[FreshCode]

Until Jeff Atwood tries an ergonomic keyboard or layout other than QWERTY, I cannot take his keyboard cult seriously. I've owned three MS 4000s and have used QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak keyboard layouts. Ever since I purchased a Kinesis Advantage a month ago on Colemak, going back to an MS 4000 noticeably hurts my hands. I don't type any faster, but it is far more natural to use my thumbs (our strongest fingers) for common keys like Ctrl/Space/Del/PgUp/PgDown/WinKey, especially as a climber.

I find it hard to believe a Model M could be easier on the wrists than my abhorrent Macbook Air 2012 keyboard, due to its equally straight, unnatural angle. Compared to my old Acer C312 tablet with a 5-degree angle, typing 90wpm+ for more than an hour is not sustainable.

Either Jeff types really slowly, or has golden wrists of the gods. After a few months of Colemak, I am up to 90% of my accumulated 15-year QWERTY speed, but my hands feel far more relaxed.

Could this be a medical condition on my end, or is there a real ergonomic case to be made for the aging Model M? Right now, I don't buy it.

[seanmcdirmid]

> I find it hard to believe a Model M could be easier on the wrists than my abhorrent Macbook Air 2012 keyboard, due to its equally straight, unnatural angle.

I find ergonomic keyboards pointless, but I also don't have (or have ever had) wrist problems.

> Compared to my old Acer C312 tablet with a 5-degree angle, typing 90wpm+ for more than an hour is not sustainable.

Who types 90wpm+ when programming? We are programmers, not typists, we spend most of our time thinking and debugging, with only some intermittent spurts of typing activity. For spurts of typing, the Model M is perfect. If you had to write a lot continuously, I'm sure there are better solutions, but even when I'm writing a paper, the thinking/typing ratio is high.

> Could this be a medical condition on my end, or is there a real ergonomic case to be made for the aging Model M? Right now, I don't buy it.

Given that your work sounds more like stenography and not programming, it is probably just that this keyboard is not meant for you.

[FreshCode]

Sean, have you tried any of the ergonomic keyboards which you find pointless? Unless you have, your argument seems a lot like my ol' man's arguments against <Internet/Facebook/YouTube> a few years ago.

Atwood specifically addresses the fallacy of "thinking vs typing as the bottleneck for programming" with the statement [1]: "What I'm trying to say is this: speed matters. When you're a fast, efficient typist, you spend less time between thinking that thought and expressing it in code."

It's not about averaging 90wpm in code. No programmer I know does that. It's about not averaging 10wpm once you've finished thinking and want to materialize your thoughts or revert a mistake.

My work is typing, primarily code and email. Every minute I spend typing my thoughts is a minute of thought wasted.

[1]: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/11/we-are-typists-firs...

[seanmcdirmid]

> "What I'm trying to say is this: speed matters. When you're a fast, efficient typist, you spend less time between thinking that thought and expressing it in code."

Hence bursty sprint speed is more important than sustained speed. Mechanical keyboards are quite good at bursty sprint speeds in my experience. Sustained speed is another matter, I can see where the power return of each key press would cause soreness (like wearing shoes with springs), but its not a problem I have as a programmer who mostly just sprints.

> It's about not averaging 10wpm once you've finished thinking and want to materialize your thoughts or revert a mistake.

Yes, but you don't have that problem on a mechanical.

> My work is typing, primarily code and email. Every minute I spend typing my thoughts is a minute of thought wasted.

Right, the question is not about whether speed matters, but what kind of speed matters. Do you type for a minute without pausing?

[baddox]

> Sean, have you tried any of the ergonomic keyboards which you find pointless? Unless you have, your argument seems a lot like my ol' man's arguments against <Internet/Facebook/YouTube> a few years ago.

If my wrist/hand/arm/etc. comfort level while using my non-ergonomic keyboard is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level, why would switching provide any useful data?

[FreshCode]

@baddox, my fingers' comfort level when looking up a contact and phoning them on my Nokia 3100's is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level. Why should switching to a smartphone provide any useful data?

Sidenote: the question for any new technology should always be "Why not?" Not "Why???".

For this particular anecdotal case, I am not claiming I have the answer, but please consider trying it before raising an indefensible argument. I have tried a bunch of keyboards and layouts. Surely my derivations are fallible, but empirically, they should carry more weight than a "keyboard enthusiast" who has not even tried a different keyboard layout or any of the well-known ergonomic keyboards.

[baddox]

> @baddox, my fingers' comfort level when looking up a contact and phoning them on my Nokia 3100's is indistinguishable from my ambient comfort level. Why should switching to a smartphone provide any useful data?

Because the promise of a smartphone is not to remove discomfort in your fingers. As far as I know, that's the only promise of ergonomic keyboards.

> Sidenote: the question for any new technology should always be "Why not?" Not "Why???".

I agree, and in the case of ergonomic keyboards, the answer to "Why not?" is "Because I don't suffer from any stress injuries or musculoskeletal problems."

[RogerL]

Empiricism trumps theory. You theorize people don't type fast enough for it to matter, but a large number of programmers, including me, report that ergonomic keyboards help them. Why are you arguing against the evidence?

[seanmcdirmid]

I've tried ergonomic keyboards and was turned off by the lack of key feedback. I never really got to whether the shape was better or not, just that the mushy tactile key press experience was vastly inferior to my Model M.

[FreshCode]

+1 because of justified, though anecdotal, experience. Which ergonomic keyboard did you try?

[seanmcdirmid]

The Microsoft ones, which were given to me at work.

[baddox]

You might be overestimating the actual observable effects "ergonomic" keyboards have over traditional designs. I wouldn't make a confident ergonomic claim for either type of keyboard, but I'm very skeptical that ergonomic keyboards on average provide observable health benefits. And, anecdotally, I've never had any health problems related to ergonomics (26 years old, 8+ hours a day at a computer desk for at least the last 10 years).

[FreshCode]

@baddox, which keyboard layout are on, QWERTY?

[baddox]

Yes, standard QWERTY with Caps Lock remapped to Ctrl (I use Emacs).

[jrs99]

you can't just move to a mechanical and expect an immediate increase in speed. I use a mechanical keyboard. When I switch to a rubber dome, i notice a DECREASE in speed, because I'm just not used to it. It takes a long time to get the same speed when you switch to a mechanical, but when you do, you may continue to increase and surpass your speed on a rubber dome. Most fast typists (200-250+ wpm on short passages) use a mechanical non-ergonomic keyboard plus qwerty layout.

[FreshCode]

@jrs99, I explicitly state that I do not expect an increase in speed. Especially when switching to a more efficient keyboard layout, like Colemak or Dvorak, after using QWERTY for 15+ years.

I expect it to take at least a year to reach my old QWERTY speed on Colemak. Sure, speed is important, but comfort: that's the Rolls Royce of typing.

[jrs99]

You said "Either Jeff types really slowly, or has golden wrists of the gods."

Which made me think you associate slow typing with low comfort and fast typing with high comfort.

I mean that if you switch, you'll be uncomfortable simply because you are not used to it. That will automatically make you slower.

But if you take any keyboard, you can become reasonably comfortable with it, in my opinion, if you get used to it. For example, if you've been using ergonomic dvorak keyboards for many years, then it will take a while for you to get comfortable with a standard qwerty keyboard.

But, that's my case. I'm comfortable with most keyboards that I use for a long time. I guess there are many factors like hand size, finger size, shape, previous injuries/strain etc that could change that.