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Interview with a blind developer on how he works (2017)

335 点作者 agomez314大约 1 年前

25 条评论

jareds大约 1 年前
Microsoft has done a lot of good work with VSCode for blind developers. I'm totally blind and used Eclipse for many years. I started using VSCode when I was learning Go. I watched audio queue's be added and thought it was a thing I'd never use because I am set in my ways. Now that I'm using VSCode to do Go programming professionally I'm glad they exist. It's not a game change but it is a nice quality of life improvement.
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Pathogen-David大约 1 年前
It looks like the audio samples have disappeared since 2017, but they&#x27;re available on the Wayback Machine for those who want to listen: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20170831162900&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vincit.fi&#x2F;en&#x2F;blog&#x2F;software-development-450-words-per-minute&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20170831162900&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vinci...</a>
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denvaar大约 1 年前
I&#x27;m surprised at the number of commenters here that are blind, or commenters who work with someone who is blind. Maybe this is more common than I thought, and that&#x27;s awesome. Goes to show that we should try to make accessibility more than just an afterthought.
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spr-alex大约 1 年前
I once worked with a blind malware analyst. I was skeptical because of the working memory requirements for reverse engineering being hard in general... until we worked together and his screen reader gave him hex and assembly. He was beyond fast at reversing and generally excellent at his job.
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IndrekR大约 1 年前
Previous coverage from 2019 where the author commented as well: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21898537">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21898537</a><p>Related topic from 2020 (Ask HN: I&#x27;m a software engineer going blind, how should I prepare?): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22918980">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=22918980</a>
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Terr_大约 1 年前
To me, this brings up all sorts of anxieties around how I could possibly function (professionally) if I lost my eyesight... and what I would practice in advance if I have reason to expect problems.
colund大约 1 年前
Very interesting article and it was interesting to see his desk without a display and mouse.<p>I posted a long and very moving story the other day about a software developer who was getting blind on an eye in six hours. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;elye-project.medium.com&#x2F;i-became-blind-within-6-hours-e2ccebb71dcc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;elye-project.medium.com&#x2F;i-became-blind-within-6-hour...</a><p>It made me think about how much time we spend in front of screens these days and that eyesight can&#x27;t be taken for granted.<p>This article was a nice contrast describing the possibilities to do work as a blind developer.
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commenter48445大约 1 年前
Link where you can hear the audio samples: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boingboing.net&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;28&#x2F;this-blind-software-developer.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boingboing.net&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;28&#x2F;this-blind-software-develo...</a>
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lioeters大约 1 年前
Related:<p>How A Blind Developer Uses Visual Studio (2017) - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=94swlF55tVc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=94swlF55tVc</a> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14347908">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14347908</a>
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SunghoYahng大约 1 年前
If blind people can do things primarily with their sense of hearing, then I believe I can learn to do the same with practice. This would allow me to work with both my visual and auditory senses. Alternatively, I could switch between working with my sight and hearing during different sessions, giving each sense a break. It sounds like a wonderful productivity hack. What do you think of this idea? I wonder if there are any blind training services for non-blind people.
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mywacaday大约 1 年前
10,000% respect for anyone able to develop or work productivility and being blind. I lost the use of my dominant right for a few months three years ago, so difficult to adapt even for a few months. Respect!
kgp7大约 1 年前
I work with an engineer who is visually challenged and uses emacs with dictation to code. He is a pretty phenomenal engineer.
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hinkley大约 1 年前
If he can perceive bright light I wonder if he can detect color?<p>Because I’m mostly normally sighted I use audio cues for extremely low bandwidth data, like chat or build status. I wonder if someone with a text to speech tool would be better off getting visual cues for low bandwidth data. For example one or more color panels on the wall in front of you to indicate chat status or unread email or failed builds. Four pixels in three colors can encode a lot of status.
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pants2大约 1 年前
I wonder how much multimodal LLMs are changing the game for blind developers. I imagine if used the right way it could be a huge productivity booster.
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snvsn大约 1 年前
Related: How a Completely Blind Manager&#x2F;Dev Uses Emacs Every Day - Parham Doustdar - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;emacsconf.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;talks&#x2F;08&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;emacsconf.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;talks&#x2F;08&#x2F;</a>
sebtron大约 1 年前
Interesting. I thought blind developers would be working 100% on a UNIX command line, using tools like ed for text editing (no GUI or TUI).<p>Related: &quot;Command Line Programs for the Blind&quot;, by Karl Dahlke [1]<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eklhad.net&#x2F;philosophy.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eklhad.net&#x2F;philosophy.html</a>
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bitwize大约 1 年前
A mentor of mine now has very poor eyesight due primarily to age. It&#x27;s affected his ability to use a computer significantly and even his ability to concentrate on a task for sustained periods of time. Also, a friend of my wife&#x27;s has macular degeneration, and at time of writing has 30% or less of his eyesight remaining.<p>I find my own eyesight is starting to deteriorate (though with prescription lenses it&#x27;s still pretty good), so in light of this and the above I&#x27;m definitely interested in how blind programmers work; accordingly, I&#x27;ve started experimenting with Emacspeak so that, if I ever go totally or effectively blind, there&#x27;s still a pathway that I can use so that I can continue to computer effectively (including programming) without sight.
fortran77大约 1 年前
I&#x27;ve known this to be true, as the subject of the article states:<p>&gt; &quot;Windows is the most accessible operating system there is&quot;<p>and people don&#x27;t believe me when I tell them.
schneems大约 1 年前
One of the best talks I saw was by a blind dev in India. About half way through I realized “holy crap, this guy had to memorize all his slides and talking points” and then it was even more impressive.<p>Also to add: we are all temporarily disabled at some time in our life one way or another. It’s never a bad day to try out an accessibility tool and explore how well your work functions with it.
_HMCB_大约 1 年前
Wonderful article. I see it’s a few years old. Wonder if VS Code has improved vastly in accessibility and what the author’s take is now.
bilater大约 1 年前
One of my biggest fears as a frontend dev is to build UIs that are inaccessible for people. It&#x27;s easy to take so many things for granted.<p>The good news is you get a lot of accessibility out of the box using native html. For higher abstractions I love working with accessibility first libraries like HeadlessUI or Shadcn (which is built on top of Radix).
pugworthy大约 1 年前
Really interesting.<p>One thing jumped out at me was whether some of my own coding process as a sighted developer overlap. I’m sure I’m not the only developer who talks about “Seeing the code in my head” before type it out. Not literal lines but I craft a mental map before hand, which guides the process more on a subconscious level.
jonathankoren大约 1 年前
One time I phone screened a blind engineer. I had no idea he was blind at the time. He did the coding exercise with no problems, and I forwarded him to the onsite. The only thing that was unusual, was that all his code was flush left. It was perfectly fine code, just formatted oddly. ¯\_(ツ)_&#x2F;¯ Nothing autoformat couldn’t fix.<p>When someone else interviewed him at the onsite and saw my comment in the packet, they told me. We guessed it was some artifact of using a braille display or something.<p>If anyone is familiar with this technology, I’d be curious to know if my hypothesis is correct.
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decide1000大约 1 年前
That&#x27;s a nice post to read. Thanks for sharing.
parkerhdeb大约 1 年前
I sure wish I could read this..