Haacked reminds me of a post I’ve been meaning to throw on my site for a while now.  I’m not complaining (after all, I took this career choice knowing that it would entail a shitload of typing), but my fingers really hurt lately.  On my right hand, my fore/middle fingers tingle quite a bit, and have periods of numbness as well.  On my left hand it’s the same with my fore finger.  Actually the only fingers that experience no pain at all are the little guys and my thumbs.

It’s worth mentioning that I was formally trained in typing many years ago…I’m not saying I haven’t developed any bad habits over the years of staring into monitors and coding away, but I’d like to think I know what I’m doing.  I honestly think it’s related to the year+ I’ve been using a laptop almost exclusively.  I’ve noticed on a laptop (especially for the afore mentioned fingers that hurt) that I use the tips of those fingers more often than using the pad…laptop keyboards absolutely suck as they force your fingers to do wierd things to get to the different keys.  When is someone going to figure out how to put an ergo (which is the style I’ve used for years) keyboard in a laptop?  I would go the docking station route, except no one makes a docking station for my lappie.  Bastards.  I do use an external mouse over the builtin trackpad (trackpads == finger suicide IMO).

Point is, I’m not near far enough into my career to be going through this discomfort.  I’m not familiar enough with repetitive stress injuries to know if it’ll get worse (or if it can get better, I’m assuming it can though).  I do know this, I probably need to ditch the laptop and go back to a desktop setup, or buy a lappie with a docking station…both of which would let me get back to my beloved ergo keyboards.  Haacked swears by dvoraks over qwertys, but wouldn’t that entail having to learn how to type all over again (a dreadful proposition…nightmares of asdf jkl; all over again)?  Anyone else made the switch?  It’s definitely something worth thinking about as I need to tackle this sooner than later, otherwise I may need to consider a new line of work.

Sidenote:  I did order this book (again on Haacked’s recommendation), so I look forward to seeing the recommendations mentioned therein…I’m sure not using a laptop all the time is up there on their list.  The rest of me is fine (back/neck and whatnot…mostly due to the chair I use (pricey, but very much worth it)), it’s just the damn fingers that are killing me from time to time.