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Ask HN: What are the best / most accessible languages for blind programmers?

55 点作者 0x0203超过 1 年前
I&#x27;m asking both from a technical perspective, and from a mental perspective. From the technical side, are there programming languages that, due to things like code syntax or structure, are either especially good or especially bad because of having to be read through a screen reader?<p>And when it comes to just being able to grok the code, are there languages that are simply easier to keep a mental model of than others? Are there properties, attributes, or types of languages that you would tend to gravitate towards? For example, are functional languages easier or more difficult to keep in your head than a procedural language? Is it even any different from a sighted programmer who can see a whole screen&#x27;s worth of code at a glance? From my position of ignorance, I could see arguments for or against any language, but would appreciate the perspective of anyone that actually has experience with this.

20 条评论

peterprescott超过 1 年前
Parham Doustdar (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.parhamdoustdar.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;27&#x2F;autobiography-blind-programmer&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.parhamdoustdar.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;03&#x2F;27&#x2F;autobiography-blin...</a>) is a blind programmer who lists his tools here (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.parhamdoustdar.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;03&#x2F;tools-of-blind-programmer&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.parhamdoustdar.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;03&#x2F;tools-of-blind-pro...</a>). He mentions languages, and lists PHP, Go, Elixir, and Scala.
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Rayhem超过 1 年前
I realize the rust evangelism strike force is a thing, but I can&#x27;t help but think<p><pre><code> 5 | let scores = inputs().iter().map(|(a, b)| { | ^^^^^^^^ creates a temporary which is freed while still in use </code></pre> is easier to make accessibility tools for than<p><pre><code> In file included from &#x2F;usr&#x2F;include&#x2F;c++&#x2F;4.6&#x2F;algorithm:63:0, from error_code.cpp:2: &#x2F;usr&#x2F;include&#x2F;c++&#x2F;4.6&#x2F;bits&#x2F;stl_algo.h: In function ‘_RandomAccessIterator std::__find(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, const _Tp&amp;,...</code></pre>
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irrational超过 1 年前
In the 1980s I had a girlfriend whose father was completely blind and he was a programmer. I don’t know what language(s) he worked in (what was available in the 1980s? C, Fortran, Pascal, COBOL, uh…) and it didn’t occur to me to ask since I didn’t knowing about computers back then. I have thought many times since that it must have been harder for him with the technology restrictions of the 1980s versus today. Just documentation would be hard. No www to look things up. Even up to the early 2000s we were still using physical books for documentation. Was there any digitized documentation in the 1980s?
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bell-cot超过 1 年前
Immediate thought: Reverse direction, and look for screen readers which have some understanding of computer language syntax. Or consider developing one yourself. Editors such as vim have been doing syntax highlighting for ~25 years now, building on that technology might be the best approach...<p>[Hurries into concrete bunker before the first salvo of &quot;emacs could do...&quot; replies arrives]
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sargstuff超过 1 年前
=== unicorn[0] fits in the &#x27;easy to keep everything in memory&#x27; mental model language department without loosing expressiveness&#x2F;power. language documentation page[3].<p>--- very high level &#x2F; 6th generation level language. Makes extensive use of generators for doing goal directed programming.<p>=== ARC[1] terse lisp dialect by Graham &amp; Morris<p>=== Cursorless is spoken editor[2]. Throat mike useful in cubical office.[3]<p>--- type one thing. speak another. X2 productivity.<p>===<p>[0] : <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;unicon.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;unicon.org&#x2F;</a> ---<p>[1] : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.owlapps.net&#x2F;owlapps_apps&#x2F;articles?id=188190&amp;lang=en" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.owlapps.net&#x2F;owlapps_apps&#x2F;articles?id=188190&amp;lang...</a> ---<p>[2] : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NcUJnmBqHTY">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=NcUJnmBqHTY</a> ---<p>[3] : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinelectronics.com&#x2F;modular-throat-microphone&#x2F;?sku=MODULAR%20THROAT" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinelectronics.com&#x2F;modular-throat-microphone&#x2F;?sku=...</a> ---<p>[4] : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;btiffin.users.sourceforge.net&#x2F;up&#x2F;index.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;btiffin.users.sourceforge.net&#x2F;up&#x2F;index.html</a> ---<p>===
aeonik超过 1 年前
I&#x27;m curious to know if very terse languages like Uiua and BQN would be good for blind programmers?<p>I would think it eliminates a lot of overhead that is specifically designed for sighted people.<p>I also wonder how screen readers deal with the symbol soup.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.uiua.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.uiua.org&#x2F;</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mlochbaum.github.io&#x2F;BQN&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mlochbaum.github.io&#x2F;BQN&#x2F;</a><p>Forth and Lisps tend to be fairly visual syntax free as well.<p>I&#x27;m just speculating though, looking for someone with experience to confirm or rebuke.
h2odragon超过 1 年前
Knew a person who was severely sight impaired who was fond of C.<p>Can&#x27;t find it now; there was some online interview of them. They maintained the SlashNET custom ircd for a bit.
cafard超过 1 年前
I worked for several years with a legally blind programmer. He got by with a level of magnification that allowed perhaps three characters on a large screen, and with a screen reader. His preferred language was FoxPro, a language I know nothing about.
Jeff_Brown超过 1 年前
Haskell seems like a candidate. It has a minimum of syntactic noise (it looks like math), and it offers the $ operator, which is great for linearizing what would otherwise be lots of nested parentheses.
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dmead超过 1 年前
I used to help a blind guy with his Haskell on the #haskell irc channel in the 2000s. He told me he picked it because it had a very low character count. He used a screen reader so brevity was important.
adr1an超过 1 年前
Related, Ask HN: Alternatives to Scratch for a blind child? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34229502">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34229502</a>
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jmclnx超过 1 年前
I believe language does not matter. I believe the hardware that presents the text to the programmer is more important. I would think a braile terminal would work fine.<p>Over 30 years ago, there was a deaf&#x2F;blind programmer in my group. She had no issues and was quite good. That was a COBOL shop.
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dontbenebby超过 1 年前
python is probably a bad choice due to the white space absolutism.<p>compiled languages may be not fun since you have more delays than the sighted.<p>what did old school phreaks use when learning to program? (i was late the the game in the late 90s, and people always assumed i was older except when it was a context they&#x27;d pay me fairly for my intellect -- then it&#x27;s nothing but precarious, low paying nonprofits or piecemeal consulting designed to keep me in their orbit)<p>there is a library for the blind in 412, but they also block tor so i have to hope what pops up in duckduckgo is accurate:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswzczad.onion&#x2F;?q=blind+library+412" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duckduckgogg42xjoc72x3sjasowoarfbgcmvfimaftt6twagswz...</a><p>&gt;Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped &gt;412-687-2440 &gt;Toll Free Phone Number: 1-800-242-0586<p>if they give you shit say that it&#x27;s greg and you&#x27;re using your one phone call, they&#x27;ll help you if you don&#x27;t start asking a bunch of kinsey crap, if they don&#x27;t suffer a narcicistic meltdown from having to do more than show someone the braile forms for welfare.<p>(i have to be careful not to hammer resources intended for the visually handicapped when using tor -- my no javascript lifestyle means i often seek out things designed for a screen reader, and i&#x27;ve seen them get overwhelmed in ways i haven&#x27;t seen since the 2000s)<p>in general, interpreted languages are easier to keep a mental model of, because they have been iterated on to the point you can write out code that looks like psudocode, it&#x27;s why i like python<p>the hackers who trained me were big into perl, which has a lot of issues but the whole there&#x27;s over 9000 ways to do things -- there&#x27;s a big library of existing perl code, and since there&#x27;s more than one way to do things and those people fucking love one liners you&#x27;ll spend less time dealing with &quot;whitespace&quot; which, as a blind person, i&#x27;m gonna guess is a very hard thing to grok, harder than public key encryption, recursion, or the idea that we don&#x27;t need john taylor gatto to tell us what hellen keller got up to.
Qision超过 1 年前
Maybe you can find some ideas here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22918980">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22918980</a>
dncornholio超过 1 年前
There is never a &quot;the best&quot; in anything. It all depends on the context. Since you provide very little to no context, my answer is; &quot;all of them&quot;.
superb-owl超过 1 年前
I managed a blind engineer for a while. My main takeaway was: avoid whitespace-delimited languages (e.g. python). Go seemed to work well.
charlie0超过 1 年前
I would think Python at the top of the list since it&#x27;s syntax is very minimal. Just autoformat the tabbing.
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zeroEscape超过 1 年前
I&#x27;ve heard good things about Braille-lang.
TalktoCrystal超过 1 年前
Python?
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singularity2001超过 1 年前
Surprised the best answer is not mentioned yet: English! English is the best programming language to program people and (soon) computers.
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