[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.