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I started to think of the setup in which I use my computer as interesting matters after suffering some pain from prolonged computer use recently.

Do you put your keyboard rather near the edge of the desk (comfortable typing, but said edge hurts your arms very hard after prolonged periods) or far away from it (holding your arm more straight is much less comfortable, but the arms don't hurt nearly as much in the long run) ? Or did you find a compromise between both, or some trick to protect your arms from sharp desk edges ?

When you have access to one of those fancy chairs where you can setup the height and orientation of the back pillow, at which point of your back do you try to make it press ?

Is the height of the chair of any importance except for leg comfort ?

The keyboard should be setup so that your arms are not in contact with the desk while typing. Your chair should be set so that your arms are nearly at right angles to your body.

The most important thing to do is get up and take a break every 45 minutes. It doesn't matter what you're doing; it is essential. Your back will thank you for it.

Steve Streeting (Former lead developer of Ogre3D) goes over quite a lot about ergonomics in his blog posts on the matter, as he has had to (and still has to) battle with back pains

I personally prefer an organists chair. They lack a back pillow and arm supports, enforcing an active seating position. Comfy chairs allow you to lean back with a curved spine, which isn't promotional for physical well-being. Even if I (or you) get one of those comfy chairs, I avoid the back support when I'm actually working.

A really good chair should encourage a really good sitting position: Touching your back at every point if you're sitting correctly. That means a properly curved backrest (with a bulge for the lower back) that you can properly adjust in height and angle.

No chair can force you to sit correctly, but it should tell you when you don't.

As for keyboard placement... close to the edge or not, arm rests or not doesn't actually matter much; what matters is the position of your hands and arms while you're typing. Your arms should hover over the keyboard while typing. (Wrist rests / arm rests are for resting, not for typing - having your wrists on the rests during typing just makes you bend your wrists this way and that, which doesn't help.) As long as your elbows are at 90 degrees or more, and your wrists are straight, whether your wrists are hovering over the table or over thin air doesn't matter. I.e., sit, extend your arms to the recommended position, and position your keyboard right under your fingertips.

I got some RSI issues with my right arm. Turned out it's not that difficult to get accustomed to using the mouse left-hand. I keep the mouse on the side of the keyboard where I have less issues with RSI at the moment.

Keyboard layout is another issue. Many programming-related keys - like [] {} \ ~ - are reached on the German keyboard (/me German) by pressing AltGr with your right thumb and reaching for keys on the upper right of the keyboard with your pinky or ring finger. With RSI in your right elbow, this gets quite uncomfortable.

My workaround for that is having an English keyboard around and plugging that in when I'm programming for extended periods of time. It's impractical when frequently switching between writing code and (German) documentation, though, because then I need the German Umlauts... the workaround for that is writing your documentation in English. Still got to convince my boss about that one.

Oh, and +1 +1 +1 +1 to getting up and moving around 1/4th of the time. Gives your back and wrists a break, and you get to think about what you're doing. This helps your work, too. I get about 90% of my "good ideas" during these "typing breaks".

Solar wrote:It's impractical when frequently switching between writing code and (German) documentation, though, because then I need the German Umlauts...

Skip the umlauts and let the spell checker fix them for you?

Hobbes wrote:

Solar wrote:It's impractical when frequently switching between writing code and (German) documentation, though, because then I need the German Umlauts...

Skip the umlauts and let the spell checker fix them for you?

Exactly what I do with when I want a capital ç or é

For some weird reason, the French keyboard layout doesn't seem to include them. It's not like on the Swedish keyboards which I have at work, where they've made typing *any* capital letter dead easy... That's so intelligently conceived, I feel bad for switching them to FR layout in order to touch-type properly.

More on topic, thanks everyone for your answers !

Owen wrote:The most important thing to do is get up and take a break every 45 minutes. It doesn't matter what you're doing; it is essential. Your back will thank you for it.

I agree. I'm having gentle back problem these days and I'm worried that it'll lead to something major. I think the reason of the back problem is my posture. I generally let my body relax when I sit infront of my desktop and I totally forget that I've too keep my body straight to maintain a good posture. I'm trying to avoid it these days so I'm just hoping I'll be fine.

Another concern is the eye-sight. The UV protective glasses aren't helping at all. Technically, my eye-sight is not deterioting but continuos exposure to the screen is causing the eye-muscle strain. My eyes beg for rest when I'm done with half an hour on the computer.
Anybody have any good suggestion for this?

berkus wrote:But also get up for a walk around. Kick a dog or something.

I start my day with a 8Km jogging. I play football in my spare time, too. Physically, I carry a good stamina. I used to hit gym everyday but these days it's paused. So far, I'm having a good muscles stretch. Nevertheless, I'm specifically concerned with my eyes.

berkus wrote:Yes, take a break every 30 minutes.

Well, that's what I do(having no option yet, my eyes resists if I prolong activities on the computer). I was just wondering if there's some other alternatives (probably some AT protective glasses?).

Your eyes are only able to relax fully when focusing into the far distance, so staring at a screen for long lengths of time will always cause eye strain, and it's worse the closer the screen is. Using a giant TV as a monitor may help as you can put it further away (though it won't do a lot of good for the planet). Wearing glasses to make your eyes focus to infinity while actually looking at the screen might help (you'd set things up so the screen's still in focus when you lean back), but it may cause another kind of eye strain because your eyes won't be lined up in the normal way they would be if you were really looking to infinity. The best solution might be to use some kind of viewing system with two tiny screens, one in front of each eye and arranged such that your eyes are focused to infinity and looking along parallel paths. If that's available in a comfortable package I'd like to get hold of it.

On the chair issue, all chairs are lethal - sitting at a keyboard for hours every day will kill you. One solution is to buy a running/walking machine so that you can walk miles every day while writing code, though again it isn't good for the planet - I've seen an item on a news programme in which all the workers in an office were doing exactly that, and it didn't appear to get in the way of typing. An exercise bike would be better for the planet as it doesn't need to be powered, but unfortunately it isn't good for you to be sitting on a saddle for hours, and it wouldn't force you to exercise in the way that a treadmill does either.

Most of the danger of chairs is probably not so much caused by the lack of exercise, because people who exercise a lot are still badly affected by sitting in chairs for hours a day. It's probably more down to restricted circulation, so a massaging chair may help by continually changing the points of contact. Experiment and scientific study required urgently.