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Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#221

Post by PureParadigm »

richardw wrote: post #164
27182818284 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar experience for when I taught myself the Dvorak layout years ago. My fingers learned the common motion for whole words first. Actually, I'm not sure I could draw the layout of the qwerty keyboard I'm typing on right now from memory either.

Just for a laugh, try changing your phone keyboard to Dvorak. It seemed like a good idea but felt alien to see the keys I naturally use. Swiping was just ridiculous. Obviously it’s just practice but I don’t mind using qwerty on my phone. It keeps it vaguely present in my memory.

I've been typing Dvorak on my computer since middle school and so I thought it'd naturally be a good idea to switch my phone... turns out not so much. While having all the common letters on the home row is good for regular typing, it is not good for phone typing which is heavily dependent on autocorrect. If I miss a letter by one key it's still likely for it to be a valid word because common letters are clustered and autocorrect misinterprets. For example, I might type "i" and then "t", "n", and "s" are all adjacent meaning if I meant to type "is" and I miss by one key and type "in" then it is not corrected. Other annoying ones are "by" and "my" because the b and m are next to each other.

Sadly, I'm in a bit too deep to go back to Qwerty on my phone (I'd be very slow for awhile). I do still enjoy Dvorak on the computer and while I don't think I'm a faster typist than I would be with Qwerty, I rarely (pretty much never) experience finger strain when typing for long periods.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#222

Post by advectus »

dundercoder wrote: post #211
zachrip wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this was 2 years ago, I ended up at Columbia Ophthalmology in NYC and they were able to get me DNA tested after another local doctor failed to assist me in doing so. USH2A is the name of the specific condition if you're curious.

I have two mutations on USH2A. It would be spectacular if someone could repair the whole gene.

Really appreciate both of your stories. Any chance you could share the specific mutation? Such a difficult to understand condition given that both of you have one or more mutations in USH2A but have different stories around hearing loss

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#223

Post by gostsamo »

Hi, A blind python developer here. You can do the job and though it has its frustrations with inaccessible tools, there're always alternatives. The two best things that you can use for web development are VS Code, because Microsoft are currently in "we love accessibility" phase of their product cycle and doing a good job of it, and emacs because it gives you a text-based os at the cost of a somewhat steep learning curve. People are using braille displays though it is not unavoidable. As a screen reader, you can use emacs speak with emacs, orca in linux, voice over on MacOs and IOs, and NVDA for Windows. Specially for web devs, there is an NVDA addon that can help object positions in web pages and has some other nicities if you are the type to do front end. Developer tools in all browsers have some more work to do before being fully accessible so there will be some issues there. If you need some more info, program-l@freelists.org is a blind-dev community with experienced visually impaired devs. Feel welcome anytime.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#225

Post by adrianN »

richardw wrote: post #164
27182818284 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar experience for when I taught myself the Dvorak layout years ago. My fingers learned the common motion for whole words first. Actually, I'm not sure I could draw the layout of the qwerty keyboard I'm typing on right now from memory either.

Just for a laugh, try changing your phone keyboard to Dvorak. It seemed like a good idea but felt alien to see the keys I naturally use. Swiping was just ridiculous. Obviously it’s just practice but I don’t mind using qwerty on my phone. It keeps it vaguely present in my memory.

Wow doing that would make so little sense. The benefit of dvorak is less finger movement when touch typing. It would be interesting to optimize the keyboard layout on a phone for less finger movement while swiping, but that probably looks a lot different than Dvorak.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#226

Post by chillacy »

PureParadigm wrote: post #221
richardw wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for a laugh, try changing your phone keyboard to Dvorak. It seemed like a good idea but felt alien to see the keys I naturally use. Swiping was just ridiculous. Obviously it’s just practice but I don’t mind using qwerty on my phone. It keeps it vaguely present in my memory.

I've been typing Dvorak on my computer since middle school and so I thought it'd naturally be a good idea to switch my phone... turns out not so much. While having all the common letters on the home row is good for regular typing, it is not good for phone typing which is heavily dependent on autocorrect. If I miss a letter by one key it's still likely for it to be a valid word because common letters are clustered and…

Supposedly the entire reason Qwerty was designed was to prevent typewriters from jamming by making the keys as disambiguous as possible, which is now ironically ideal on tiny screens.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#227

Post by miki123211 »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #98
cortesoft wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am confused why his diagnosis makes any difference... this isn't a fatal disease, so he has no fewer years to live than the rest of us. If he thought being a software engineer was what he wanted to do to live a fulfilling life before his diagnosis, why would that change now?

Because programming without sight is hard. It's definitely doable and could very well lead to a fulfilling life. Or it might not. Maybe there are other careers that he might be better suited for and where his disability won't be as much of a hindrance. If so, he still has time while he can see to prepare for a career change. Basically, the GP is telling the OP to consider all of his options and not to box himself int…

> Maybe there are other careers that he might be better suited for and where his disability won't be as much of a hindrance.

I'm blind myself, and I consider software-engineering to be one of the nicest options out there, at least in my country. Sure, there are difficulties, but not as many as in other fields. Computers can be accessible, and accessible tools can usually be found.

A blind person becoming a software engineer is a realistic option. a blind person becoming... almost anything else is not. As a blind person, career prospects are pretty limited, and someone who already is a software engineer has a huge advantage, compared to someone who i.e. invested n years of his life into becoming a surgeon.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#228

Post by hutzlibu »

kolanos wrote: post #47

You can definitely continue as a software engineer. I'm living proof. It won't be easy, especially at first. For a while it will feel like you're working twice as hard just to keep up with your sighted peers. But eventually, the better you get with your tools, you'll find you have some superpowers over your sighted peers. For example, as you get better with a screen reader, you'll be bumping the speech rate up to 1.7…

"When you abandon this two dimensional representation, your non-visual mental map suffers no spatial limits. "

My visual representation is definitely 3 dimensional and I am not sure what you mean by abandoning it? I mean, code is statement blocks and controll flow elements. It is data and connections between them at execution. I can imagine, not being visual gives you much more focus and fewer distractions on the mental map, but is it really different?

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#229

Post by edwinyzh »

vidanay wrote: post #68
kolanos wrote: post #47

You can definitely continue as a software engineer. I'm living proof. It won't be easy, especially at first. For a while it will feel like you're working twice as hard just to keep up with your sighted peers. But eventually, the better you get with your tools, you'll find you have some superpowers over your sighted peers. For example, as you get better with a screen reader, you'll be bumping the speech rate up to 1.7…

Your comment about proof reading and errors not sounding right reminds me of the "proper/best" way to learn Morse code for ham radio. Most everyone is familiar with the charts that show A=.- B=-... etc. Lots of beginners try to actually interpret the sounds in their ears and convert that to a letter and then convert a bunch of those to a word. Obviously, that is very processor intensive and has a high failure rate. T…

You reminds me about learning a foreign language you need to think in the foreign language without the translating part.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?

#230

Post by Drakar1903 »

jedberg wrote: post #129
kolanos wrote: post #47

You can definitely continue as a software engineer. I'm living proof. It won't be easy, especially at first. For a while it will feel like you're working twice as hard just to keep up with your sighted peers. But eventually, the better you get with your tools, you'll find you have some superpowers over your sighted peers. For example, as you get better with a screen reader, you'll be bumping the speech rate up to 1.7…

> you'll be bumping the speech rate up to 1.75-2X normal speech. You'll be the only one who can understand your screen reader Huh. I already listen to most podcasts and recorded presentations at 2x. Now you make me wonder if I could process information faster with a screen reader even though my sight works just fine...

As someone who also does this, I find that the problem becomes not processing the information, but retaining it, and I haven't found a solution to that yet.
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