[el-duderino42]

As a piano player I don’t get all that obsession about the home row. I like (and possess) a good quality keyboard as the next guy, but that home row optimization makes no sense to me. Moving your arms is good for you, not bad! Look at a 88 key piano, people manage just fine to move their arms up and down a bit.

[thomastjeffery]

Moving your arms, yes, but not your wrists!. Unless you want a row of keys stretching six times as wide as a standard keyboard, we are talking about entirely different movements here.

As a side note, the piano is infamous for causing injuries. A lot of work has gone into mitigating them, but it's not an ideal platform by any means.

What we really need to do for PC keyboards is split the keyboard into two halves and get rid of the typewriter column stagger.

[IggleSniggle]

I’m a different piano player than who you are responding to, but I kind of type this way. I’ve never been a home-row person, and will cross my hand over the other if it’s convenient (or, more usually, just drift one hand onto the “other side” or up or down), but don’t have any trouble typing around 130wpm with accuracy (I can go faster but quickly lose accuracy).

Sidenote, but I’ll also do one-hand 5-finger typing on a cellphone screen, because it’s faster than thumbs even with the input lag. Or I did, until I got hooked on word-swiping.

I know I’m biased from years of practice doing it this way, but I still kinda believe that most people don’t because they didn’t take a few minutes out of their day for a week or two to really focus on their hands as they input. Instead, they’ll focus on shifting around their hardware and software, even though rewriting your wetware really doesn’t take that long and is far more portable. I even suspect that the 60-key enthusiasts are actually just tricking themselves into this kind of focus as a kind of oblique strategy.

[Swizec]

As a non-piano player that started having wrist problems over 10 years ago, +1 to this. Rewriting my wetware has had the biggest impact.

Two tricks that made all the difference: Float my hands, move from the shoulder.

After trying all sorts of keyboards and mice (and still loving them), I can now type comfortably on any keyboard in any weird position. Hell I do most of my writing on an iPad + Magic Keyboard combo sitting in my lap. Can type for hours like this with zero pain or discomfort.

The hard part was learning how to move my mouse from the shoulder instead of using finger or wrist movements. Keyboard was relatively easy.

[Izkata]

> Moving your arms, yes, but not your wrists!. Unless you want a row of keys stretching six times as wide as a standard keyboard, we are talking about entirely different movements here.

Not really. It's the obsession with home row that creates wrist-twisting.

> What we really need to do for PC keyboards is split the keyboard into two halves and get rid of the typewriter column stagger.

I'm self-taught and instead use the edges of the keyboard to orient myself, and use my shoulders and elbows to move my forearm inwards from a very different resting positing. Not much wrist movement.

(for anyone curious, my usual resting keys are around shift/a/w/d/space and alt/l/p/[/] on a US qwerty keyboard, but it's not strict)

[IggleSniggle]

I am exactly the same way, and it’s refreshing to run into a like-minded soul. I will admit to having always wanted to try a stenographer’s keyboard, though, just optimized for code.

[schwartzworld]

This response blows my mind. I'm not a piano player, but I have played stringed and brass instruments of various kinds since high school (over 20 years, sheesh).

On every instrument I played, there are fundamentals that are required to get beyond the beginner level. Without proper form more advanced techniques can be harder to learn, and even worse can lead to injury. Louis Armstrong couldn't play trumpet at the end of his career because his lips constantly hurt. I would imagine there are pianists with wrist or finger injuries due to years of playing with improper form.

So on a computer keyboard, the things you want to optimize for are speed, accuracy and ergonomics. It's not like a piano. Expression is not a factor. Nobody cares if you type staccato or legato. Home row typing is the most common way to optimize for this, but not the only way.

I don't use the proper home row, but I did learn to type that way originally courtesy of Mavis Beacon.

[bbor]

Interesting take, I love it. That said - do people play piano for 6-8h a day? Or, knowing piano players and their … let’s say “determination”: after how many hours do your arms get tired?

[NineStarPoint]

You have to gain a habit of holding your body and hands very specifically at a piano to not gain an rsi (which at the beginning does make you more tired, but like anything else you gain the needed muscles over time if you stick with it). Most people aren't that careful with their keyboard positioning and how they hold themselves while typing, so I do have to wonder if there's more to be done on the human side even with an unoptimized keyboard layout.

[bbor]

I do wonder what will happen to ergonomics in the upcoming VR-replaces-your-laptop revolution. Apple had some working steps highlighted in their ad for Vision Pro that would make a piano player weep

[TylerE]

Nothing( because it won’t. And this is why.

[occamrazor]

Professional pianist practice hours every day. The main differences in posture, compared to an office chair, are:

1. A flat seat, without back

2. No wrist support.

[bbor]

You raise good points, and just showed me what my fallback career should be: Herman Miller salesperson targeting just professional musicians. Proper ergonomics is going to blow their minds! The people who want orchestras to look they did in 1700s Austria will just have to get over it

[url00]

Do you constantly type for 6-8h a day? Surely even the most dedicated typists aren't going to spend all day constantly mashing on keys.

[bbor]

Very fair. I suppose writing code is more like composing piano music than practicing it

[mynegation]

I think the rationale is that it aggravates repetitive stress injury. I am not a doctor and lucky not to have an RSI, do not play the piano either, so I do not really have an opinion for this. The reason I avoid the remappings because it messes up my muscle memory when I have to move between computers.