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

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

hermitdev wrote: post #372

WalterBright wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to debug embedded systems by hooking an I/O pin to the speaker, then would toggle the pin level at various points in the program. You could tell where it went wrong by the "song" after a while. Sorta like tuning your car by ear.

This reminds me of when I was helping a friend debug his home-built computer. Couldn't get a POST message out of it indicating why it wouldn't boot. After a while of searching, discovered it was because there wasn't a speaker connected to the non-existent pins for the speaker (there were no pins, just the soldering points for them). Once discovering that, used a multimeter to read the POST error - no GPU detected. Fu…

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #250

egd wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a previous gig, we had a lot of systems named after animals, and I'd joked about wiring our alerting system up to emit the animal sound for the system that was paging, but I think I'm actually going to do that at my next gig. Outside the land of software, engineers debug systems using sound all the time - I think we're underutilizing our senses and our pattern recognition.

I always wonder at the madness of elevator design. Most of them "ping" as they pass a floor for accessibility. But that means the blind rider must first know the floor he is on, then count the pings to the right floor. It should simply announce each floor as it passes. I know from experience that you can make quite comprehensible voice sounds by connecting a 5V I/O pin to a speaker, so there is no excuse. (All you do…

Post by RobMurray » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

tapia wrote: post #318

RobMurray wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would strongly recommend switching to Windows - the screen readers are just so much better than anything on Linux. I agree with the other person who said that GUI programs are easier to use with a screen reader. At least on windows, this is definitely the case.

You know that Drew is the maintainer of sway, right? I don't think switching to Windows is an option here :P

Post by vidarh » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 7:47 PM UTC

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #326

vidarh wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fun demonstration of getting comprehensible sound via one bit sampling is that you can use a tight loop on a C64 to read from any number of input pins (such as the tape input) to sample sound, and play it back either by writing to any number of outputs and connect it to a speaker, or indirectly by using the signal to toggle the sound chip volume up and down. So not only can you get comprehensible voices from a 5V I…

my c64 is sitting right next to me, and i think i'll play with this after work. thanks!

Post by ozim » Mon, Apr 20, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

Endlessly wrote: post #149

zw123456 wrote: post #110

I started my career at Bell Labs in the 80's and one engineer there made a huge impact on me. I learned more from him that any other single person I have worked with since. He suffered from progressive myopia so he had a rig with a camera and a big screen and a huge monitor. He coded slower than everyone else, but in a way, that was his secret power because his code almost never failed in testing. Also, he was brilli…

Meat of your comment to me is this phrase, “he had this insight about the balance between when to use hardware and when to use software that I think is somewhat lacking today” - would you attempt to clarify what you’re expressing he would have said about balancing the design of how software & hardware work together? Thanks.