Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–497 of 497 posts

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

#491

Post by roganartu »

vekker wrote: post #474
karmajunkie wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh yeah, same here. Like, I can remember what my daughter looks like as she sleeps in her crib, but visually what I see (with my eyes closed) is just blackness. I've always thought of it as something akin to a prerendering buffer or virtual display context in my mind. What the parent poster is saying makes me think that for them its more like experiencing an actual display, which seems like it would get really confus…

That's an excellent analogy! The mental space is exactly like a prerendering buffer. When asleep and dreaming, there is no overriding visual input, so the stuff in the mental space gets rendered. And I guess some people can access this even when sensory input is present. That must be wild.

I had many conversations in the weeks following my original discovery, and this comment thread reflects them perfectly.

Me: There's no way everyone actually sees things and I made it 30 years without knowing.

Everyone else: Yeah I see things.

Me: but, like really see or just remember features?

Everyone else:

I put "see" in quotes in my original comment simply because that is how everyone I spoke to described it; that it's clearly not physical vision, but it's also clearly a visual experience. I have absolutely zero visual experience when I close my eyes, and I never have, it is simply emptiness.

You seem to describe dreaming as if you experience that visually too, while not being able to do it while awake. It's worth noting that this is not uncommon for people with aphantasia, which is why it is the inability to _voluntarily_ invoke your minds eye. Many people can still dream visually, however I do not. I go to sleep and then simply wakeup with nothing but emptiness in between (not an experience of emptiness as time passes, but more like a time skip).

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

#492

Post by mannykannot »

jodrellblank wrote: post #489
dang wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The plausible interpretation is that the commenter got excited about screen readers because they unexpectedly connected to something he was already interested in, and it made him curious. Not only is that a perfectly decent thing, it's an example of the curious conversation that HN exists for. Meanwhile, snarking and putting down other users, which unfortunately are what you did, are examples of what HN very much doe…

Without meaning it as a personal attack, do you have any reason to think that 6 years of trying to detect meanness has made you any more accurate at it than you were before, or than anyone else is? When you say "trained to pattern match it", is there any feedback to change your models? As moderator-by-fiat it's your decision what comments are mean, which is potentially a self reinforcing loop.

Here's some feedback: under Dang's eye, HN has become a paragon of online discussion. I say this as someone who has occasionally been called out.

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

#493

Post by wizzwizz4 »

vekker wrote: post #459
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do, but I haven't practised the skill much lately so it's not as vivid as it used to be. It's more like a second virtual desktop than superimposed; it takes up the same coordinates, but there's a clear distinction between "real" and "imagined" objects (unless I'm particularly tired, but that's closer to "hallucinating" than "visualising"). I used to be able to visualise things in positions relative to real objects,…

That's blowing my mind right now. First I thought people who can visualize to the point of actually seeing what they visualize were pretty rare. For me what I visualize takes place in a mental space: it's a clear mental image, not a literal visual image. Have you always been able to do this, because you mention practising this skill? Also, does this only happen after focussing on something, or does it happen spontane…

> I imagine it would be pretty distracting if someone says for example, "don't think of scary thing X", and then the scary thing manifests visually for you because you are thinking about it.

That sounds about right. For me, "don't think of a pink elephant" results in the image of a pink elephant, though if I'm not concentrating on its location it's just… somewhere.

> Have you always been able to do this, because you mention practising this skill?

I think I've always been able to do it – but I haven't been doing it as much since I stopped playing with toys, going outside and generally doing activities where such a thing would be useful, so it's less instinctive.

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

#494

Post by aabbcc1241 »

Malp wrote: post #192
aabbcc1241 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also rely on the "inner voice" for reading and writing. But I can skip that when programming. I think it's related to how you learn that language in the early stage.

Could you expand on how you skip it for programming?

When I am designing the solution, I still have the inner voice. But when I'm implementing in code, I can do it almost "brain-lessly", even fine when listening to music.

I'm not sure how do I do that, but I guess because I do it a lot, so I can do it as familiar as walking?

Edit: Maybe because I didn't learn programming by listening to teacher, instead I learn from books and trials. I guess it's more like walking / playing sport, you don't need explicit inner voice to guide your body movement.

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

#495

Post by vekker »

roganartu wrote: post #491
vekker wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an excellent analogy! The mental space is exactly like a prerendering buffer. When asleep and dreaming, there is no overriding visual input, so the stuff in the mental space gets rendered. And I guess some people can access this even when sensory input is present. That must be wild.

I had many conversations in the weeks following my original discovery, and this comment thread reflects them perfectly. Me: There's no way everyone actually sees things and I made it 30 years without knowing. Everyone else: Yeah I see things. Me: but, like really see or just remember features? Everyone else: I put "see" in quotes in my original comment simply because that is how everyone I spoke to described it; that…

Yep, imagining/visualizing something goes without an actual visual experience for me. I've always assumed the same thing applies to most people, but I guess I do have some degree of aphantasia.

I can imagine something, but it's like rendering a layer with the opacity brought all the way down to 0, but my "mental computer" knows it's there and can tell its shape, color, all its features & details in 3D space... without seeing the actual visual image.

Dreaming on the other hand is usually multi-sensory and especially visual for me. Much like being awake or in a VR environment, but with internally generated input.

Have you spend time really consciously investigating your sleep? To the point of interrupting it with alarms etc..? I'm someone who's very interested in my dreams: for years, every night before sleep I wonder what I will dream, sometimes I get lucid during the dream, and when I awake my first instinct is to recall my dreams. I think this is why I dream so much. I wonder if the same thing applies to visualization and whether or not aphantasia is "curable" through consciously exercising visualization.

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

#497

Post by fsckboy »

check out TECO as a text editor. It was designed way back in the day when printing minor text edits to paper (or paper tape!) over and over would waste a lot of paper, so it trained you to keep a picture of your text in your head and normal editing was writing little macros in your head to move around and make changes.

EMACS was originally written in TECO. Don't waste a lot of time reading about people remembering TECO today, you'll hear too much from all the people who talk only about LISP's parentheses and not about how perfect the people who love LISP find it. Better to spend your time seeing if you love TECO.

https://almy.us/teco.html

download it here https://github.com/blakemcbride/TECOC

read about it on wikipedia and check out the external links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TECO_(text_editor)

the guy who created it in the early 60's is still around http://www.opost.com/dlm/#teco

Post reply on HN