Programming toolset for restricted typing ability?

Question

This is a cousin to the question Programming with Speech Recognition for Typing Instead of the Keyboard:

I program in Visual Studio 2010, and I find that programming takes a much greater toll on my hands than typing text does. I attribute this to (1) the extensive use of punctuation and other characters away from the home row, and (2) the extensive use of multi-key command such as Ctrl+Shift+B.

So a question in three stages:

1. What programming language is "easiest" to type? BASIC? COBOL?
2. What editor/IDE is easiest (from a typing standpoint) for the edit/compile/execute roundtrip (and perhaps debugging)?
3. Is there a combined solution that's powerful enough to create, say, a web application?

Ideally I'd like to hear about ideas for completely mouse-free solutions, compatible with (say) a one-handed chording keyboard.

Answer 1

If you are not attached to the QWERTY keyboard, you could consider trying out Colemak or Dvorak layout. Both have ardent users reporting excellent improvements in typing speed and decrease on the strains caused on the hands.

Since you mention an IDE, you might want to consider Vim or Emacs (or any equivalent) where you can make a set of repeated keyboard hits a macro. If you find yourself pressing the down arrow or up arrow many times, you could make a macro to let you press one key and move, say, 3 or 4 lines at a time. I know for sure Emacs can help you do this out of the box. Vim should not be far behind if it is behind. Both are popular for helping users totally avoid mouse usage. Both have a learning curve that easily puts off the faint hearted ones. Those who cross the initial stages keep climbing all the time, but these stages are not as steep.

A combination of one of these IDEs and one of these keyboard layouts can result in lot less strain on your hands, while totally avoiding having to use the mouse. There could be a need to use the modifier keys. But the strain on the hands will be far less to negligible with tremendous improvements in speed.

Answer 2

Either you get weird combo keys or you use the mouse, at least this is the current practical way. I stay mouse free most of the times, this means I buy a great soft touch / ergonomic keyboard + table setting that offers wrist/elbow support.

I have seen people try and program with pianos!, but I personally don't find it practical. And fwiw, I type way faster than I speak or write, so there goes any trick other than mind reading.

Answer 3

Get a better keyboard. I use a Kinesis Contoured keyboard, and swap backspace/control and delete/alt, putting control and alt conveniently under my left thumb. No more stretching for those shortcuts. I use Emacs, and Eclipse with the Mulgasoft Emacs+ bindings, so I type a lot of control and alt shortcuts, and have no problems. Without the Kinesis or something similar, I couldn't work.

Answer 4

I switched to python from perl several years ago, when RSI was starting to limit me. I didn't switch for that reason, but I found after switching that, when coding in python, I could do 80 hours a week without pain, when in perl I was down to about 20 and in pain.

The difference is in punctuation: Any c-based syntax, with lots of curly braces, parens, and semicolons, is going to keep you roaming around the keyboard, off the home row much of the time. Perl makes that even worse by requiring that you dive for the top row and shift key every time you want to type a variable name.

Python, on the other hand, with its notorious indent-based syntax, is wonderful for staying on the home row. And you can read your own code a year after you write it as well. ;-)

I also swapped the <Enter> and <Caps Lock> keys (using xmodmap, on Linux), and I always put the mouse on the left side of the keyboard. Those two things together balanced the load a lot better between left and right hand. For an editor, I've used vim and vi for decades, which reduces the pointy-clicky activity a great deal. The Windows version of vim is gvim. Vim's not an IDE, unless you start adding any of the optional scripts from vim.org.