My job requires us to use Mac. I've spent the week figuring how to get stuff done on it.

My best description of trying to code on mac is that it's kinda like having to extract your mangled penis from a blender before you bleed to death... Except you can't look directly at it, you have to wear a VR headset that's linked to a camera in the corner of the room.

And you can't use your hands directly you have to use an incredibly stylish and ergonomic looking steering wheel to control a robotic arm. The robotic arm has its own artificial intelligence and it desperately wants to help.

Unfortunately it doesn't understand anything about what you're trying to do and it keeps leaping to incorrect conclusions about what you want from it.

Everyone tells you it'll get better, but you're still in intense pain and your penis is still stuck in the blender.

The colleague:

- I can't work, my chair is uncomfortable
- I can't work, my chair is not ergonomic
- I can't work, my desk is too small
- I can't work, my legs are uncomfortable
- I can't work, my keyboard is not ergonomic
- I can't work on this task, John knows how to do it better
- I will only work on <this> type of tasks. I will not work on others
*gets assigned <other> task; browses the internet all day; at the EOD task isn't even touched*
- I can't work with Jack, he's too noisy
- I can't come to the office on time, there's traffic in the city
- I couldn't come yesterday, I was out of town. No, I will not log a vacation day - I was NOT on vacation. It's personal
- I can't<...>

Manager, 2 days to the end of said colleague's probation period:
- I am very sorry to tell you this, but our attitudes are not in line and we cannot continue working together. Since this is your 5th warning, we have to let you go.

The colleague:
- What?? How come?? I did NOT see this coming... You can't do this! I work here! This is where I work and you can't fire me!

*got his things from his desk and left. Never came back*

Everyone at the office:
- YAYYYY!!!! Let's have a shorter day today and let's celebrate this riddance in a pub! (manager agreed)

I like my inputs. Buttons are fun! Guess that's why I ended up here.

This facts are killing me

"During his own Google interview, Jeff Dean was asked the implications if P=NP were true. He said, "P = 0 or N = 1." Then, before the interviewer had even finished laughing, Jeff examined Google’s public certificate and wrote the private key on the whiteboard."

"Compilers don't warn Jeff Dean. Jeff Dean warns compilers."

"gcc -O4 emails your code to Jeff Dean for a rewrite."

"When Jeff Dean sends an ethernet frame there are no collisions because the competing frames retreat back up into the buffer memory on their source nic."

"When Jeff Dean has an ergonomic evaluation, it is for the protection of his keyboard."

"When Jeff Dean designs software, he first codes the binary and then writes the source as documentation."

"When Jeff has trouble sleeping, he Mapreduces sheep."

"When Jeff Dean listens to mp3s, he just cats them to /dev/dsp and does the decoding in his head."

"Google search went down for a few hours in 2002, and Jeff Dean started handling queries by hand. Search Quality doubled."

"One day Jeff Dean grabbed his Etch-a-Sketch instead of his laptop on his way out the door. On his way back home to get his real laptop, he programmed the Etch-a-Sketch to play Tetris."

"Jeff Dean once shifted a bit so hard, it ended up on another computer. "

Just bought a Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard/mouse combo, it's actually quite awesome and I'm learning how to properly type with 10 fingers!

I somehow feel conflicted though because I'm using something from microsoft :sweat_smile_

A previous co-worker (dev) bought a "foot mouse" he found on a Chinese website, then changed his keyboard's layout to match the "natural human cognitive ability" also bought a sleeping bag because he needed a "power nap" after lunch break he even asked our MD to buy him an ergonomic chair which would cost around 1200 USD ( of course our MD refused) then the worst of the worst, he had this habit of chewing his food loudly when he's eating something he likes.
One time our operations manager (she was pregnant XD) screamed at him from her desk " RAYAAAAN SHUT YOUR FUCKING MOUTH I CAN HEAR IT FROM HERE DAMN IT"

He literally spilled some of the food he was chewing on his desk and I burst out laughing like crazy.
On the same day our MD told us to follow a new "no food in office" policy 😂😂😂

Sad story is that when he left the company I had to revert his PC to how it was including resetting the keyboard layout to default, remember his "foot mouse" ? Well he had to modify the mouse settings so all directions were inverted.

The first thing I said when I turned on his laptop was

FUCK YOU RAYAN!!

What do you guys think of my office? I do all my web dev work on a monitor mounted above my bed using my split Infinity Ergodox keyboard / trackpad. Probably the most lazy / ergonomic / comfortable / geeky setup possible. 🤓

That moment that you start typing on your new ergonomic keyboard and suddenly notice that your muscle memory has nearly entirely adjusted to this new keyboard without you even noticing it because you're suddenly typing at full speed while you hardly could type any sentence an hour ago without looking at your keyboard.

This kinda stuff never ceases to amaze me!

!quiteRant

Since I'm working for 3 years as a parttime software engineer, I started to feel my tendon sheath more and more, sometimes it was hurting so I decided to have a look around on ergonomic keyboards, because in the office we only have these flat, thin wireless keyboards which are the fucking opposite of ergonomic.
They feel like when Eddie Scissorhands has to cut hair of a pile of rocks.
So after some reviews I decided to buy a Kinesis Advantage2 (made in the USA of Americas) eventhough it is quite expensive (379 Kanuckistan Kopeks).

I must say this keyboard is fucking well engineered. You can remap every key in a few keypresses and it is stored on the keyboard itself, no software required... awesome!
The disadvantage for me is, being pretty tall I have very wide shoulders so the 2 keyboard pits are a bit too close together in my oppinion.
The other thing is, you really have to get used to it... I am slowly advancing in speed and it feels great. No pain anymore and I don't have to move my hands at all.

So what are your experiences with keyboards and does your workplace have a good setup for staying healthy?

Saw one of these in store today.
Who designs these "Ergonomic" things?
My fingers starts aching just by looking at this..

I need an ergonomic keyboard -.-

Does this seem "ergonomic" to you?

Not a rant, but still relevant:
GET YOURSELF A PROPER ERGONOMIC CHAIR!

I'm pushing 30, but have been coding/messing with computers since i was a barely a teenager.
I code at work and i code at home, and while i consider myself decently fit and observe decent routine regarding standing up regularly at work, my lower back is still all kinds of fucked. (Facet Joint Disease - look it up if you are bored)

This is SUPER common in our field and i figure most of you here are working more and more from home, from you couch probably. This is killing your back, and let me tell you, coding is freaking difficult when you feel like the thousand knives of the management layer is in your back literally instead of metaphorically.

You will be sitting in the same damn chair/set of chairs for the majority of rest of your life, make sure its good, preferably before your back is screwed.

Never tried the ergonomic mouse before, have you?

So I log into a great new site with my development machine. 64G of RAM, and 2 hex core CPU's; GTX 1070 video, SSD, etc. 4K display screen. (Motherboard is 5 years old, not trying to brag, just give context). I regularly put 8 pages of text on the screen side by side. Split ergonomic keyboard.

It wants me to load a mobile app for "full access".

Yea, why look at the world with wide open eyes when you can view everything through a cardboard toilet paper tube and type with your thumbs???

== John ==

It's 2017 and every keyboard on Earth still has vertically unaligned keys !
And if you think it's for ergonomic reason, you're wrong ! It's just something we inherited from goddamn typewriters.
It's time to let that go !
Far far away in the past.
Right next to floppy disks, MySpace and Nicolas Cage !

Late night ramble warning.

I like to fix issues. I like to roll up my sleeves and fetch my keyboard or soldering iron on a mission to build a custom solution for whatever real world annoyance that has just triggered my problem solving caveman brain.

I have prided myself in that. I am the kind of guy who doesn't shy away from getting my hands dirty, I tell myself, and it's good because it makes my life easier, I tell myself. But increasingly, I've been wondering if this is really so. Am I really making my life easier? Am I fixing the world or just scratching an itch?

Example 1:
Instead of using conventional backup methods for my personal files like a commercial cloud based service or buying a Synology NAS or something similar, I decided it would be better to build my own linux server and set up a rather obscure configuration in order to address things like parity, ECC, bit-rot and the likes while staying cheap.

Learning a lot? Sure. Fun? Sure. Never have to worry about backups again? The opposite, of course.

While I set out to build the perfect bespoke solution to all my personal backup needs - it's as if I, by putting my time and effort into the nitty gritty of technical implementation, placed a vote for my future to contain more of that stuff. In reality this project has burdened my little brain with many new things to consider in regards to storing my files.

Example 2:
Qwerty and the conventional staggered keyboard layout are relics of past technical limitations and both of them inefficient and bad from an ergonomic perspective.

Possible solution: ignore and carry on or possibly transition to Colemak on a somewhat more ergonomic full size keyboard.
My solution: well, let's also hand build a tiny-ass super obscure ergo keyboard and spend two days to come up with my own layout for all special characters, numbers and function keys.

Fun? Somewhat. Learning a lot? I guess. Never have to think about keyboard layouts again? Lol.

I'm living in a world of pain with various key commands in various apps and edge cases. Could I fix it? Probably make it better but not without quite a bit of effort.

Anyways, it'd be interesting to hear if anyone can relate to this feeling of wanting to fix something once and for all only to find yourself deeper in it then ever before. Idk might be a just me thing. Anyways, goodnight lovely people.

The client in my previous two rants officially hired me as their Head of Tech Support.

I moved into the tech support office today, with a super comfy ergonomic chair and a huge table.

If only there's someone else here......

I'm freaked out like I have never been freaked out before. My pinky finger (don't know what the actual name for it is) started to get itchy about two days ago and steadily got worse and now it's gotten to the point that it's almost numb and vibrates constantly. I guess it's because I use my laptop's keyboard and repeatedly use Shift or Ctrl keys. Anyways just wanted to share my panicky day with you all and wish you healthy fingers.

P.S. I ordered an ergonomic keyboard just today but still, you know how much we need our fingers, I have the right to panic here!

What is more essential? A good CPU or a good GPU?

Me --- A good ergonomic chair.

After working 16 hours at a stretch I got a fucking bad back pain ..

Oh godddd!!!!!!! Kill me Please !!!!!

I would really love a type-safe python - quickly write a script with all the IDE-coddling that a type system can bring, and run/debug it with no compilation.

I'm a big typescript fan but the compile step and all the issues of the node ecosystem are a pain.

Really wanna play with F#'s scripting capabilities but not yet supported on dot net core.

MyPy is somewhat promising but it's slow and not the most ergonomic, library support is still lagging behind, and it's not expressive as a proper type system.

For all the languages we are blessed with these days, it's an odd void.

Finally invested the money in a proper and ergonomic office chair, and it is the best money I've spent in a long time. The difference is really night and day!

I have a rant. A genuine rant, not a funny story, etc.

I want a keyboard. I need one. It can cost €500, as long as it won't break in a year and fulfils all my needs. Make it a €1000, I don't care. What are my needs then? Well...

It has to be a split keyboard - two halves. But wireless in every aspect, ergonomic, with multimedia keys on its outer edges (preferably pointing outwards, not up) and a heavy metal trackball on the right outer edge (preferably upper right corner). That's a bare minimum.

On top of that it probably some magnetic scrolls for things like navigating pages, changing volume and fidgeting in general wouldn't hurt. Also I'd prefer it to snap back into a one-piece whenever I need it to lie on my knees, e.g. when I type while sitting on a coach (I have a coach PC setup, no desk, and there's a reason). Why do I need it to split then...?

I had an accident. Kind of broke my back when I was 11. It's mostly okay now after couple years of rehabilitation and many more years of careful living. Luckily the only two wheels I ride on are powered by a 105.97 hp @ 9,970 rpm engine. Still, I try to be careful so I tried tons of work hygiene techniques over the years and I found out anything over 2 hours is best done while lying flat.

Coding while lying flat has its challenges, mostly focused around screen and input. Ever since I got a VR headset half of them got solved but the other half - acquiring a suitable keyboard - it's very hard to satisfy. I tried that with a one-piece keyboard lying on my stomach. Turns out actively bending elbows quickly wears them out (hello tennis players). So a split keyboard it has to be. So far I tried 4 different ones and I had to modify the cable connecting both halves in each and every one of them so that it'd be long enough to go behind my back. The main cable itself I only had to modify once because usually there're extensions available.

Apart from cables, all of those keyboards had issues. Starting from some kind of de-syncing when keys from both halves would randomly register in a wrong order - I didn't know it's possible with a cable connected halves... I did try two generic WiFi keyboards (using one for each hand) and they unfortunately suffered from that very same issue but I was sure it wouldn't happen if the device was designed to be a one unit from the very beginning, right? And yet it in 2 of the tested devices.

Other than that, plugs disconnecting on their own forcing me to take off the headset and fiddle around, too high key travel that'd strain the wrists after a few hours, even the noise that would wake up my girlfriend sleeping in a separate room were all a common issue (I briefly had an almost completely silent WiFi mechanical keyboard from Logitech we both really liked, but it was a one-piece). Once I got a split keyboard that was "natively" WiFi but not only the two halves were still connected with a cable that turned out to be way too short for my needs, it also had a very noticeable lag despite the high price - a lag way higher than any of the cheap WiFi keyboards I owned in the past. So I sent it back. Now IDK what to do because AFAICT there are no more models available, at least where I live.

So yeah, I need a keyboard and I'll probably have to make one myself. Sorry, just had to vent.

!rant

guys what do you think of microsoft ergonomic sculpt keyboard?, does it feel good?, i think its pretty cool

Its hard being a developer with out using ergonomic keyboard or mouse, the strain hurts my hand so much.

As we're sitting like nearly all day, my sit is like dead.. I was wondering if some (tall) people have recommendation about good sit ?

I'm not living US so please, don't give me Walmart references. :p

Thanks

Why do you use ergonomic keyboard?

Do ergonomic keyboards and mice help?

Yesterday I went through 6 hour maintenance without a break which involved a lot of typing and clicking.... (Because shit never works properly on live server, right?)
And now my right shoulder through my wrist feels numb.

I'm thinking maybe it's time to give up on 'gaming' rigs...
What are your thoughts?
Or should I just stretch more often?

What diseases or health problems do programmers commonly suffer from?
How do you take care of yourself? What mistakes you made?

Are computer glasses worth it?
What is the best investment you made for your health? e.g. ergonomic mouse or keyboard. How useful are these ergonomic gadgets?

I'm 26yrs. old. I've learnt the value of physical and mental health, so I'm starting to take care of it now.

(I'm not completely sure of what I'm saying here, so don't take this too seriously)

Settling on a language to write the api for ranterix is hard.

I'm finding a lot of things about elixir to be insanely good for a stable api.

But I'm having a lot of gripes with the most important elixir web framework, phoenix.

Take a look at this piece of code from the phoenix docs:

defmodule Hello.Repo.Migrations.CreateUsers do
use Ecto.Migration
def change do
create table(:users) do
add :name, :string
add :email, :string add :bio, :string
add :number_of_pets, :integer
timestamps()
end
end
end

Jesus christ, I hate this shit.

Wtf are create, add and timestamps. Add is somehow valid inside the create, how the fuck is that considered good code? What happens if you call timestamps twice? It's all obscure "trust me, it works" code.

It appears to be written by a child.

js may have a million problems. But one thing I like about CJS (require) or ESM (import) is that there's nothing unexplained. You know where the fuck most things come from.

You default export an eatShit() function on one file and import it from another, and what do you get?
The goddamn actual eatShit function.

require is a function the same way toString is a function and it returns whatever the fuck you had exported in the target file.

Meanwhile some dynamic langs are like "oh, I'll just export only some lang construct that i expect you to specify and put that shit in fucking global of the importing file".

Js is about the fucking freedom. It won't decide for you what things will files export, you can export whatever the fuck you want, strings, functions, classes, objects or even nothing at all, thanks to module.exports object or export statement.

And in js, you can spy on anything external, for example with (...args) => debugger; fnToSpyOn(...args)

You can spoof console.log this way to see what the fuck is calling it (note: monkey patching for debugging = GOOD, for actual programming = DOGSHIT)

To be fair though, that is possible because of being a dynamic lang and elixir is kind of a hybrid typed lang, fair enough.

But here's where i drop the shit.

Phoenix takes it one step further by following the braindead ruby style of code and pretty DSLs.

I fucking hate DSLs, I fucking hate abstraction addiction.

Get this, we're not writing fucking poetry here. We're writing programs for machines for them to execute.

Machines are not humans with emotions or creativity, nor feel.

We need some level of abstraction to save time understanding source code, sure.

But there has to be a balance. Languages can be ergonomic for humans, but they also need to be ergonomic for algorithms and machines.

Some of the people that write "beautiful" "zen" code are the folks that think that everyone who doesn't push the pretty code agenda is a code elitist that doesn't want "normal" people to get into programming.

Programming is hard, man, there's no fucking way around it.

Sometimes operating system or even hardware details bleed into code.

DSLs are one easy way to make code really really easy to understand, but also make it really fucking hard to debug or to lose "programming meaning".

I understand technical limitations and maintenance burden, but I think Rust could be a lot more ergonomic if the borrow checker was applied to functions that don't reference invalid types even if the rest of the codebase contains type errors. I have 146 lifetime errors, some of them very fundamental to the design of my solution, which I didn't spot because the borrow checker wouldn't run until I fixed all totally unrelated type errors in parts of the project that literally only interact with this one through virtual function calls.

What ergonomic chairs do you devs use? Balls? kneeling chairs? Photo and your experience using it would be cool

Damn. I just broke my ergonomic keyboard. I love learning Flutter, but it's layout system sometimes causes an unbounded rage constraint error in my brain.

Is anyone else eagerly waiting for their x-bows keyboard? (New ergonomic and mechanical keyboard funded on kickstarter and indiegogo)

!rant

My life was turned upside down when I discovered negative tilt on my workdesk. Here I come, job!

Random question to everyone out there:
Do you guys use a specific keyboard?
As in a mechanical or just the off the shelf keyboard? Do you invest in ergonomic ones or not?

I ask because I've been looking at ortholinear keyboards and was wondering if they work or if they're even worth it.

No rants about new MacBook pro generation? Obviously one must rant about the absolute need to buy adapters to connect keyboard&mouse (let's be honest, BT devices out there are mostly nowhere near ergonomic)

I slide into my kiddie pool of Nutella, pull my ergonomic mouse and keyboard in nessled tightly around me, dim the lights, turn off Alexa, and... what was I going to do again?

Quick question for everyone who wasn't fully remote before march:

What kind of setup did your company provide? Did you have nice ergonomic chairs/desks? Monitors higher res than 1080p? Mechanical keyboards? How powerful was your workstation?

Best ergonomic keyboard for programmers?

Any keyboard recommendations? Trying to looking the most ergonomic one.

I often got a wrist pain after doing long typing for a few hours on my MBP butterfly keyboard. Realize, typing on this keyboard is not for me.