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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?

#331

Post by newtwilly »

whitehouse3 wrote: post #325
TriNetra wrote: post #270

Legally blind, I'm a full stack engineer (and a solution/security architect) with extensive experience in building both backend and frontend (web) systems. I work on Windows with Jaws screen reader. I use autohotkey extensively to super charge my productivity. I had worked as employee with Microsoft (and others) in the past and have been running my consultancy cum product company since 2016. Email in profile - You ca…

> Programming is mostly a mental job (no pun intended) I'm drawing a blank. What's the pun here?

I think the pun has to do with the word 'job', which is an abstraction used for CPU scheduling, among other things.

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

#332

Post by notaplumber »

whitehouse3 wrote: post #325
TriNetra wrote: post #270

Legally blind, I'm a full stack engineer (and a solution/security architect) with extensive experience in building both backend and frontend (web) systems. I work on Windows with Jaws screen reader. I use autohotkey extensively to super charge my productivity. I had worked as employee with Microsoft (and others) in the past and have been running my consultancy cum product company since 2016. Email in profile - You ca…

> Programming is mostly a mental job (no pun intended) I'm drawing a blank. What's the pun here?

'mental' can often also mean 'crazy'.

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

#333

Post by TriNetra »

whitehouse3 wrote: post #325
TriNetra wrote: post #270

Legally blind, I'm a full stack engineer (and a solution/security architect) with extensive experience in building both backend and frontend (web) systems. I work on Windows with Jaws screen reader. I use autohotkey extensively to super charge my productivity. I had worked as employee with Microsoft (and others) in the past and have been running my consultancy cum product company since 2016. Email in profile - You ca…

> Programming is mostly a mental job (no pun intended) I'm drawing a blank. What's the pun here?

The term mental is often used in the region I live to indicate psychologically disturbed person. So clarifying that I didn't mean anything other than the literal meaning of mind related job.

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

#334

Post by kedean »

kendallpark wrote: post #190
vidanay wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A while back I worked for a team that had wired up Jenkins to a speaker in the office. Each type of event would trigger a different Zelda sound effect. Victory music for successful deployments, game over music for breaking the build, etc. Notably, dev server exceptions were connected to sword clashing sounds. It led to debugging situations like this: "Okay, so that's two clanks when we click on this button, but if we…

That's super interesting. I would imagine another benefit of that system is pattern detection. It would be much easier to notice a "beat" happening than with log messages, where you need to put things on a timeseries representation to see those patterns show up.

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

#335

Post by LouisSayers »

whitehouse3 wrote: post #325
TriNetra wrote: post #270

Legally blind, I'm a full stack engineer (and a solution/security architect) with extensive experience in building both backend and frontend (web) systems. I work on Windows with Jaws screen reader. I use autohotkey extensively to super charge my productivity. I had worked as employee with Microsoft (and others) in the past and have been running my consultancy cum product company since 2016. Email in profile - You ca…

> Programming is mostly a mental job (no pun intended) I'm drawing a blank. What's the pun here?

Mental: relating to disorders of the mind.

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

#336

Post by shmageggy »

svilen_dobrev wrote: post #330

24y only? hm. comeon. Have u ever tried getting out of the rat-racing wheel for a while (7-8 months to 1 year maybe)? Apart of physicaly not-doing-that, some physiology actualy depends a lot on psychology. But u need, really, away.. in more aspects than just geographical. (btw Human eyes have evolved for looking far, not close. Which we keep ignoring, progressively) here some maybe related occurence to me... 20y ago,…

How lazy and disrespectful this comment is. One minute on Google told me this poor guy's condition is caused by a genetic abnormality and causes degeneration of light sensing cells in the eye. And you don't think he nor his doctors would have thought about the most basic possible treatments?

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

#337

Post by kedean »

malikolivier wrote: post #268
roganartu wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t speak to physical blindness, but I have aphantasia[0] which basically means I cannot voluntarily invoke my minds eye. Up until I found out about it last year, I thought that “visualizing” things was a metaphor for thinking, as I didn’t realize people could actually see things without looking at them. There are varying degrees of aphantasia. For context, I am completely unable to “see” anything in my mind. I d…

Aphantasia is a condition I have never heard about. Your experience and the description on Wikipedia lets me think I was born like this as well. I had many arguments with my wife about how I did not have visual dreams and did not see anything when I close my eyes. When she says she sees stuff when she closes her eyes, I always assumed it was some sort of metaphor and it was usual for human beings not to see anything…

Not OP but...

There isn't a scientific diagnosis, it's more of a self observation kind of thing right now. The reason is that there has been very little research into it so far. You may notice that the wikipedia article is extremely short and most of the references are news articles, opinion pieces, and blog entries. Personally, I've found that the realization has offered slightly new ways of approaching life. It's fun to explain to people how I think and how that may differ from them. Nothing truly changed except perspective.

For reference, I also think mostly in directed graphs. I'm also able to roughly draw a shape in my head, but its very quickly erased and is hyperlocal, like trying to draw in the air with a sparkler.

There is a subreddit, r/aphantasia, but I've found that it's mostly a mix of curious gawkers and bitter people claiming that having it has somehow deprived them of essential life experiences.

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

#338

Post by jitendrac »

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03780257

https://ir.proqr.com/news-releases/news-release-details/proq...

ProQR is working on some -RNA based gene editing treatment for Usher's syndrome. Stay updated with its result,hope for best. They are recruiting new patients for trial if interested.

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

#339

Post by tambarskjelve »

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…

"Now I will have less distraction." - Leonard Euler upon losing his right eye vision

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

#340

Post by mal_rak »

Please do eye exercises including: - Eye rolling (Make full circles with eyes) 5 times each day -- Eye roll one eye at a time (e.g. roll left eye right eye closed) -- Eye roll both eyes together - Near far eye exercise: Watch your hand switch focus to an object far away (based on how clear you can see progressively watch further away) - Palming (Google it) - Sunning (Google it)
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