This article was written in 2024, looking back at my previous home lab projects and where my journey into IT began.
This article is part of a series on Other Projects.
A Better Way to Type
Coming off the heels of thePrimeagen’s Data Structures and Algorithms course, I was experiencing some major wrist pains from writing TypeScript code on a laptop keyboard for 20 hours of the past week. I realized that I would need to do something (and fast) in order to solve the problem, if this was a path I wanted to pursure. However, the solution was right in front of me, even if it was a bit expensive: the Kinesis Advantage360 keyboard.
I had seen Prime using the Kinesis keyboard throughout the Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) course, and I knew from other videos of his that he was a huge fan of his keyboard. Since I had already started to feel pain in my wrists from only a week of coding, I decided to take the plunge and get myself one too.
An image of the Kinesis Advantage360 keyboard.
It was an absolute game-changer. It wasn’t without some growing pains… but, at least the wrist pains were gone.
I ordered the keyboard the weekend after taking Prime’s DSA course, and it arrived the following Monday. I excitedly unboxed the keyboard, cleared it off my desk, and admired it for a few minutes before plugging it in and testing how it felt. I pulled up MonkeyType and started doing some typing tests. I was amazed. Where I had been able to type at ~100 words per minute (WPM) on my conventional mechanical keyboard, I was now typing at a record… 3 WPM.
I was shook. Was this a skill issue, or was it the keyboard? I tried out some more typing tests. Thankfully, I started seeing some improvements after a few minutes. 3 WPM became 4 WPM, 4 WPM became 6 WPM, and it wasn’t long before I was back at a mighty 10 WPM. Clearly, it was going to take more effort than I had expected to get use to the keyboard. After a few hours of typing tests, I started to approach 60 WPM. Not my fastest, but I was getting the hang of the keyboard.
The Benefits of Using a Kinesis Keyboard
While I’m back to my previous highs of 100 WPM, and I’m grateful for all the changes I had to get use to, I didn’t realize that it would take a day or two (up to a week) to get used to them. The benefits of the curved and orthogonal keys are unmatched; but, early on, I found myself attempting to move my fingers in ways that I no longer needed. In addition, I no longer have to use my weakest fingers to reach out for curly braces ("{ }") and brackets ("[ ]"), as they’re found just below the comma and period keys. This has resulted in a far more comfortable experience when writing code. I also like that I get to use my thumbs to access keys like Ctrl, Alt, and the Super (Windows) key, which means I can utilize my window manager (DWM) with far less strain than I would with a regular keyboard.
What’s been most interesting about the experience has been going back to conventional-style keyboard, like I do when I use a laptop from time to time. I really haven’t seen much of a slow-down coming back to regular keyboards, as I can still hit numbers in the high 90s (WPM). The only difference is: I know what I’m missing, and I’ll long to get back to my Kinesis keyboard as soon as possible. And, that’s because using a Kinesis keyboard really has been such an improvement to my work flow. I really didn’t think it would make such an outsized difference in the typing experience, but it has.
The only other thing I’d mention in this article is this: while I only heard thePrimeagen say this after I purchased the keyboard, it’s stuck with me ever since. As I can’t find the clip where he said it, I’ll paraphrase: “don’t wait until you start having wrist issues to get a fix implemented.” I find it astonishing that I started to have wrist pains after only a week of attempting to code on a laptop keyboard. In contrast, I have spent many hundreds, if not thousands, of hours typing on the Kinesis keyboards since purchasing my first one in August 2023. Not once since then have I experienced any sort of discomfort while typing. Not only are my wrists saved, but by using a split keyboard, I’m also sitting up straighter as I type, which has helped my posture immensely.
It really has been a game-changer.