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by boogerlad 441 days ago
If you're going to learn it, use at least a split columnar keyboard and a non qwerty layout. Learning to touch type on a regular keyboard will likely worsen your health compared to your four finger hunt and peck due to the bad uncomfortable qwerty touch typing enforces. Think about the awful pinky curls and reaches. Ouch!
3 comments

I'm almost 40 and have no issues with this yet. Colemak is my favorite non-QWERTY and feels smooth, but sadly, programming was designed with QWERTY in mind. The 30% comfort improvement wasn't really worth it and there's a speed drop because I've been on QWERTY since 5 years old. I also use my laptop in well, laptop mode half the time, so eventually I went back to QWERTY.

But it's actually surprising on mobile how much easier a non-QWERTY keyboard is considering it's two thumbs and your thumbs are at the pinky areas most of the time.

spread dev pinky awareness whenever possible, we need a ribbon..the struggle is real and its a sign of excessive copy pasting. customized split keyboard is the cure so bring on the subsidized moonlanders for all
I think subsidized svalboards are far better. Moonlanders are an evolution to the standard keyboard design, but a svalboard is a step function improvement - a true keyboard revolution.
I'm mostly "stuck" to my company-provided QWERTY Macbook, but interesting thought.