Forty years of programming

This is going to be controversial, but what saved me was abandoning a keyboard-intense environment (emacs + command line) for Apple’s Xcode. I do still build much of the time at the command line, but editing code and switching between windows is mouse-heavy.(You can use Xcode as just a text editor if you like.) I cut and paste by selecting with the mouse where possible. I have a gaming mouse with a button programmed for macOS’s “Exposé” so I can find windows back – and I use a single screen, a 27″ iMac.<p>I have an Apple trackpad which I use to give my hand a break from the mouse, but I find that if I use it heavily for a day or two I get sore fingers. I use a mechanical keyboard. That too tends to cut up my fingers, and I’m on the lookout for a better one, or at least better keycaps.<p>I’ve been doing this for 45 years now, since age 19. Along the way I’ve used punchcards, line mode editors, TECO itself and two TECO-inspired full screen editors, various full-screen editors like DEC’s EDT, and emacs. I know vi, and will by habit drop into it when editing config files and so on, but don’t subscribe to the view that it solves the RSI problem. So I do know how to edit efficiently using keyboard shortcuts, but now think it’s the wrong thing to do.<p>I went through a stage where I used emacs and a Happy Hacking Keyboard, and was very sore at the end of it.<p>I am not slow with my mouse. I can churn out ~2000 lines of good C++ in a day. (But I am not a fan of the language from a typing point of view!)

I&#x27;m only 33 but never had any issues with joint pains or anything like that whereas my peers, some younger and some older struggle with this and use various methods like ergonomic keyboards, massage sessions, stretching, etc to help ease the pain.<p>I&#x27;ve used a traditional mouse and keyboard since I was around 7 and can easily spend a whole day in front of my computer.<p>Lately I&#x27;ve been wondering if it&#x27;s simply just my inability to sit still which has helped me so far. I feel like I always need to change my sitting position. I can sink down in my chair, put my legs up on something, move my feet, lean on my desk in awkward positions, stretch and twist my body and so on. Not because anything hurts, but because I just feel restless.<p>But sometimes when I&#x27;ve been intensely in the zone while programming, I don&#x27;t move as much and then I might start to feel some stiffness in my arms, fingers, etc. I would also notice my eyes get sore, maybe because I don&#x27;t blink as much?

I started experiencing similar forearm pain a few years ago. The split keyboard seemed to help a ton. I also programmed[0] an Arduino with two foot pedals. Left pedal for CTRL, right for SHIFT, both for ALT. Worked wonders. I mostly have the pain manageable now, but it still flares up sometimes, and it was really scary there for a while wondering if I might have to stop programming. To you young guns out there, an ounce of prevention truly is worth a pound of cure. Invest in an ergonomic setup and stretches&#x2F;exercises now, and don&#x27;t push yourself into pain while typing. Take more breaks. Once you push your body over the edge it may never quite be the same.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;anderspitman&#x2F;ergo-pedals">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;anderspitman&#x2F;ergo-pedals</a>

Forty years is just a crazy amount. I’ve been doing it for 30 and getting paid for 20, and I know my stuff: but not to that level. Fabien is just a demigod. Given the long ass hours I’m pushing 100k hours in this trade, and I feel like I’m really finding my feet in the last 1-3 years.<p>This is one of those trades where you can do amazing shit on the first day, but you’re still a work in progress just decades in.<p>I love this shit.

Stenography is the most ergonomic method of computer input I am aware of.<p>Stenography is a mapping of some combination of keys to some output.<p>A particular mapping is called a &quot;theory&quot;.<p>One such mapping is phonetics, or the sounds of words. Let one key represent the &quot;Kuh&quot; sound, another &quot;ah&quot;, and a third &quot;tuh&quot;. Press them all down and when released, you get &quot;cat&quot;. &quot;Al&quot; &quot;Guh&quot; &quot;Or&quot; &quot;If&quot; &quot;Um&quot; &quot;Algorithm&quot;. 5 strokes instead 8. And that&#x27;s not even trying to be efficient.<p>Another mapping is to use shapes. Three keys in the top row and one in the middle on the bottom looks like a &quot;T&quot;. So, map that to something you associate with T.<p>A theory can be any mapping you want. Stenography is based on shorthand which was invented in the late 1800s. There are plenty of theories that already exist. You don&#x27;t need to make your own.<p>When you write, you use some words or phrases frequently. Map those to convenient keys. Such mappings are called &quot;briefs&quot;. Go crazy with them and you can reach 370 words per minute of real-time dictation.<p>You obviously don&#x27;t have to be that good. I find that 30 wpm is sufficient to be productive at work. You can reach 70 wpm by practicing 15 minutes a day for a few months. You&#x27;re a programmer. You can do it.<p>Expecting a lifetime of computer input? Don&#x27;t optimize for easy key-to-output mappings such as QWERTY or Dvorak. Learn stenography.<p>See Plover and Javelin.

Dear Vim beginner, before getting a fancy keyboard, do remap Esc to some other key.<p>It makes <i>no</i> sense to have your most important key where it is nowadays.<p>The reason the back to normal mode key is ESC is because that key used to be much closer from the home row.<p>My personal preference is to use Caps Lock because each OS has an easy solution for this simple remap and since it&#x27;s system wide you can use vim modes elsewhere too (zsh and gdb for me mostly). Also in general it&#x27;s quite convenient to have escape so close.<p>Do what you will but please don&#x27;t suffer uselessly for stupid historical reasons.

Long-time programmer here who is a typing machine, without discomfort, thanks in part to heeding Internet warnings about RSI circa 1990, and to finding what works for me.<p>One of the things that matters for me when seated at a desk (I also do standing desk) is that I like to be able to have my feet flat on the floor when seated, and then for the keyboard height to be lower than most desks.<p>If you&#x27;re similar, and you&#x27;re considering those powered height-adjustable desks, note the minimum height in the specs of a desk (and that the actual minimum height might be an inch or two higher, due to the top thickness and&#x2F;or leveling). Importantly, the &quot;3-stage&quot; ones on Amazon go lower than the &quot;2-stage&quot; ones.<p>You can also occasionally find rare low fixed-height desks. I also once realized that the legs of a university lab&#x27;s white laminate desks were interchangeable with the legs of matching shorter white laminate side tables. (I quietly swapped a set, under the cover of night.)<p>On chairs, I don&#x27;t like armrests in any case, and also, note that, if you have a lower desktop or keyboard shelf, armrests on chairs might bump into it.<p>If you want to remove arms from a chair that has them, check how well that works before you spend a lot of money. Aerons with arms look like they can come off pretty cleanly. I&#x27;ve had good luck with <i>some</i> more conventional commercial-grade office task chairs. I&#x27;ve also seen office chairs that leave unsafe heavy-duty welded steel frame protrusions out the sides, with corners that could rip into someone&#x27;s leg someday. Steelcase Leap V2 arms can come off, but not cleanly, so it looks kinda dumb for how much money you spent.

There&#x27;s an elephant in this room. Are you all ignoring it deliberately?<p>Reading all these comments from people about what they do&#x2F;don&#x27;t do. Nobody seems to address the giant stinking pachyderm: are you right or left handed?<p>Left handers <i>have to</i> exercise their right hands, because of all the kit made for the right-handed majority. Almost all these fancy vertical mice are right-hand only. In fact most mice are RH only. I sometimes use a cheap 2nd hand gamer mouse I bought for when my main one&#x27;s batteries die: it&#x27;s RH-only.<p>Digital cameras? All RH only. Most mobile phones? Mainly for RHers.<p>We sinister types <i>must</i> use our right. Most right handers barely use their left.<p>20Y ago, in my mid-30s, I switched to mousing right-handed at home. I&#x27;m a leftie, but I worked in support for 15-20 years and I had to use customers&#x27; machines the way they were configured. Usually that means mouse on the right. I could but didn&#x27;t on my own because they&#x27;re mine.<p>An ex suggested switching and it really balanced my hand usage. Gave my tired sore left a rest, made my under-utilised right pick up the slack.<p>I also trained myself to clean my teeth with my right, to practice my coordination.<p>Never mind rock climbing or whatever. Nobody needs to climb a wall to get to work. But pretty much everyone needs to clean their teeth.<p>Learn to use your left hand for more. Learn to mouse with it, or use your touchpad or whatever. Learn to clean your teeth with it.<p>Spread that load out. Even the workload on your hands and wrists, and they&#x27;ll thank you for it over the decades.

I too have been programming for 40 years, am in early 60&#x27;s, and amazed that I have no real wrist issues from all that time of typing, etc.<p>I&#x27;ve also been a pretty avid WASD + Mouse gamer for a long time as well, and I think gaming probably causes me more issues than programming.

I didn&#x27;t quite make it to forty years, but I think I could say I made it to 37 (1983-2020). I&#x27;ve also spent more time than the average programmer <i>writing</i> on a computer, and I&#x27;ve never had any significant RSI-type issues. This might be a bit controversial, but I think part of the reason is that I&#x27;m <i>not</i> a traditional touch typist. That&#x27;s not to say I&#x27;m slow, either. I&#x27;ve probably worked with well over a thousand other programmers, and the only person I&#x27;m sure was faster wasn&#x27;t any of them. It was my mother, who was a professional typesetter longer than I was a professional programmer. Only a handful of other programmers have even seemed close.<p>So, why do I think that relates to my lack of RSI problems? Because with my seven(ish) finger method my hands constantly rove over the keyboard. What they don&#x27;t do is stay in one fixed location, with the wrists in the same (usually somewhat awkward) position as only the fingers move. That maximizes repetition - the R in RSI. Minimizing hand motion this way is <i>bad</i>. If you want your hands and wrists to stay healthy you have to keep them moving, just like any other muscle&#x2F;tendon&#x2F;ligament complex in any other part of your body. It&#x27;s silly to think that the general rules of exercise and flexibility don&#x27;t apply to hands.

I&#x27;m not a rockstar, but I&#x27;ve been sitting in front of a computer for most of most days for the past 20-something years.<p>What I&#x27;d recommend is varying everything as much as possible, I found always being in the same position and using the exact same movements day in day out is what seemed to cause problems.<p>I&#x27;ve got a mouse, a trackball and a trackpad all connected. Trackpad is on the left, others on the right. Trackball is a Kensington Orbit (fingers, not thumb, on ball). When adding a new input method take away the old ones for a week or so in order to create new instincts, or you&#x27;ll just always reach for the mouse.<p>Keyboard is just a standard mechanical TKL (the trackball goes where the numpad would) - in my experience programming involves a lot more thinking than typing, and I avoid editors&#x2F;IDEs which encourage constant hand-contortions to use hotkeys. For me, at least, optimising for keyboard efficiency would be a waste of time.<p>My 43&quot; 4K monitor set at 100% scaling is perfect. I can see a lot of code side by side. A second 28&quot; monitor in portrait mode usually contains slack, a tiling terminal and the UI (browser&#x2F;emulator) of whatever I&#x27;m working on. On a laptop I&#x27;ll use multiple workspaces and get by OK, but more pixels are better.<p>I gave up on ordinary office chairs, I&#x27;ve always had a slightly dodgy back ever since I was a teenager and it got fairly bad a few years ago. I switched to an ergonomic &quot;wobbly stool&quot; and that&#x27;s worked well - I&#x27;m forced to move around because it&#x27;s never totally stable. Sometimes I stand, but if I&#x27;m trying to focus I do still need to &quot;sit and think&quot;.

While everyone is different, it&#x27;s nice to read about other&#x27;s journey and the hardware they recommend along the way.<p>I&#x27;ve been developing as long as the author, but lucky enough to not have any serious forearm&#x2F;hand pain during that time. There was a time a decade ago where I had some mild pain, but taking frequent breaks helped tremendously. And like the author, I started investigating other keyboards as well.<p>Today I use a Moonlander Mark I and Apple Trackpad on one system, and a Lenovo TrackPoint II and Logitech MX Master 3 on my other system. Both configurations have their merits, and are equally good in my opinion. It&#x27;s also surprisingly easy to move between them.

I&#x27;ve been using computers since I was a pre-teen, it wrecked both my forearms (and later, my neck) in my early 30&#x27;s. There was NO WARNING, the issues just happened out of nowhere. I always thought RSI, if it happened to me, would happen gradually and I&#x27;d know to stop&#x2F;rest. The neck stuff has taken a decade to heal and it&#x27;s still not back to normal.

Just want to mention sticky keys[1], as it seems often overlooked.<p>Instead of holding the modifier key(s) when activating a shortcut, you can press and release each modifier sequentially.<p>It does come with some of the fancy keyboards&#x27; firmware, but is also a built-in feature of all major OS-es. You can get it without spending a single dollar.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.emacswiki.org&#x2F;emacs&#x2F;StickyModifiers" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.emacswiki.org&#x2F;emacs&#x2F;StickyModifiers</a>

I am also 46 and can not do much of anything physical with my hands anymore, such as sand, paint, use a screwdriver, etc. Years ago I switched to an ergonomic keyboard (Kinesis Advantage 2) and a vertical mouse. Neither bother me at all, I can type and use the mouse just fine all day. Unsure if the two are related. Does the pain I feel from sanding indicate I&#x27;d feel similar pain with a non ergonomic setup? Not sure. But I am glad I made the switch, just in case.

40 years of development here, too .. my solution to the RSI problem, which I discovered in the 80&#x27;s, is quite simple: change my keyboard and mouse setup regularly - simply don&#x27;t use the same keyboard&#x2F;mouse for longer than 6 months, maximum.<p>Adopting this policy has kept RSI problems at bay, at least in my case. I have 3 or 4 favourite keyboards and I just switch them around ... giving my hands a chance to re-train on different weights&#x2F;resistances of keys, etc.

After a lifetime of programming I feel like I still have a pretty-good “keyboard stamina”. I attribute this to not having any habits, let alone bad ones. Or maybe they’re all bad. I’ll explain.<p>I started programming pretty early, but I didn’t have a desk until my first job after college. I pretty-much made do with whatever situation was available to me. I also started working pretty early, doing physical jobs. I bucked hay for local farmers at about 12 and started shearing Christmas trees at about 15. The latter doing a lot of damage to my shoulders over the next few years. In college I rowed crew, which didn’t make things better as far as my arms went.<p>After college I started programming and I’ve been doing it professionally for going over 30 years now. It’s never really been physically comfortable. Even back then I was good for like an hour-long sit at most before I had to get up and move around and “get the blood flowing“ so to speak. That’s never changed. I still don’t like working at a desk. I stand, I sit on the floor, I sit in comfortable chairs, I lay down on the sofa, I’ve been known to steer a sailboat with one hand and program with the other.<p>I feel like this is why it still works for me - I don’t repeat my posture much. I have a really, really low bar for my programming “situation” and take full advantage of that.

I am somewhat of an edge case<p>My left hands fingers are way more flexible and nimble than my right hand, even though I&#x27;m right dominant.<p>I do basically all typing with all my left hand&#x27;s 5 fingers, accompanied by just two fingers on the right hand.<p>I have looong fingers so it works out on standard keyboards without any need to stretch.<p>But yes, never ever put weight on your wrists while typing, same advice as when playing a violin.

im a little older than the author. I also play a musical instrument that I guess you would say is physically demanding, and I have a hobby that is sort of hard on the hands. On the forums I inevitably follow about those activities, there is a sort of background of paranoia about how if you don&#x27;t do everything perfectly all the time, your hands will be ruined, you will never have seen it coming, and you should base all your decision-making regarding practice time around avoiding catastrophic injury.<p>I&#x27;m sure there are some other people who share my interests who have been the victims of misfortune when it comes to RSI injuries, but I think for the bulk of us who do anything repetitive, it&#x27;s not incredibly difficult to avoid these issues if you just pay attention to what you feel.<p>For example, on Friday I noticed that, after pretty much a solid week of intense editing of code (I wrote a large thing and then realized I had gotten it all wrong and needed to move a lot of stuff into different files), I kept noticing that my elbows were killing me because they were grinding into the armrests of my chair. It didn&#x27;t dawn on me until the end of the week that the reason I don&#x27;t usually have that elbow discomfort is that years ago I took the armrests off my chair, or as the case with my current chair, I folded them backward and out of the way. I had put them down to clean them or something and forgot about it.<p>If I mind myself, I&#x27;ll notice the stuff that makes me uncomfortable. If I try doing whatever that is less and I feel better, then I&#x27;ve learned something. If I stop doing the thing that I&#x27;ve learned makes me uncomfortable, that&#x27;s great. If I did it too long and I need to visit a doctor or a therapist to help me undo the damage, that&#x27;s great too.<p>So long story short, pay attention to how you feel, recognize that however you feel is probably a result of the choices you&#x27;ve made, intentionally or not, and treat your body as a machine that needs maintenance and either find a good technician or learn to do it yourself when it makes sense.

I’m about the same age as the author and also tried the freestyle as my first ergonomic keyboard.<p>I’m now a big fan of my keybordio model 100.<p>If you’re young and you plan to do this for a living, a good ergo keyboard with firmware you can customize is one of the best investments you can do for your hands’ (and arms) health.

I&#x27;ve been programming (and gaming) 40+ years now, and weirdly, the main RSI injury I have is actually from when I was a kid using the Atari joystick as a left hander (this one <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;3&#x2F;33&#x2F;Atari-2600-Joystick.jpg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;commons&#x2F;3&#x2F;33&#x2F;Atari-26...</a> )<p>now any fine motion where I need any kind of pinching motion for more than 30 seconds is super painful and by thumb pretty much gives up (using my thumb to tap the spacebar on the keyboard is fine though).<p>Since learning about RSI about 30+ years ago, I regularly exercise and stretch my hands, so I think that has helped a lot.

At least he has a desktop. I cringe every time I see someone spend all day on a laptop.

I have found a trackball to be even better than a vertical mouse. Only your thumb moves.<p>Otherwise it&#x27;s also Ergodox for me. I switched to Colemak at the same time, also have a programming layer ()[]{} etc. In addition I have a layer for cursornavigation and selection, word wise&#x2F;char wise&#x2F;start&amp;ens of line&#x2F;page wise, comparable to vim mode, but using the default shortcuts for Windows and macos (with the help of Karabiner)<p>It took a few weeks to get up to speed but I couldn&#x27;t be happier.

I went tough much of the same in my 30s, and essentially went through the same steps and came to essentially the same conclusion, except in my case it means living on laptops with a trackpad

After less than a decade of programming around 8-10 hours every day, I could barely use my hands anymore. My forarms and shoulders were like marbles. I even stopped playing musical instruments because moving my finders was torture. Vim and split keybord (Dygma Raise) was my solution. I could feel the difference right away now, almost a year later, I don’t feel any pain at all. I feel lucky because I know people who have had to have surgery.

I recommend checking out Talon Voice[0] if you’re experiencing any wrist (or similar pain).<p>It’s a very intuitive and customizable voice coding tool, and even if you don’t need it at all times, you can use it to lower the strain on your hands. It’s surprisingly productive, too.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;talonvoice.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;talonvoice.com&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m curious if typing speed is any indicator of problems, or lack of problems. Per previous comment, I&#x27;ve been &quot;typing&quot; for over 40 years, no real problems, and am a really, really fast typer. My hands don&#x27;t spend a lot of time locked in one particular position, and my fingers are moving all kinds of ways constantly when typing. Just a thought.

I took the opportunity to learn an alternate KB layout (Workman) and I think that has been beneficial for my hands, which are average to slightly smaller than average, so QWERTY movements like T are a slight stretch. Have also got the split KB (Kinesis Freestyle Edge, which is OK. Would like something that can run QMK or similar). Also paying attention to the little nags and working them out is definitely valuable. For, e.g. I run &#x27;g sta&#x27; (git status) often, as well as &#x27;g lscm&#x27; (git log -20 --pretty etc); now I use Bash bindings to run both with Ctrl+j, and &#x27;cls&#x27; with Ctrl+l. I&#x27;ve even started using the KB&#x27;s &#x27;action keys&#x27; (I.e. those ones that aren&#x27;t part of the standard ANSI&#x2F;layout) for Winkey+1..n to spare my left hand the awkward chord from winkey to the number row. I also run a trackball for dev and a mouse for gaming so that I split my use over different muscles. Hoping it all keeps any kind of injury at bay.

Some things that have worked for me:<p>- Fish oil.<p>- Getting enough protein.<p>- Yoga. Especially for tight forearms and shoulders.

Well, I doubt that an ergonomy is the reason here. Going gym consistently benefits much more, rather than switch devices. I have never seen healthy programmers over 30 who avoided physical activity. But I saw how people from constant switching of ergonomic devices and clinics visits just in several months were able to forget about most of the pain in wrists and back just by consistent increase in their physical activity and adding some resistant training. Their back CT looks the almost same, but their lives are significantly improved. I work on any devices and sit on various chairs for almost 25 years, and never experienced any significant pains. Just visiting gym and having some massages. In my case the most significant factor that affects back health is stress, but massages is what help to maintain it.

Only 1 monitor for 40 years? p impressive

Doesn&#x27;t even mention what a legend he is one time, just straightforward useful clearly presented info.<p>Legend.<p>Also: the part about rock climbing because you can&#x27;t think about anything else resonates. I run for the same reason.

I can confirm that the vertical mouse (exactly same brand) fixes my wrist issue. I used to feel some pain after playing diablo 2 a few days, a few hours each but now this doesn&#x27;t bug me anymore.

I have experienced shooting pains along the backs of my hands. I had to lay off typing&#x2F;mousing for a few days for it to subside whenever I tried typing. After that experience, I learned an alternate keyboard layout (customized-NIRO) and I haven&#x27;t had any issues since. I don&#x27;t believe my typing speed changed much if at all, it was all about reducing strain and improving comfort.

The advice given to pianists is valuable for PC keyboard users: &quot;wrists up!&quot;<p>trackballs are possible to use without fatigue. mice, less so.

Lower back pain is probably the worst problem for many developers. I have ended up doing one minute dead hang every morning.

Ha! Experiences forearm and shoulder pain. Proceeds to mention casually he&#x27;s into rock climbing. DisplayS photos of games where (jerky) mouse mileage is, to put is mildly, excessive.<p>Talking about elephants in the room here... I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s the keyboard or mouse, dude! ;)<p>I&#x27;ve done rock climbing myself. Obviously, it&#x27;s a huge burden on the ligaments of the upper body. It&#x27;s also very fun (not in the least because it&#x27;s a bit scary), but you will feel those wrists a shoulders a bit the next day. Small price to pay, until it because really painful.<p>I would recommend to the author to try and mix in in some other fun sports like kite-surfing or mountain biking etc. Or dancing (salsa I can recommend if you&#x27;re open to the latin music). And limit mouse-mileage-heavy gaming a bit maybe? There&#x27;s a lot of other options (try Return of the Obra Dinn).<p>Finally, I don&#x27;t know if other have experienced this, but reflecting a bit on how you do programming can also help. Thinking more, resisting that urge to start typing away did a lot for me personally wrt my wrists and shoulders starting to loving me again. But that may be just me, of course.

I found using a gel pad in front of the keyboard and mouse cured my issues. I was having wrist problems where I got a lot of pain doing bench press or pushups or any pressure against my hands. I discovered this around 10 years ago.

Same on the wrist. I have one of those mice with a trackball on top that you use by running your hand over it. Absolute game changer and not at all difficult to work (probably even more sensitive tbh).

Ha, I was having wrist pain and I got that same wrist rest. I&#x27;ve recommended it to a lot of people. (Although I&#x27;ve never thought about cutting one in half for my mouse :)

&gt; Meditation in motion<p>Is that Pierre-Chauve in the background? Nicely climbing the Rocher du Roi Gros Nez then! I can never get enough of the vistas you get from that crest line..

I find that using the trackpad my wrist is always working to keep my hand over the trackpad without touching it.

Another thing that made a difference for me regarding wrist pain was to switch my keyboard layout to Colemak.

It’s crazy to think that even a rock climber can suffer from RSI. Goes to show it can happen to anyone.

i am early in my journey and would like to take preventative measures before i have to overcompensate with fancy equipment when it is too late.<p>what is it that one can do without spending too much or making overly drastic changes in how we work?

Standing desks, split keyboards, photos of outdoor adventures... I see these everywhere. Is this the modern developer&#x27;s midlife crisis at 40?

A WARNING for anyone who thinks this article doesn&#x27;t apply to them:<p>If you are reading this post and thinking, &quot;oh I don&#x27;t have these problems, I&#x27;m going to read something else&quot;, I encourage you to pause.<p>Having been in this industry for a while, I have seen RSI-type injuries happen to HUGE portions of my colleagues. I&#x27;ve met many people who have changed careers over this.<p>The reality is that spending 8-10+ hours a day in front of a keyboard is grueling on the hands, wrist, and arms (not to mention it can be for your back and neck as well).<p>It isn&#x27;t a matter of &quot;if&quot;, but &quot;when&quot;. For some the result is more impactful on their daily life than others, but it does affect nearly everyone to some extent.<p>So I encourage anyone who is still young, thinking this is a post for &quot;old people&quot;, to consider applying some of these principals today in hopes of pushing these problems further down the road or maybe even to put you in the minority of people who never have to deal with them in their career. The apple mighty-mouse thing (whatever they call it now) is horrible for your wrists and hands, throw it in the trash. Consider investing in some of these tools now, so you don&#x27;t suffer later.<p>In a similar vein, take care of your posture which can save you from back problems and neck or spine injuries later. Sit&#x2F;stand desks are great options and readily available now (and relatively affordable). Consider an ergonomic chair as well, and don&#x27;t be afraid to spend good money on it. You spend 8-10+ hours a day in it. It&#x27;s worth spending $1,000 on a desk and $1,000 on a chair that will save you thousands in medical bills and a priceless amount of avoided pain down the road. It&#x27;s funny to me how many engineers making $150k or more a year and won&#x27;t spend $2,000 on a good desk setup (which lasts for many many years). If you have a work-from-home budget, spend it on ergonomic tools, not a fancy monitor with a higher refresh rate.

Am I the only one who finds these &quot;I&#x27;ve been programming since 6&quot; posts silly? I mean, I used to mess up with computers since I was a child, but I wouldn&#x27;t call that &quot;programming&quot;. In fact if I&#x27;m completely honest, it wasn&#x27;t until 5 years ago when I truly started to learn and grow as an engineer, more than the rest of my career combined.<p>Rather than focused on quantity let&#x27;s focus on quality. 1 good year of experience is worth 10 bad ones.