I’m a professional developer but I started out as a hobbyist. I fell in love with programming after seeing all the neat things you could do with jailbroken iPhone back in the day, and while I don’t dabble in that area, I love having the ability to customize or alter something to suit my needs.
My current work is pretty boring and repetitive, so I’ve found some energy to write a workout routine newsletter, like their weren’t enough workout apps already haha. I also started a terminal SQL application that could be used for querying files. (insert into orangefiles.csv select Path, Name, FileSize from [./…/dir] where Name like ‘%orange%’ and Type = ‘file’) But I gave up on that because it was way over my head. Might pick it up again a few years in the future, it would be pretty handy.
A lot of people are talking about better ergonomics, which is great and helpful for preventing symptoms. But for me, what helped most to reverse my symptoms was performing finger extension exercises throughout the day.
Mouse clicking is all finger flexion so you need to balance that out by working the opposite muscles. Finger extension stretches (lifting one finger at a time off a table; stretches the flexor muscles), finger tendon glide, and finger spreads (spreading fingers apart with a resistance band; strengthens extensor muscles; my fav) have all been incredibly helpful in managing symptoms.
Ball squeezes on the other hand aggravate my symptoms because they work the same muscles and motions that clicking does. So don’t do those.