Ask Slashdot: Single-Handed Keyboard Options For Coding? 147
First time accepted submitter dubbreak writes "I was recently injured in a car accident which will limit the use of hand for six weeks or so. I'll be taking a little time off, but deadlines march on, and I'll need to be (semi) productive after my initial recuperation. What is you experience with single handed keyboards or other input option that require one hand at most? The current project is mainly C#, so I've need to be able to type brackets, semicolons and parentheses quick and painlessly."
As someone who posted to Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
... you would think you're well adapted to typing with one hand!
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I wonder if this is Mayim Bialik posting.
You still haven't replied to my date request, Mayim, and sorry to hear about the accident.
Re:As someone who posted to Slashdot... (Score:4, Insightful)
While a joke. I am using a normal keyboard, with one hand. The other is on the mouse. (With a different window). While not as fast as normal, I can still type at a good speed. I can seem to type everything I need. !@#$%^&*()_+ My hands are average sized.
I really don't see the need for a new keyboard for a temporary usage.
Re:As someone who posted to Slashdot... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Cover Story (Score:5, Funny)
On a serious note, maybe this would do the trick: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FrogPad [wikipedia.org]
I've used one. There's a learning curve, but after a week I was pretty fast with it. I've never actually coded with it though just typed notes, but all the keys are there for just one hand.
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The frogpad comments made me curious, but it seems like the FrogPad company is a zombie at this point. There is only one on ebay and their company web site goes to a blank screen.
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Nice cover story... what are you really looking to do with that other hand while coding?
Maybe he's using functors in Haskell [imgur.com].
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... what are you really looking to do with that other hand while coding?
Eat Cheetos
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He's a programmer.
How about the Supercoder 2000 [gizmodiva.com]?
Also, think about the Twiddler 2 [handykey.com].
It has macro support and allows for custom chords.
Re:Cover Story (Score:4, Informative)
The Frogpad is no longer made.
A British company, Maltron, does make single-handed keyboards. They can be purchased in the U.S. here at Enablemart [enablemart.com]. But these keyboards are pretty pricey, so it might not be worth the investment to get one, unless you expect your injured hand is going to be out of commission much longer than a few weeks.
About thirteen years ago, I had sustained a horrific injury to my left arm that resulted in my arm being put into an immobilization cast for the better part of fourteen weeks and a brace for months after. My fingers, however, were still functional. The immobilization cast kept me from positioning my hand over a keyboard. I rigged a dowel using some duct tape so I could at least press the shift, option and command keys with on my left while I typed with my right hand. I definitely couldn't type as fast, but I was able to get the job done.
If you have an Apple Macintosh computer, it already has the Dvorak one-handed keyboards built into it. Just go to the Language and Text pane in the System Preferences application to switch to one or the other. Look up the keyboard layout and download the image [wikipedia.org] so you have something to look at while you learn to type the layout. This will be a LOT cheaper than buying a specialized keyboard for a condition that you say will only last a few weeks.
If your hand is immobilized for just a few weeks, it probably is not worth the effort to learn a new layout like that. It takes a couple of weeks at least to become proficient using a new layout to make it productive, and a couple of months to really develop the reflexes needed to touch type using the new layout without having to glance at the keyboard to find the key you want. If your hand is out of commission for a couple of months or longer, then it is certainly worth the effort to learn a new keyboard layout to maintain productivity. If your hand is out of commission for longer than a year or perhaps permanently, then a one-handed keyboard would be worth the expense.
Above all, don't panic and think through what you really need. And DON'T skimp on your physical therapy! P.T. is what will bring the usability of your hand back to you. Shirk your P.T., and your hand could heal permanently out of order.
Typing with thumbs (Score:2)
I can confirm (similar situation: 2 months cast after some stupid indoor injury), combination of:
- left handed typing on a regular keyboard
- typing with both thumbs on a small keyboard
is a good way to type and not get exhausted too much.
Logitech is producing a few wireless thumb keyboards for media Pcs. (Logitech diNovo mini, for example).
just be sure to get a 4 row thumb pad with separate numbers (like a regular keyboard). not something with only letters (quite a few such are popular for phones and tablets
Don't Bother (Score:5, Insightful)
One of my coworkers can use only one hand. He has no special equipment, uses a regular keyboard and mouse, etc. The guy's wicked-effective, and his work output appears to be -- at minimum -- at reasonable volume. Frankly, he's one of the most productive engineers I know. And that's with both Java and Perl, which is a pain in the ass given its special characters.
Consider using this as an opportunity to focus on design and thinking before you bang your keyboard. You may be surprised by the results.
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Agreed. I know a guy who literally has only one hand (his other arm ends in a nub due to a birth defect), and he does great with a regular mouse + keyboard. Special equipment may be nice, but it certainly isn't necessary.
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Not absolutely necessary, but it can improve your typing speed. For no extra money, I'd recommend a Dvorak keyboard layout. While most Slashdotters have probably heard of the normal Dvorak layout (which is optimized for two-handed typing), there's two other Dvorak variants, which are specifically designed for both left-handed and right-handed typing. Using the appropriate layout (for whichever hand you still have) may allow you to type faster and more comfortably.
Re:Don't Bother (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget sticky-keys. This guy is plainly working in windows which has a number of baked in(usually annoying) features for accessibility.
Just press shift 5 times. Then you can press shift, then the key you need to use, separately. I just wrote a method for work one handed to see if it works. It seems to. Give it a try.
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Maybe with an old keyboard at floor level and some bits and pieces from the DIY store, he could rig himself up a shift-key foot pedal?
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Maybe with an old keyboard at floor level and some bits and pieces from the DIY store, he could rig himself up a shift-key foot pedal?
I don't see a person like the story poster doing it, since it would require wiring dexterity and soldering for a project that will be dropped in six months, so DIY is probably not his intention.
That said, one can easily purchase a real foot pedal [google.com] aimed at the music industry at Radioshack or music stores. At around $20 dollars, it's cheap and more sightly than whole keyboards (or half ones) rigged to sit on the floor because it has a single big clicker rather than 100+.
Someone with the engineering knowhow co
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He could be coding in Mono C# you insensitve clod :)
Re:Don't Bother (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to know a guy who was wheelchair bound, he typed with a stick in his mouth. He wasn't a fast typer but his code NEVER had bugs.. he had the time to think about what he was typing and it was basically done right the first time. He was one of the most productive members of the team due to the quality of his work.
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Given the mention of parenthses etc, it seems likely the submitter has an impaired right hand. The trick for me when I had an impaired right hand due to a traffic accident was to put the mouse on the left, then scooch the keyboard a little to the left. Now the left thumb or index can hit shift and the other fingers can reach any of the special keys you need. Keeping the mouse on the left helps me with the longer term effects of my injury; others find it odd to see me typing normally with one hand and hunt-
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Right hand side has a number pad in the way unless you have a numpadless keyboard. Everyone with a standard keyboard should use mouse left handed.
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A bit of kit to keep depression at bay maybe the real reason. Nothing like retail therapy.
Speech to text is good these day. It is on my phone. that may help.
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Twiddler (Score:2, Insightful)
I have the original serial-based Twiddler keyboard (there is now a USB one), and it isn't all that amazing. However, if I really had to use one hand to type, I could get used to it.
The biggest problem is with hand cramping. It is not ergonomic in any way.
http://www.handykey.com/
Ask those guys at Illusion in Japan (Score:2)
OS Accessibility Features (Score:2)
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Have you accepted Agile Programming [wikipedia.org] into your heart?
FTFY.
Nostromo or Frogpad (Score:5, Interesting)
I'de go with Nostromo because I know it.
Fully programmable single hand key pad for gaming.
You can easily create your own layout and do chords like a court reporter would.
EG key combinations to type a letter.
I believe it even comes with a template for single handed full ascII map typing.
There is also a website for templates others have created.
After a day or two of practice most people can type via chord input at 80 to 90 % of two handed typing rate QWERTY style.
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most people
have an average typing rate significantly below that of a developer, so I would presume it would take significantly longer to get to choord typing at the >100wpm of a developer in qwerty. Sounds like a great idea though.
Dvorak Single Handed (Score:4, Informative)
Comes in both the left and right varieties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard#One-handed_versions [wikipedia.org]
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+1 to this. I know a person who injured their aim in a car accident and this worked for them.
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+1 to this. I know a person who injured their aim in a car accident and this worked for them.
Professional gamer I take it? Makes me wonder how a new one handed keyboard would help his aim in Quake/Unreal/Rage, etc?
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1) Why do you assume it was for games?
2) Why do you assume that everyone who uses a computer (or gets in car accidents) is a him?
gaming keyboard (Score:2)
It'll take you longer than six weeks to get used to a chording keyboard or one of the alternative keyboards out there; typing one-handed may be annoying, but still more efficient. As to brackets and other special characters, I'd recommend getting a gaming keyboard with extra macro keys, and program those chars into them.
Vim Remapping (Score:5, Informative)
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"I broke my hand a year ago ... coding (in Fortran, baby!)"
Breaking your had must have been like a breath of fresh air. I can't imagine the pain and torture of having to code in Fortran. I still have blank spots in memory from my college years when I was forced to learn/use it. Or maybe that was the rum.
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I mean, granted, you wouldn't want to maintain web-scraping code in it. [Shudder]
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It's a bit harder for '(' as you can't just remap that to '99'.
Actually, that's a great idea. What better way to discourage the use of 'magic' numbers in your code than by turning them into syntax errors? :)
One handed mirror keyboard (Score:1)
If you have to ask, you can't afford it (Score:3)
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There's a free version for Autohotkey that works decently on a standard keyboard available here [autohotkey.com]. I used it a bit and decided it wasn't for me but it might be usable.
Foot pedals. (Score:5, Interesting)
Another thing to consider is a foot pedal or two. Set them up to do SHIFT and CTRL and away you go!
Re:Foot pedals. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have four foot pedals on my work computer for various tasks I need. They are really great. Even more nice is that fact that they can be programmed to any keypress that you want.
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Sorry for not logging in. Any recommended footpedal brands? If I were to make my own it would be clutch, brake, and accelerator pedal.
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Set up another for Alt and then do some Walter Rorhl-level footwork on them :D
I'm disappointed in Matias. $595 for a keyboard? (Score:3)
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Because of IP issues, I had to edit out some portions of the code. But it would take about a minute for a coder to make it functional again and compile it.
Additional chords could be added to make specific characters even more accessible (quotes, braces, etc.) and adapted for coding.
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Are you serious? Voice wreckignition is bad enough when trying to dictate a letter, where at least you have auto spell and grammar correction to help. Trying that with programming would be horrid. You'd get your work done faster hunting and pecking with a pool cue.
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Voice wreckignition is bad enough when trying to dictate a letter
People use it to dictate a letter? I can't even get it to dial my fucking phone right (and the geniuses at google took out the confirmation prompt, too)
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There's a 5 year old perl coding video from Vista's early days [youtube.com] to warn anyone of all the wasted time with locally hosted voice recognition AI. At least on smartphones it goes to a server that can be improved continually, though there's a privacy implication here.
In those grounds, Android 4.0 speech-to-text (non-coding) is lots better we don't have a way of using its wealth of code and google-dependant connectivity on a desktop --that I know of. Also handy with alternative input languages. Again, these are N
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Well, I tried to train mine, but it crashed, with a bus error.
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Actually, I am serious.
Back in '01, I was released back to work after a spine injury (at, ahem, a major software company in Washington State) with the restriction that I not use a keyboard or a mouse.* So there I was, writing C++ code using Naturally Speaking on an alpha version of Windows that wasn't entirely compatible with the OS. Oh, yeah, and there wasn't any built in C++ support.)
And seriously? It took some training, but it really wasn't bad - and I had to use it for all my navigation, which is a lot
a suggestion: Programmable Keypad/board (Score:1)
one handed dvorak (Score:2)
When I broke by hand I used right-handed Dvorak, but semicolons where a pain. If it proves too much of a problem you can look into customizing the keymap yourself.
I went through something similar (Score:2, Interesting)
...and did this
http://daughtrey.com/?cat=13
I must have missed the memo (Score:3)
That in order to be a super productive coder you need to be able to type at 150 words per minute.
I almost never code with both hands anymore. My carpel tunnel has gotten worse over the past few years, so I am constantly switching arms. So far I have still been able to hold down my senior developer job.
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If you need to be able to type at 70wpm to code your projects efficiently they are probably pretty simple programs. The biggest part of the day is thinking. Even say you can spit out 1k lines of code a day that are actually tested and properly working that is still only ~20chars per lineX1k lines 20k chars, 70wpm = 350char/min so about an hour of typing. I agree you need to be able to keep up with your mind to have flow but a lot of time I find I think of what I want to do as about 10 lines of code. Type it
XKCD has the answer (Score:4, Informative)
Great mods of slashdot , forgive my AC ways and mod this to +1
You can mirror the keyboard with say , the caps lock key. I tried it and you get used to it really quick because the motion is already familiar to you since you use the keyboard in a "mirrored" fashion anyway. One hand for each side.
http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-keyboard-layout-for-the-lazy/
USPTO has the answer (Score:2)
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foot pedal shift key (Score:1)
I am assuming that you are concerned about shift-keying with one hand:
http://www.fentek-ind.com/FootPedal.htm
The one I have used for a decade now.... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.handykey.com/ [handykey.com]
Works great and you can actually type REALLY fast with it once you get used to it.
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GAUNTLET keyboard (Score:2)
Get in touch with these guys: http://gauntletkeyboard.com/ [gauntletkeyboard.com]
They are working on a VERY EARLY prototype of a keyboard glove that looks very promising if you can look past the ugliness of the prototype.
Trying to get funding... http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1099959-help-me-get-10000-from-best-buy-for-my-invention/page__fromsearch__1 [neowin.net]
Why they don't just stick it on Kickstarter, I have no idea, but it is something I can across which could be of some use, I'm sure they would need a good test use case to show off
Logitech M13 (Score:2)
I have a Logitech M13 game keyboard - you could program in macros to do common things in your language of choice...
twiddler (Score:1)
Sticky keys? (Score:1)
If you have problem with using the modifier keys, you can turn the "Sticky Keys" on in your Windows Control Panel.
iPad + Textastic (Score:2)
Textastic is a nice source editor for iOS devices that adds an additional row of buttons above the onscreen keyboard. You can type all the common symbols with a single touch gesture. I normally use a Bluetooth keyboard when I have to edit source files on the iPad, so I don't know how fast typing in general would be on the touchscreen device.
This may not be an option for you at all if you're using an IDE on a Windows machine. Textastic is basically a fancy text editor like Notepad++.
Remap some keys (Score:2)
My thought it take the most used/painful to type symbols and remap them onto keys you don't use.
On grammar (Score:1)
You are looking at adverbs here, so repeat after me:
"Typing how?"
Quickly. Painlessly.
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Dear OP: Feel free to ignore grammar nazis for the length of your recovery.
And for the grammar police: perhaps consider that the person dropping punctuation or letters may have barriers to communication that you do not. Like maybe a broken hand.
shh.. we have something free for you at AutoHotKey (Score:1)
Microwriter? (Score:2)
One of these [wikipedia.org]...
I'm sure someone suitably skilled could implement a USB keyboard version with a cheap off-the-shelf microcontroller board, a bit of 3D printing for the button bracket, and a certain amount of programming.
dvorak (Score:2)
I'm 80-90 words per minute with 2 hands. I had really bad carpel tunnel problems in the 90s and got to where I could type about 60 words per minute with either hand on a one-handed dvorak keyboard. It took about 2 months of coding every day to get to my max.
I went about 5 years changing hands every 3-4 months. There are left and right handed dvorak layouts.
I'm sure youre boss wouldn't approve. (Score:3)
What I did... (Score:2)
I broke my non-dominant hand and had it casted while on a job than involved writing on deadline. I worked with paper for a while, but mostly just got good at one handed fly-over-the-left-side typing. If you know where the keys are "hunt and peck" turns into "peck" and that's actually reasonably fast.
I think, on balance, in 6 weeks you're still going to be faster on your normal keyboard than a new layout or speech to text.
IDE plugins can help too (Score:1)
Back when I was developing in C#, I used (and loved) CodeRush. (http://devexpress.com/Products/Visual_Studio_Add-in/Coding_Assistance/) This assumes you're using VisualStudio.
I wasn't doing one-hand development but found it extremely helpful and I think it could apply in you situation. It supports macros/templates and things like smart brackets where you don't even need to type brackets. You could just b+TAB or whatever you want. It would give you a bracket body with your cursor placed in the middle. It has
One handed devorak (Score:2)
There are one handed devorak layouts. Probably not worth the trouble to learn to use it, memorize layout, or buy a overlay. There are also chording keyboards, but again not worth the time to learn. It sounds like a cool idea, but I'd rather use the qwerty layout even though it is inefficient. I'd rather my typing be good 100% of the time, rather than split my typing across two different techniques depending on whether the computer I'm on has all the things needed to use my lternate keyboard choice. I d
Build your own - here's the software (Score:1)
One Handed Keyboard (software) (Score:1)
Because of IP issues, I had to edit out some portions of the code. But it would take about a minute for a coder to make it functional again and compile it.
Additional chords could be added to make specific characters even more accessible (quotes, braces, etc.) and adapted for coding.
Morse Code?! (Score:2)
Frogpad user (Score:1)
I can comfortably touch type with it, I'm gutted that it is no longer made, I killed two of them by spilling wine on them, so there was issues of build quality.
Basically the thing just works and without it I'm lost, I can use a normal keyboard but love my FrogPad. So please Linda Marroquin, start producing your wonderful keyboard again, but this time, make it water proof.
Peter.
half qwerty/mirror image keyboard (Score:1)
Been there... (Score:1)
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Honestly unless your self employed or a major shareholder in a small company the best option is to:
a) take the whole period off on the doctors advice, submit this to your company (Though this does depend on the employment laws where you live and your paid sick leave) b) just work slower, the company will need to take up the slack somehow (they should have contingencies for this, after all what if you had been more badly hurt or incapacitated)
i was injured and had to have surgery i simply took the opportunity for some well deserved time off. Admittedly working would have caused me additional pain and incurred significant additional expense (i was forbidden to drive) but equally I sure as hell wasn't going to waste the opportunity for 3 months paid leave, very few will fault you for taking this option.
Seriously, you probably deserve the time to recuperate. You would probably be better off in the long run resting as much as possible, and coming back ready to code up a storm. The programmer who does most of our web apps is currently out on a six week vacation mostly because he doesn't like coming in during August!
Hopefully you will be able to recover quickly from your injury. Good luck!