it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site
Stackoverflow feels like it's turning into wikipedia sometimes.
I thought it was an excellent question for SO's knowledge pool.
How to program if you are blind
21–30 of 34 posts
Re: How to program if you are blind
#22I've wondered about this too, since I can't really picture myself doing any sort of programming without my vision. My problem is juvenile arthritis which came on when I was 12 and will probably leave me with another 8-10 years or so before the pain will be too unbearable to continue. I'll be around 40 then. I really don't wanna program "Captain's log, supplemental" style. Besides, how does one do CamelCase with speec…
> Besides, how does one do CamelCase with speech-to-text?
My guess would be tight integration with the IDE and knowledge of the language being used; most of the time, the editor should be able to figure out that chained, non-keyword or existing identifier words should be CamelCase. You'd need some manual way to disambiguate when it gets it wrong.
Re: How to program if you are blind
#23Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere, and a virtual wasteland of locked/deleted questions that are actually of use in the non-black and white world we live and work in. This real world ambiguity seems like it is completely i…
My experience with SO is this: Google for something, see a relevant SO link, click it. Page loads, question covers exactly what I'm looking for. First 3 comments on the question are about how the question doesn't belong on SO, or is too broad, or wrong, or whatever. The first answer contains the information I need.
I don't really contribute to SO for the same reason I don't really contribute to Wikipedia - the editors seem so hellbent on enforcing standards and rules that they throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Re: How to program if you are blind
#24Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere, and a virtual wasteland of locked/deleted questions that are actually of use in the non-black and white world we live and work in. This real world ambiguity seems like it is completely i…
My experience with SO is this: Google for something, see a relevant SO link, click it. Page loads, question covers exactly what I'm looking for. First 3 comments on the question are about how the question doesn't belong on SO, or is too broad, or wrong, or whatever. The first answer contains the information I need. I don't really contribute to SO for the same reason I don't really contribute to Wikipedia - the editor…
Doesn't the fact that you actually found an answer that covers exactly what you're looking for indicate that SO didn't throw the baby out?
Re: How to program if you are blind
#25I read his page years ago, and found it quite interesting: http://emacswiki.org/emacs/MarioLang
Re: How to program if you are blind
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience with SO is this: Google for something, see a relevant SO link, click it. Page loads, question covers exactly what I'm looking for. First 3 comments on the question are about how the question doesn't belong on SO, or is too broad, or wrong, or whatever. The first answer contains the information I need. I don't really contribute to SO for the same reason I don't really contribute to Wikipedia - the editor…
Doesn't the fact that you actually found an answer that covers exactly what you're looking for indicate that SO didn't throw the baby out?
True enough, but I'm afraid that if the editors had the power, they would have nuked the question before the answers even got there.
Re: How to program if you are blind
#27Does anyone know the productivity level of a blind programmer compared with an average programmers? I'm pretty curious about this for a while now. If my sight suddenly gone, can I actually retain my current productivity level with rigorous training and suitable development tools?
Re: How to program if you are blind
#28Locked. I honestly don't know why anyone would bother contributing to Stack Overflow at this point. It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere, and a virtual wasteland of locked/deleted questions that are actually of use in the non-black and white world we live and work in. This real world ambiguity seems like it is completely i…
> "It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere" That's exactly what StackOverflow is meant to be. I feel like I'm the only one who appreciates what StackOverflow is trying to achieve here - to be the place to document hard, solid facts - nothing more. If I wanted to read commentary and opinions on programming, there's always HN o…
Maybe you are the only one who appreciates it. I sure don't.
I'll have a question, I'll google it, be excited to when Google finds that someone else has asked the exact same thing, and then disappointed to find that it was asked on StackOverflow, where the Red Guards will inevitably have discovered an interesting question and taken steps to make sure it isn't answered. Hint to SO mods: it's not the question that is "unhelpful", it's you.
While Google manages to sort through the unbelievable chaos of the entire open Web to bring up the most relevant answer to any question on any topic in a fraction of a second using the latest 21st Century search algorithms, SO goes at it from the other direction, making sure so few questions are answered that what remains won't overwhelm its 1980s-era MS-DOS search technology.
I appreciate Joel's letting us use his vintage '486 to gather the world's biggest collection of code snippets, but I'm hoping someone with less primitive technology will replace SO with a system focused more on providing answers than on preventing questions.
Re: How to program if you are blind
#29Does anyone know the productivity level of a blind programmer compared with an average programmers? I'm pretty curious about this for a while now. If my sight suddenly gone, can I actually retain my current productivity level with rigorous training and suitable development tools?
As a blind programmer I would say that I can be every bit as productive as my sited peers with comparable experience levels for back end development although not nearly as productive for user interface work. If you suddenly lost your site I’m not sure how well you could program, the way I use a computer is significantly different from how I understand sited people to use a computer. I also assume the way I generate a mental model varies from most programmers and don’t know whether you could adapt existing mental models for use with our site or would have to start from scratch. If you lost your site you would want to focus on things like basic independent living skills and the ability to use a computer for general internet browsing before you attempted to learn to use screen reading software well enough to continue programming. While you could probably obtain a similar level of efficiency after losing your site it would be a process that would take several years at the least.
Re: How to program if you are blind
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "It seems to basically be the hosting ground for answers to hard factual questions answered in most documentation/materials elsewhere" That's exactly what StackOverflow is meant to be. I feel like I'm the only one who appreciates what StackOverflow is trying to achieve here - to be the place to document hard, solid facts - nothing more. If I wanted to read commentary and opinions on programming, there's always HN o…
It seems like this type of question should fall in to http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ domain as well or at least much more so the StackOverflow.
My thoughts exactly. Is anyone aware of topics being moved from one stackexchange to another? This would be a fantastic feature, obviously.