Refiber Designs originally designed their typing gloves with coding in mind. At the time, my husband was a software engineer struggling with repetitive strain injury from long hours of coding at the computer. With some research, he found out that keeping his hands warm was a significant aspect to his hand health. The tendons and ligaments are more elastic when they are warmer, so naturally a glove could reduce strain in the hand. Typing gloves quickly made a difference. He has been wearing his gloves for years, often still wearing some of the original prototypes I made more him. No more hand problems!

The reason my husband asked me to make him some personalize gloves for coding was because the other available gloves have some problems like:

❌ bulkiness around the fingers makes typing more awkward

❌ most gloves look ugly

❌ gloves can be ill-fitting and feel too loose or tight

❌ knit gloves look grungy/outdoorsy, don’t wash well

❌ compression gloves are annoying to put on and take off and look like a medical glove

As my husband worked at the computer day to day, he gave me feedback on the gloves and we worked out the details of the design you see today. These are some key features we landed on:

✅ coverage stops near the knuckle line of the back of the hand, stopping short enough to not have chafing at the knuckle line, and leaving the fingers with complete range of motion

✅ edge is angled to be shorter on the pinky side of the hand, so that the pinky can more easily reach keys such as Tab, Shift, etc. (my husband is an Emacs user, so this has been particularly great for him!)

✅ a range of sizes (now with half-sizes, making 9 total!) so that everyone can find a fit that feels good

✅ professional and fun fabric options so that the gloves can feel stylish and cool

✅ machine washable and durable, so they are truly practical (My husband still wears some prototype pairs of gloves over 5 years later!)

While we have a surprisingly large variety of typing gloves available, we have some unique patterns for the coders out there. For the software engineers and web developers (and others who code!) we introduce the Python and JavaScript code designs for our Coding Collection Typing Gloves!

JavaScript Coding Gloves: Hello, World!

But let’s see the code! First off, the JavaScript fabric print, that I sourced from an independent designer on Spoonflower, has a classic choice of code: Hello, World! This was the natural choice for our first coding glove to launch (If you know you know!).

const helloWorld = () => {

    return ‘Hello, World!’

}

helloWorld() // Hello, World!

Python Coding Gloves

While the ‘Hello, World!’ code is pretty universally shared in the coding community, not everyone uses or learns JavaScript. So the natural next choice was to create a coding glove with none other than Python code on them.

We didn’t want the code on your gloves to be meaningless fragments that only “looked cool”. So we decided that, for the Python coding gloves, we should design our own fabric pattern that would compliment the JavaScript look well. This meant writing some of our own code, but what could we write that would be universal enough that the everyday software engineers, data scientists and computer science majors could all enjoy them? You might have an interview question with this one or you might have it on an upcoming test: we wrote a variety of functions for the Fibonacci sequence. Which version comes to mind?

The Iterative Function for the Fibonacci Sequence:

The Recursive Function for the Fibonacci Sequence:

The Memoized Function for the Fibonacci Sequence:

Don’t wear these gloves during a CS exam or you might get in trouble for cheating! On the other hand, wearing them during a coding interview could make you a more memorable candidate, just don’t get caught checking a detail reading your gloves!

A Bonus Mention to our Coding Collection:

Specialty gloves only available through Kinetic Labs. These gloves have such a fun retro computer illustration on them that makes them the fun choice for a pair of coding gloves.

More on hand pain/strain

Are you looking to prevent hand pain while you’re coding? Are you hoping to get some relief from your RSI? Obviously, coding gloves are not a panacea for your potential problems, but they are an easy way to set yourself up for better hand health, reducing your risk of strain and injury.

Look at any research on sports injuries and you’ll see the importance of warming up your muscles when you begin physical activity. This is no different for your hands. However the biggest difference is that your hands lose heat much more easily than the majority of your body. Sedentary work at the computer with a computer mouse for 3 or more hours and your hand temperature can drop all the way down to the temperature of the room![1]. You may think that you only need gloves when it might be drafty in the wintertime, but if your hands go down to room temperature, that could look like 70 degrees Fahrenheit or even 80 or more in the summer time. The closer your hands are to your core body temperature the better, so they may even make a noticeable difference in the strain on your hands during the warmer months of the year too, especially if you work in an air-conditioned space. The people in the study previously mentioned did not have any medical conditions or problems with circulation, so even if you don’t notice your hands are icicles while you are working, they may be a lower temperature than ideal to prevent injury. Something to consider.

While ice can be helpful to reduce inflammation and pain in carpal tunnel patients, it only makes sense to do so while you are resting your hands, not while you are using them. Any physical therapist or occupational therapist you see will probably do some sort of heat therapy before doing hand exercises with you. This is because when your hands are moving, you want the muscles, tendons and ligaments to be more elastic to your movement[2]. The colder your hands are, the more at risk they are for strain.

Moreover, studies have shown that warmth (not compression) is the only statistically significant factor in helping hand pain from arthritis[3][4]. While compression is considered helpful for inflammation, the warmth is what is going to help with comfort and pain. So it makes sense to choose the gloves for warmth that you are happiest with for your use-case (maybe the ones we designed for coding?).

[1] Reste, Jelena et al. “Wrist Hypothermia Related to Continuous Work with a Computer Mouse: A Digital Infrared Imaging Pilot Study.” International journal of environmental research and public health vol. 12,8 9265-81. 7 Aug. 2015, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph120809265

[2] Laymon, Michael et al. “Effect of heat, cold, and pressure on the transverse carpal ligament and median nerve: a pilot study.” Medical science monitor: international medical journal of experimental and clinical research vol. 21 446-51. 11 Feb. 2015, https://doi.org/10.12659/MSM.892462

[3] "Special arthritis gloves are no better at reducing pain and stiffness than looser-fitting gloves”, 17 Dec. 2021, https://evidence.nihr.ac.uk/alert/special-arthritis-gloves-no-better-than-looser-fitting-alternatives/

[4] Prior, Y., Bartley, C., Adams, J., Firth, J., Culley, J., O'Neill, T. W., & Hammond, A. (2022). Does wearing arthritis gloves help with hand pain and function? A qualitative study into patients' views and experiences. Rheumatology advances in practice, 6(1), rkac007. https://doi.org/10.1093/rap/rkac007

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