Are there any good quick guides to improving the ergonomics of my desk? With the start of the semester I'm starting to get back and wrist pain again and that is a red flag if I've ever seen one.

things that have helped me: get a good wrist rest, wear a long-sleeve to keep your wrists and forearms warm

When I do light typing, I don't have trouble, but when I do heavy typing, using a Kinesis Advantage keyboard helps reduce wrist stress for me: https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/advantage2/

I use one of these, having more tactile keys definitely reduces wrist and finger stress for me: https://ergodox-ez.com/

I have a Das keyboard, forget which one though

It has MX Blue's I don't know if that matters

I was just given a wrist rest, so I'll try using that

Just looked at the link, I thought those keyboards were a joke to be honest

they’re no joke 🙂

@gganley: I second @andy.fingerhut’s suggestion of the Kinesis keyboard; I've been using one for 2-3 years, and I love it

Wrist surgery is no joke. I haven't had it, and I hope I never do.

When talking to coworkers who see these funky-looking keyboard in my office and comment on it, I often mention "not cheap, but way cheaper than wrist surgery"

also, if you program 10 hrs / day for 365 days / year, assuming the keyboard las5t 5 years, it comes out to like: 300 / 365 / 5 / 10 = < 2 pennies / hour

I've had mine for 2-3 years, and there's no reason to believe it won't last another 2-3 years

"dollars per hour of use" is a good metric for anything you are considering purchasing, although the future "hours of use" is sometimes much more difficult to estimate than ergonomic keyboards.

I have purchased many books that, so far, have an undefined value for "dollars per hour of use" 🙂

I have 2 Kinesis keyboards, so I don't need to carry one between office and home.

keybaord is more like toothbrush than book, in taht you need only a single one, but will use it multiple times a day

leaving emacs (and therefore not chording all the time) helped my wrists a lot. Also a development style with more thinking and less typing.

and a trackball mouse

Yeah, chording is probably a major factor in my wrist stress, when I experience it, even though I use Vim mode in Emacs, because of the remaining chording I do for switching buffers/windows/etc., although I know I could change my habits/introduce fn key bindings to improve that. The keyboards that put modifier keys under your thumbs also help.

be sure to examine other causes of wrist pain. sometimes pain while typing is the symptom, not the cause. my wife fixed her wrist pain by wearing braces while sleeping (she was folding her wrists under her while she slept). that fixed the pain while typing without changing anything about her work ergonomics