Rust vs RSI: How I calculated that I lift 500kg/day with my fingers

Source: Dev.to

Visualizing the Invisible Labor of Coding

I built a desktop widget with Rust and Tauri v2 to illustrate how much “weight” we lift with our fingers while coding.

The math

• Standard mechanical switch actuation force: 80 g per keystroke
• Approximate daily keystrokes → ~500 kg of force per day (about 1.7 grand pianos)

That means we’re effectively lifting a car every week with just our fingers—no wonder the wrists start to hurt.

Technical Decision

I considered using the rdev crate for low‑level input hooks, but opted for a polling strategy (checking key states every 50 ms) instead.

Why polling?

• Stability – Hooks can crash the input chain if they misbehave; polling runs in isolation.
• Permission Hell – macOS requires intrusive “Input Monitoring” permissions for hooks. Polling sidesteps much of that friction.
• Privacy – The widget only needs to know whether a key is pressed, not which key, to calculate the “weight”.

The trade‑off is sacrificing nanosecond‑level precision for rock‑solid stability.

Implementation Highlights

• A “Health Bar” drains as you type, treating coding energy like HP in a video game.
• The widget runs locally; no data is sent to the cloud.

Try It Yourself

You can download and run the tool here:

The Burnout Meter (booby.dev)

It’s free and runs entirely on your machine.

Discussion

Have you ever dealt with RSI from coding? I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.