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Ask Slashdot: Keyboard Layout To Reduce Right Pinky/Ring Finger Usage?
Tooke writes "I've developed focal hand dystonia from playing clarinet. It affects my right pinky (and my ring finger, but to a lesser extent). My pinky isn't totally unusable when typing; however, it isn't nearly as agile as it used to be. When I must press a key with it, I tend to keep the whole finger rigid and move my entire hand instead. I also use my ring finger to press the P and semicolon keys (on QWERTY) which is a bit awkward but better than using the pinky. Thus my question: are there any keyboard layouts that are optimized to reduce right pinky/ring finger usage? I switched to Programmer Dvorak a few years ago, but Dvorak seems to make me use my right hand significantly more than my left. I'm considering mirroring the letter keys so my left hand would be used more. I also came across the Workman layout which looks interesting. I might try using that after switching the numbers and symbols around to be more like Programmer Dvorak. Has anyone been in a similar situation? What else could I do to make typing more comfortable? I've got a long career ahead of me as a programmer (I'm currently a high school senior) and I'd like to take care of my hands as much as possible."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard#One-handed_versions
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
Working around a treatable condition is pretty silly. How about just treating the dystonia? Standard treatment is sensorimotor retraining.
How exactly is your Dystonia affecting your typing? Focal Task Specific Dystonia, by definition, rarely affects tasks other than those where the the symptoms originate. What treatments have you been seeking to deal with your dystonic symptoms? There are several potential treatments. It seems more productive to deal with your symptoms, rather than try to work around them. I'm a member of the Performing Arts Medicine Association, and can recommend several authors/doctors if you are interested. There are also several treatments you could try without medical supervision/assistance.
I almost never use my ring or pinky while typing, on either side.
Just type so that it feels natural to you. Nothing forces you to use any specific fingers.
Because I learned to type in such a "natural" form, instead of learning home rows and specific zones for each finger, I find I can easily adapt to different typing positions and injuries. Eg, if my index finger on either hand had a cut on it, it only takes a few minutes for me to adjust and type at a near full speed without that finger.
While I'm not the -fastest- typer around, I still type pretty damn fast and with little fatigue.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Who knew that learning to reed in school could be harmful.
As a Dvorak user myself, I'd say a Dvorak is probably not the way to go, what with the 's' right under the finger you are trying to avoid using. I think, of the most common keyboard layouts, QWERTY is the one that will use your right pinky the least in normal everyday typing, but as a programmer you would be using the semicolon and quote marks a lot too, depending on the language. Maybe Colemak? ( http://colemak.com/ )
I learned the 'home row keys' much too late to be disciplined with them, and probably have slightly longer than average fingers, but I generally only use my left pinky for the Left-Shift key and my right pinky only for the Enter key.
From left to right:
Left-Shift, A, W, D, Space - Space, between J and K, between O/0/P, resting on [ but with my fingertip on +, Enter
Yeah right we all believe you.. this is slashdot..
we know about focal hand dystonia and you don't get it by playing the clarinet..
so you better improve the quality of your pr0n or else your hand will fall off.
You can try with a single-hand maltron keyboard. I have used the two-hand version and it is quite comfortable for me.
http://www.maltron.com/keyboard-info/single-hand-keyboards.html
that can use only the index finger on the right hand then?
we have 400 years of learning how to make the fingers and wrists strong and reliable; for instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Virtuoso_Pianist_in_60_Exercises
is öäå, right shift and enter(').
maybe switch to a finnish/swedish layout and move ' somewhere?-)
point being, you can write in english perfectly with the finnish layout but öäå are right hand pinky characters you'd never use anyhow.
when you're doing a custom layout, think about more than just switching the keys around the kb - you should also reduce the amount of the characters by combining them behind modifiers. on finnish kb there's no > as a separate key for example like on english qwerty.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Can't you just move your hands all around the keyboard?
I often do that, and type at about 90 words per minute. I'll type both code and prose without using the little finger on my right hand at all, and the ring finger only rarely. It feels much better to have my whole hands flying all over the keyboard. Fixed wrist position always seemed terrible to me from an RSI perspective.
Simplest solution I can think of is to map right alt to enter (which I would do even without injury anyway), and then some comfortable substitution for p, ; and /. Some candidate keys would be capslock and tilde, or probably better some chording combinations like left alt o, l and .
The best solution might involve buying a Kinesis Contoured, which should save stress from pinkies on both hands as it has an extended thumb keywell.
You can use a Kinesis Advantage keyboard. First, important keys are pressed with the thumb, not the right fingers (Enter, Ctrl, Backspace). Second, the keyboard is programmable, so you can map all problematic keys to the left side and type them together with AltGr (right ALT). I am already using this method, because our national characters take the place of almost every symbol characters, which are important for coding. It is working well.
I would recommend trying out some ergonomic keyboards (Logitech K350 highly recommended) too. I had nerve problems in my back and wrists which basically made me unable to use a computer for a number of years. I solved that problem with better posture (reclining with a keyboard on my lap), some exercises, and having better keyboards and mice. I know it's not the same thing, but it's interesting that my problems would first manifest in those two fingers also (because of the nerve/vein bundle that was getting squashed). It took a long time and the right doctor to finally realize that it was actually a back problem. Frankly, if you have bad posture and use conventional keyboards and mice, I think you're fairly likely to get nerve problems in your hands anyway, 5-10 years down the road. (For me, it started as carpal tunnel, which a lot of people get, and years later, the extreme of that was just not being able to use my hands for months at a time.)
Get a second medical opinion. Focal dystonia appears to be extremely specific to the activities that caused it. You might have something else going on instead.
Is this even possible? I don't see anything that one needs to use the right pinky for except possibly /.
Swap the 'P' with something, perhaps 'Z' ?
Shift your home keys over one? If you're learning new layouts anyways, this seems easier.
There is only one letter involved, swap 'P' with ',' and there are none. Not sure how you can avoid it more changing all the other letters around.
Besides, whatever works for you. Not like i used more than 4-5 fingers to type this. Like someone else above my hands move more than my fingers.
Starting to wonder about Ask Slashdot myself....
Just program EMACS to detect CPU temperature increase and hold down space bar instead!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
First, I strongly suggest sticking to QWERTY. You'll find yourself typing on large numbers of other people's keyboards over your career - switching all over the place is hard enough when its something little like someone else's pipe sign being in a silly place.
Even on a laptop you can angle your elbows somewhat out so that your wrists are "straight", using an ergonomic-keyboard position even on a regular flat keyboard like a laptop's. This by itself changes your finger motion significantly. I don't know if that's why, but I basically never use my pinky fingers when I type - and I've been in software professionally since '92 with no particular typing deficiencies.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
No joke. Look at the below picture--the pinky is so under-utilized in QWERTY it looks looks like it has been cut off in the diagram!
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/ergo/fig4.jpg
But really, probably any decently-designed keyboard layout spreads the workload relatively evenly across the fingers. Dvorak does use the pinky and ring fingers quite a bit though, as a result of its design to favor the right hand. I have switched from QWERTY to Dvorak back in early December, and am currently learning Colemak as a second layout... I haven't used Colemak enough to come to a personal opinion on its finger usage, but from what I read it's pretty well evenly split between the fingers.
Maybe you could go to the CarpalX site and download the program, try setting it up to minimize the use of those fingers and run it yourself to see what it generates. The pre-made fully-optimized CarpalX layouts would probably be of little use, because they were not designed to avoid those fingers at all costs... they were made with the idea of having eight fully-functional fingers, while only slightly reducing the load on those fingers due to their natural weakness.
Check out this tool to get a nice overview of the hand, finger, row, etc. usage and other stats that might be useful:
http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/
http://normanlayout.info/ This is similar to workman, and might be better. I've been experimenting with Dvorak but find I don't like the lateral movement to i and d, as well as the right pinky for s and l. For qwerty, I would only swap f and t for the left hand. The right hand would need a little more substitution. For me, reaching up with the first three fingers (or down with index) is no problem, but I really don't like the heavy lateral index finger movement.
A smaller format keyboard that you can allow your pinky finger to do less since the other fingers can reach easily, as well as some minor retraining will allow you to type at nearly the same rate without a large learning curve. You can also look at some of the different brands and ergonomic keyboard types and see if the computer function (return, command, alt, etc) are in more suitable locations for your hands.
With my old EEE I only used 2 fingers for typing since the keyboard was so small.
Phil
Laugh, it's good for you!
http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/
This guy has written some extensive scripts to find optimal keyboard layouts. You could probably derive a model from his work. Personally, I use Dvorak and find it much more efficient than QWERTY
Since I type of a lot of symbols and fewer numbers, it helps to be able to make typing symbols easier. I do this with an alternate layout that I can switch to with a hot key. It inverts the shift of the number keys and makes them sensitive to caps lock. I wrote a blog post about this. http://dctucker.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/keyboard-layouts/
Crimey
You have a disability that affects your ability to work.
Go on Disability.
Sue the Clarinet maker and anyone who ever encouraged you to play Clarinet for the difference between your SSDI checks and whatever you would have made as a programmer, including any and all attorney fees and court costs.
Maybe even go for treble damages (har har) since whomever is responsible for forcing you to play clarinet either knew or should have known that there was a significant risk of a permanent disabling injury, and was therefore grossly negligent in placing your entire lifetime career in unreasonable jeopardy.
Then, you won't need to worry about keyboard layouts.
I lost the use of my left pinky in a childhood accident. After I graduated and starting programming professionally I found that the lifeless finger really interfered with my typing. So I quit programming and became a gangster. After a few years I got involved in the lucrative black market whale meat trade, necessitating a move to Japan. Fifteen years on I was, despite my lily-white ass, trusted by the locals and initiated as a full yakuza. The next day I called the boss a cunt and he required me to cut off my left pinky to atone.
Finally rid of the useless digit I moved back to the States and resumed my career as a programmer. Don't be wasting your time with non-standard keyboards.
There might be an obvious reason not to do this, but considering how few keys are typed by the right pinky you might be able to get away with this. It would also have the advantage of being able to easily use other keyboards that you may come across in your regular existence.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Have you considered a one-handed wonderbox, like a Twiddler?
Haven't used, and they always seemed dumb to me, but if you're already considering left handed Dvorak, maybe this is what you're looking for.
Pianists move their hands around. So can you! Keeping your fingers on the home row isn't particularly ergonomic or efficient. Typing is like playing an instrument: just keep your wrists relatively straight and relaxed and type with whichever fingers seem most natural. If you don't want to use your pinky, just move your hand over a little and hit a key with your ring finger. If you don't want to use your ring finger either, move over a little further and use your middle finger instead. As long as you stay relaxed and keep your posture relatively neutral, you can hit any key with any finger you want.
Take frequent breaks. Shake out tension with your wrists hanging limp at your sides. Go for walks. No matter how ergonomic or neutral your posture, it's not healthy to stay in the same position forever; no matter how relaxed you try to be, you'll build up some tension over time. Just listen to your body: if something hurts, stop. Take care of yourself. Simple as that.
People who go on disability and then sue for such frivolous reasons are a waste of life.
Time for tort reform!
I am a self taught typist , had no formal training . With that being said , I wouldn't give up on qwerty . I barley ever use thoose two fingers to type even the I am right handed . I use my left a whole lot more of the time . I don't' many mistakes , and when I do it's usually hitting the key next to the letter I intend to use .
i have no sig
http://www.trulyergonomic.com/store/index.php
Unfortunately, this isn't a layout so much as a rather expensive, different kind of keyboard. But this is an ergonomic keyboard with mechanical switches, so it feels better than all of the rubber dome switch-based keyboard out there.
Enter, backspace, and tab are moved to the middile of the keyboard, which changes how necessary the pinkies are.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
I've only used a QWERTY keyboard, and I was originally taught to type how you were saying was uncomfortable for you, with home rows and specific fingers for specific keys. I don't have a specific problem but my pinkies kind of suck so as I've gotten more used to the keyboard layout I've just been more fluid in my typing. 90% of keys I hit with my index fingers, although my other fingers and even pinkies do come in to play every now and again, presumably due to some distance/usefulness tradeoff. I've tested for both formal and informal typing speeds (home row vs. hands shifting about) and found that they are virtually identical speeds at 90WPM for me. Basically, I would say keep to the keyboard you know best but try a different style that's more comfortable.
Speaking as someone who's still struggling with the extensor tendinitis he developed as a young programmer over 15 years ago, with hundreds of nights of pain and hundreds of thousands in lost earnings as a result...
First: It's a natural hacker impulse to focus on keyboard layouts and hardware and other fun toys like that. Resist that urge. The importance of that stuff is tiny compared to good overall ergonomic habits, good posture, taking breaks, and managing tension. Get all the help that you can on those issues. Watch your own habits. Have someone else watch you. Make adjustments.
Second: Having said that... when I was first having hand trouble, I switched to Dvorak. This was, for me, a very poor decision. As you've noticed, Dvorak overloads the right pinky finger, which is a bad idea on a typewriter, but a horrible idea on a computer keyboard where other often-used keys are on the right edge of the layout.
Moving the entire arm to hit Enter and other right-edge keys with a non-pinky finger helped some, but not enough. After a couple weeks of increasing right-pinky pain, I simply swapped the L and P keys, so the commonly-used L was on the left index instead of the right pinky.
The L/P swap helped with the overloading, but exacerbated my second problem with a new layout, which was greater tension while typing. Even though I felt comfortable with Dvorak on a conscious level, I was still sometimes tensing up before keystrokes as my fingers weren't sure which way to go for an extra few milliseconds. And I was still having to use QWERTY keyboards often enough that I couldn't completely banish that muscle memory. Eventually I just switched back to QWERTY. More finger-mileage, yes, but is finger-mileage really the issue? It wasn't for me.
Third: No, really. Spend your time on the annoying difficult-to-scientifically-analyze meatspace issues like posture, not on keyboard layouts.
The obvious answer is DataHand. Nothing else seems so well designed. But you can't get one anymore, and if you could they'd be more than you could afford. They always were, even when they were making them.
A large part of what your pinky does is slam the return key over and over again. Get something like a Kinesis contour or the expensive Data Hand which uses the thumb for return key. It will take a huge load off your right pinky.
Bass player and instructor Scott Devine discovered that wearing gloves while playing his instrument provides an efficacious workaround to the symptoms of focal dystonia.
Layouts smlayouts... Being a wicked lead guitar player turned wicked IDE rocker, you've all be crammed into a mold.
Consider the difference between virtuoso's who can compose music on the fly, virtuoso's who can write to staff the sounds they hear in their own head, versus the musician that needs both the staff of the music and the staff of the director befor them to perform as a part of the whole. Of course there are execptions to every exception, however, it comes down to something ripping lead guitar players like me learn.
Number 1. try to type with only your thumb and ring finger when they are free and able to hit the target key regardless of if there is another finger closer.
Number 2. use the index and middle fingers to support the thumb and the ring fingers when they are engaged.
Number 3 Use the pinkies for supporting the ring finger and for rocking on the arrow/ insert/delete clusters.
Its not about the finger ZONE, its about the finger ORDER of usage where you have a choice. Very bad example but imagine hitting 'space' t'g'b' by going thumb,ring,middle,index all on the left hand, and almost instantaneous. Pinkies are for rocking the tab and arrow menu subselection of the ide primarily.
ROCK ON!
Pinky Finger? Seriously?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I tried Dvorak first when ditching QWERTY as well and ran into the same issue. Having to use only my pinky for ls -l was not acceptable. I ended up switching to Colemak instead and haven't looked back. About half of the keys are unchanged from QWERTY so it's easier than Dvorak to switch back and forth with QWERTY in a pinch. I have mine set up with the caps lock key unmodified though, I need it for C macros and PCB layout etc so no left hand backspace for me. In your case, you might want that left backspace key. http://colemak.com/
qi coplaii i ae e sae isse excep i aecs poie is
I designed this just a couple weeks ago:
http://blog.fsck.com/2013/01/pinkies-and-your-brain.html
I've been using it and am fairly happy with it.
One of the advantages from Colemak.com "Fast – Most of the typing is done on the strongest and fastest fingers. Low same-finger ratio."
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
So what's wrong with old fashioned two finger Hunt and Peck? Hell you can even throw in the second fingers now and then, and the thumbs for the space bar and the control key.
Some Realforce keyboards have variable weight on some keys, for instance 35g for the keys under the pinkies and 45g on the rest.
This is a common ailment that effects the brain for musicians with repetitive motions. My brother suffers from it and receives injections at the Cleveland Clinic which allows the nerves/brain to 'relearn'. The shots last about 4-6 months. You should look into it if you have insurance. I believe that they are costly though.
I was having the problem with crtl c and v. A Logitech G110 has 12 programmable keys on the left side. I use the bottom 2 for copying and pasting which I use a lot in adding products to a website.
www.trulyergonomic.com
I bought one a year ago, a blank-keycap version actually. I use in dvorak mode, though I've modified the layout very slightly.
Regarding your pinky, there are three improvements.
The biggest is actually that the keys don't have a typewriter stagger. In the vertical axis this are columnar. In the horizontal access, they follow the wave that your finger tips follow. The result is that your fingers take a simpler path to farther keys, making your straight pinky more operational.
Second, many major keys are actually in the center. Including backspace and enter -- which I'm certain you've always had under that right pinky. It took one week. but man are they way better in the middle! bigger keys, bigger fingers, striking them in the middle of the keycap. All good.
Third, and you may find this the best part, the shift keys are higher up -- where enter and caps lock typically are. So your straight pinky would actually still easily grab the shift key on the home row.
Of course, proper cherry switches, heavy keyboard.
I have tendinitis in my fingers. I wear gloves when I type and I use a special keyboard with keys which are softer and less jolting to press. I also use an Autohotkey script to remap my mouse click to the keyboard.
When my fingers are warmer, they become more supple and hurt less. I read about a surgeon which tendinitis who always soaked his hands in warm water before a surgery and it enabled him to keep on performing his job. Perhaps, the gloves cushion the shock of the keystroke as well. For a keyboard, I use the fantastic Kinesis Advantage keyboard.
I also use the fantastic program Autohotkey to enable me to click by pressing my thumb on a keyboard key. My clicking finger was always the worst, esp with terrible games like Diablo which require you to madly click as fast as you can for hours. And mice have a hard, jolting click. My thumbs seem invulnerable to any problems. My current version of the Autohotkey script even allows me to "click" and hold and drag then release! It does not do key-repeat like keyboard keypresses normally do.
I started out with thin polypropylene gloves for a few years. I felt a bit weird wearing them at work. But if I didn't wear them, by the end of the day, I'd become rather irritable. It happened so gradually that I didn't even notice that it had happened unless I thought about it. But as I walked home (10 min), I would cheer up so much. But this problem went away with the gloves. I used to worry that I might have to completely stop typing if the pain got worse and that would kill my career. And then what job can you do without using your hands much!? But my current system has worked well for the last few years so I don't worry so much now.
Now, in addition to the polypropylene gloves, I also use outer possum-merino wool gloves. My whole body is fairly cold which is partly why I have to wear such warm gloves. I have tried several glove combinations but the problem is finding gloves that are super-warm yet are not so thick or rigid that they prevent me typing. The possum-merino are fantastic - super flexible and super warm. I tried silk and alpaca as well. I find that if my fingers are even toasty warm and slightly moist, that's even better (less minor joint pain). But at 22C-24C, with all my gloves on, my fingers are not toasty warm - just normal. I have a space heater under my desk I turn on if it's I tried usb-powered hand warmers which let the tips of your fingers stick out. They were useless because my fingers need to be warm and warming my palm doesn't warm my fingers much. (although if my whole body is too cold, my fingers will be colder)
I was originally diagnosed with carpel tunnel syndrome. Many doctors call any RSI in your hands "carpel tunnel" because it's the most well known RSI. I'm fairly certain that's not what I have so I just call it tendinitis in my fingers. The doctor originally prescribed special, expensive carpel gloves with a rigid wrist and let my fingers stick out to type. My thin polypropylene gloves work better.
You must have incredible tension in your body and hands to have that much trouble.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
as far as I know, the only thing you often need your pinky for is the shift key, and since pretty much nobody capitalizes anything on the internet anymore, what's the big loss/
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
It all depends on how much time/energy you want to throw into learning how to type... again.
Consider this keyboard, if you want to continue with the QWERTY layout:
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-us/p/sculpt-comfort-keyboard/V4S-00001
It is still QWERTY - the only difference is that there is an additional Backspace key under the left thumb. The Backspace key is the third most-used key on the keyboard (which tells you something about the human being). Backspace is the main thing that the right pinky finger is doing when you type.
Just shift your "home keys" from f/j to g/k (or f/k), move the entire hand for pressing bksp/enter/right shiftkeys (will be a lot easier if you rip out the windows-key on the right side).
Or just cross the hands (so that the right hand's pinky rests on the the left hand) (this one will require a bit more training)
Or remap most of the right-hand keys to the numerical keyboard.
And yes, I've used them all (sport-related injuries) (but I did remap the keyboard a bit more (1-6 are letters on my keyboard mapping, I always have numbers under the right hand only))
I see you want the WANKER layout!
Reading other posts saying you 'don't need them' I first thought "ugh, finger-pecking". But having checked myself I do most of the typing with the first and second fingers myself. The left third finger gets a bit of action in the QWASZX region + tab. While the right third is mostly lazy occasionally helping out with a ;'. Right pinky is Return, left pinky Caps lock/Shift.
I actually got my left pinky knackered in a play fight with an ex girlfriend (she kicked the fingers right back and the little one never recovered). At the time I was convinced it would be a major problem and affect my typing - but it really isn't. Incidentally, my right pinky was also broken during birth and has always being bent. I just tested 80wpm on an unseen text.
You'll adapt to your injury just fine if you stop obsessing about it.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
Colemak is limited by being stuck with Qwerty conventions.
Dvorak considers the transitions between left and right hand, as well as the row and finger for each symbol.
Sticking the most recent book from Gutenberg ("The King of the Mountains") through a script which counts hand transitions, I get this:
Qwerty: 159876 transitions
Colemak: 170978 transitions
Dvorak: 199143 transitions
10MB of Linux kernel source (my Perl script is too slow for more...)
Qwerty: 4081041 transitions
Colemak: 4412425 transitions
Dvorak: 4776202 transitions
(See the scan with the inverted characters here: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/ergo/parkinson.html -- I wrote a script to do this: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/4966987 )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0-tt9FwZk
please mod up
that link will send you to a page where i demonstrate typing at peak speeds of 115wpm with no hands and no special adaptations.
basically, in my humble opinion, you have to adapt and stop acting so pessimistic.
-michael vega
i'm posting anonymouscoward because id prefer to leave my real 6-digit uid slashdot account unconnected to my real life identity, but yes i have great karma and post/mod here every day.
C and Java requires the frequent use of {}[]'" But there are plenty of languages that do not, such as Erlang, ML, and COBOL.
You could also just make your own keyboard layout. and map shift-1 to shift-9 to the symbols you need in programming often. Then just carry around a config for windows, mac and linux on a USB key. Maybe write an installer for it, since you are a programmer.
With a little effort you could use ctrl-1 to ctrl-9 for those keys and keep the regular shift behavior of those keys. I'm not sure if it works on all OSes, but it definitely was easy to set up on Linux.
I'd recommend trying the various ergonomic keyboards as well. A few centimetres change in posture or desk/chair height can make a remarkable difference too.
Unfortunately, trial and error have been my most successful way of finding solutions. I tried three different keyboards before getting one of the portable Goldtouch ones with the adjustable keyboard angle. It helped a lot, quite quickly. (My issue was with the tendons on top of my hands so ymmv.)
Good job to get working on this now, better than waiting years with further damage.
"Ruthlessly pursuing the idea that the accordion is just another instrument."
Here's how I solved my pinky problem:
My problem was not dystonia, but a combination of tendinitis and carpel tunnel syndrome (diagnosed by a neurologist, but mild as far as CTS goes). However, I think the solutions I found might be useful for any programmer trying to cut down on pinky strain.
Maybe you should just think about using a more concise programming environment (?). Having started to use Clojure recently, I can usually express myself in 10% of the amount of code I would have to type in Java/C/C++ or other imperative languages (even lisp used that way). Looking at reference implementations of algorithms generally underlines this . Lisp nicely wraps up any DSL, so you can do stuff like SQL or HTML in very composable functional style. If you are typing all the time and not thinking most of the time when programming, you are doing it wrong! Switching layouts can never fix that.
I modified the Maltron layout to come up with something that reduced load on both pinkies (amongst other things). I can't claim any particular expertise in keyboard design, but it's been working OK for me for the past 12 years. http://www.agilekiwi.com/other/news/my-keyboard-layout/
Colemak + "ctrl" mapped to "alt" key is heaven for Vim users.
When I began suffering from wrist strain, I began using foot pedals to do all of my chording (Emacs is very chord-heavy). I use the pedals for Shift, Control, and Alt - no more chords and thus no more pinky access to those keys. It helped me dramatically and has provided endless "water-cooler" discussions over the years.