Ergonomics (was Re: Question mark in variable and function names

[Jeff Shannon]

Carlos Ribeiro wrote:

>On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 00:53:35 -0700, Cliff Wells
><clifford.wells at comcast.net> wrote:
>  
>
>>On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 10:19 +0300, Ville Vainio wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>>>>>>"Cliff" == Cliff Wells <clifford.wells at comcast.net> writes:
>>>>>>>>                
>>>>>>>>
>>>    Cliff> On Fri, 2004-10-08 at 12:08 +0300, Ville Vainio wrote:
>>>
>>>    >> Incidentally, I've remapped my keyboard so that ( and ) don't
>>>    >> require pressing shift.
>>>
>>>    Cliff> *smacks forehead and cries*
>>>
>>>Why? Ergonomics is a matter that is taken into account way too rarely,
>>>just observe how frequently programmers complain about RSI these
>>>days. Python is pretty ergonomic for the most part (not too much
>>>punctuation, popular habit of preferring lowercase letters) but it's
>>>often a good idea to go for a little extra edge :).
>>>      
>>>
>>I'm crying because I've been hitting shift 8000 times a day for 20 years
>>when such a simple solution was right in front of my face :P
>>    
>>
>
>Totally off topic -- if you were to design a new keyboard, where do
>you would put the parenthesis? After reading that I was wondering
>about what is the best choice:
>
>1) put each parenthesis on one side of the keyboard (open in the left
>hand, close in the right hand);
>
>2) keep both parenthesis on the right side of the keyboard, where
>there are a few spare keys, _including_ the ones for square brackets
>and regular brackets (I have a brazilian ABNT-2 keyboard);
>
>3) design a new block of keys, similar to the (Insert/Delete,
>Home/End, PgUp/PgDn) block, with quick punctuation symbols [...]
>  
>

The problem with this is that you're taking your hand too far away from 
the center of the keyboard.  You want something that you can reach 
easily, without significant stretching and without needing to watch 
carefully when you return your hand to the home row.  I'd personally be 
inclined towards option 2.

Heck, that would really only require a slight remapping on my current 
keyboard, at least to get parens accessible without shifting -- 
currently [/{ and ]/} are just to the right of P; I can see an advantage 
to remapping those keys to be (/[ and )/], and putting { and } above 9 
and 0 where the parens are now... 

Of course, for me it's not worth customizing my keymapping, because I 
end up working on a variety of machines often enough (frequently in the 
sense of "fixing", rather than just trying to get my own work done).  
Switching back and forth from a custom keymap to the standard one would 
be confusing enough to counteract any gains I'd make from a more 
ergonomic arrangement of keys.  (Now, if I could convince everyone 
worldwide to switch to (nationalized keyboards based off of) a 
Dvorak-style arrangement, that'd be a different matter....  :) )

Jeff Shannon
Technician/Programmer
Credit International