreading the load over all 20 fingers is the only way to avoid RSI and related problems. Proper touch typing, caps lock remapping, right hand ctrl pressing... What ever it takes to balance things. Typing less also helps.

2. We programmers sit a lot. Or stand a lot. This leads to back problems, faster RSI development, etc. All the usual workarounds (massage, etc) will only postpone the issue a bit. The only way to counter these is to make sports a routine. Walking, lifting, swimming, climbing. Anything that makes blood go faster - this helps with recovery, and should be a habit.

3. Being overweight kills and makes all of the above problems 10 times as painful. There is just no way around learning to control one's weight. It's not even that hard.

My father (also an emacs user btw) also taught me this but for the usual young people's reasons I had to learn things by, ehm, doing.

I still use Emacs, but I feel the author's pain. I was developing Emacs-induced RSI in my early 20s. Taking a job where I didn't type nearly as much had the side-effect of letting the RSI fix itself.