The Dyslexic Programmer(blog.bethcodes.com)

35 pointsby nkurzvor 12 Jahren31 comments

blog.bethcodes.com

http://blog.bethcodes.com/the-dyslexic-programmer/

31 comments

A blog post based on little knowledge of dyslexia leads to a bunch of comments that do not accurately describe dyslexia. There has been a HUGE amount of research on how dyslexic readers read and how that compares with how proficient readers read, in multiple languages across most developed countries and quite a few developing countries.

The most common type of dyslexia, by far, is a problem in the performance of the brain module called the "visual letterbox area,"[1] which matches features of the reader's writing system (letters, letter combinations, "phonetic" elements of Chinese characters, or whatever) to phonological features of reader's spoken language. Developmentally, dyslexia is nearly always preceded by poor "phonological awareness" in dealing with spoken language.[2] They way to help people with dyslexia read better and get through daily life better is systematic training in sound-symbol correspondences specific to the reader's writing system,[3] which helps dyslexic readers improve the performance of their visual letterbox area through training.

Meanwhile, programmers improve by debugging and reviewing code with other programmers, which analogously helps programmers attend to the details that matter.

[1] http://readinginthebrain.pagesperso-orange.fr/intro.htm

[2] http://www.fldoe.org/ese/pdf/phon9872.pdf

http://www.sedl.org/pubs/sedl-letter/v14n03/3.html

http://reading.uoregon.edu/big_ideas/pa/pa_what.php

[3] http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Dyslexia_articleintro.html

http://dyslexia.yale.edu/book_Overcoming.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3704307/

bethlyvor 12 Jahren

OP here: thank you for the additional clinical background. That sound-symbol relationship is exactly what I have trouble with.

I had intensive, systematic training in sound-symbol correspondences, and though it did not seem particularly effective for me who knows where I would be without it. I do know it was incredibly frustrating and a miserable experience as a child to be faced over and over with the one thing you are terrible at.

If I were encountering greater difficulties or my coping mechanisms were less sufficient I would seek it out now, but I don't feel it is necessary.

AnimalMuppetvor 12 Jahren

It was a blog post based on personal, firsthand knowledge of dyslexia, rather than academic knowledge. I wouldn't call that "little knowledge of dyslexia".

headShrinkervor 12 Jahren

Maybe is should have said, 'little clinical knowledge'.

AnimalMuppetvor 12 Jahren

I can buy that.

headShrinkervor 12 Jahren

Wow! That is exactly it. I was diagnosed as severely dyslexic in first grade. I have never heard anyone so accurately describe what I feel is happening in my head. Thank you for this.

danbmil99vor 12 Jahren

Slight dyslexia caused me to basically skip the C/C++/Java cycle of programming languages. I was great at assembly, basic, and FORTH; then not so much for 15 years. Then I found Python and became a ninja again. Now, with the right modern IDE and tweaked syntax highlighting and hinting, I can handle C# and Javascript as well.

LISP, not so much.

Perl...

n0bodyvor 12 Jahren

I'm dyslexic and I write Perl everyday. It's no different to c/javascript/java. Except it's easy, and has the cpan

ck425vor 12 Jahren

I'm also Dyslexic and I've also found Python is great. I think the large amount of intuitively named built-in functions really helps. Funnily I've also found syntactical whitespace to be very helpful, having curly brackets everywhere makes everything harder for me to read.

danbmil99vor 12 Jahren

> having curly brackets everywhere makes everything harder for me to read.

What really kills me are nested parenthesis. I think I'm just deficient compared to most capable programmers in the ability to see how they pair up, especially in plain monochrome text.

In addition to indentation instead of curly braces, Python uses way less parens, for instance in if and for statements.

kevinnkvor 12 Jahren

> "I read quite quickly (though only somewhat accurately) through pure pattern-recognition. I can look at, say, "word" and identify that the second letter is an ‘o’, but if I want to understand it as a concept I ignore the letters involved all together"

Isn't that how pretty much everyone reads? No one looks at every individual letter of each word!

arnauddrivor 12 Jahren

Not everyone reads like that. A good test to note if people uses pattern recognition is the way they pronounce a character proper noun after reading a book: I never can pronounce a character's name at the end of a book as I have never actually "read" it but only "recognized" it.

jsweojtjvor 12 Jahren

I also don't read aloud in my head for the most part. I get caught with this exact problem with character names -- I have to sound it out for the first time when I try to say it.

However, you are making a different point. Anyone who reads 'fluently' recognizes the shapes of words in one glance -- whether he reads aloud in his head or not. No one is looking letter-by-letter.

exDM69vor 12 Jahren

I know exactly what you mean. More than once I've read the book and on the second-to-last page I've realized that I have been reading (and mentally pronouncing) the name of the protagonist incorrectly.

I have other similar dyslexic traits to the OP. I can read and write well but I can't read out aloud. I don't usually find reading books enjoyable and I need to have code snippets and math formulae to break the wall of text.

Hansivor 12 Jahren

But is this really a dyslexic trait? I use this method of reading most of the time by default because it allows me to read much much faster than reading the whole thing out. I often get pissed of at badly written text because of this because it slows me down a lot. For technical text it's often impossible to do this.

arnauddrivor 12 Jahren

This is not a dyslexic trait. It is just a method very popular among dyslexic people as it is much easier for them to read this way

ck425vor 12 Jahren

Hmm that occurred to me to but I also do the same thing with whole sentences. If I'm reading aloud and read 'As he ran he noticed a storm brewing', I'd often say 'A storm brewed as he ran'. Even if someone pointed my mistake out and read it aloud to me in my head I'd hear my version.

dsuthvor 12 Jahren

Many people do this - take a look at any children's show where they read books out. Typically the spoken words don't match the page exactly, but do carry the gist of the story. I do the same thing when I read to my kids, my brain summarises a sentence very quickly, and I repeat it in my own words without thinking.

I think this is just part of spoken communication - our brains short-circuit more formal written patterns into 'normal' speech patterns.

thybagvor 12 Jahren

I do exactly that, weirder still i can often tell the words on the page say somthing differnt to I'm reading while i'm reading it wrong. My fiancee does the same thing (we're both dyslexic).

cwmmavor 12 Jahren

people have 2 methods for reading words, sounding out words letter by letter, this is what you use for new words, and names, the other method is the recognizing words by the general letter shape as described in the article. These are totally different paths in the brain and thus either can be impaired.

CmonDevvor 12 Jahren

"My dyslexia means that the most important thing for me about a language is the tool support, which often rules out new, hip languages." - a language without a proper tooling isn't worth learning. How can a language be "modern" without automated refactoring and smart syntax assistance?

mqsiuservor 12 Jahren

You are overgeneralizing

vanderZwanvor 12 Jahren

Interestingly, the advantages of her dyslexia seem to boil down to "I have the opposite of the Curse of the Gifted"[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7219872

xedariusvor 12 Jahren

I never really noticed I had trouble with words, not until I met my girlfriend who is somewhat of a words smith. It's been quite a revelation since we've been together, to the point that I now notice it myself. I've never been tested, I don't think I'm full blown dyslexic, but I'm somewhere on the spectrum.

I too have noticed that having your brain wired up a little differently does allow you to make leaps in slightly different directions to others (not always for the good). However other things are out of reach. For example I rarely read anything other than comp sci books or maths books as I find it incredibly difficult (and painfully slow) to consume information that way.

As for programming I found it's never really held me back, apart from reading documentation, I much prefer to dive into the code and build pictures in my head.

marincountyvor 12 Jahren

I too have a hard time reading most books of fiction, and have spent a lifetime of reading nonfiction though. I will read great authors like Vladimir Nabokov. In college, I went from a average student to one of the better students when I changed the way I took notes(I started to draw visual pictures on each page of notes, so I could recall each page with close to idetic accuracy.)

In her article she stated,"It’s even better when books use it too: the easiest textbooks for me to read were the computer science books with syntax-highlighting. Unfortunately, this was not most of them. Code can also often be represented visually: I highly recommend the HeadFirst series in particular [2)." I have found 95% of computer programming books are 500 pages of blocked typed, verbose, horribly written Phone books. They are slowly changing though.

I don't know if I am dyslectic, but I had a horrid time in school--especially with language. Right now the only foreign language I would attempt is Chinese. I heard most words are one syllable, and the words are visual pictures.

yarpervor 12 Jahren

If you're really dyslexic why choose software development as a job. I mean seriously it's just reading and writing all day - every bracket has to be matched up and every line (usually) has to have a ;.

> I believe that in some ways dyslexia makes me a better programmer.

I'm sure everyone on your team says the same thing when you spell all your shit wrong and can't do 90% of the refactoring shit legacy code that they do.

ugh, hn, get a grip seriously. Programming can be hard, that's the deal. It's not an every-one is the same we can all bring our special snowflake to the party deal

UnoriginalGuyvor 12 Jahren

> If you're really dyslexic why choose software development as a job.

People do things they enjoy. Very few people pick their jobs based purely on what they're innately best at.

> I'm sure everyone on your team says the same thing when you spell all your shit wrong and can't do 90% of the refactoring shit legacy code that they do.

That's a very strange point. Neither the IDE or compiler will let you produced "wrong" code and push it into the codebase.

Also refactoring has nothing at all to do with writing individual lines of code (i.e. it is "big picture stuff") and is very much a learnt skill (see the literature on effective refactoring). There's no rational reason why someone with dyslexia couldn't be just as effective at refactoring a codebase than someone without.

> ugh, hn, get a grip seriously. Programming can be hard, that's the deal. It's not an every-one is the same we can all bring our special snowflake to the party deal

I'm surprised and disappointed that this kind of low effort trolling is on Hacker News now. I've come to expect this from Reddit and Slashdot, but the tone here has always been better.

thybagvor 12 Jahren

I'm not the OP, but as someone whos both a programmer & dyslexic - I do it because i enjoy it & and IMHO am pretty decent at it. Sure I naturally make a few more typos in my code comments & docs than most people, but a minute of extra proof reading (+ F6 in sublime) fixes that so why should anyone care?

> I'm sure everyone on your team says the same thing when you spell all your shit wrong and can't do 90% of the refactoring shit legacy code that they do.

I wasn't aware dyslexics magically got to avoid ever having to debug weird issues in legacy code bases? Hell, i may as well not come in some days if thats the case.

> ugh, hn, get a grip seriously. Programming can be hard, that's the deal. It's not an every-one is the same we can all bring our special snowflake to the party deal

Sure, programming can be hard, and true, it isn't for everyone. But what has my (or anyone elses) being dyslexic got to do with whether they are the best person for the job?

Swiftyvor 12 Jahren

im a dyslexic, and i started at uni doing a programming degree, I then switched off it (not due to my dyslexia, but lousing a passion for it once I was no longer doing it for run.)

I had no problem programming with dyslexia, as I found after repeating world long enough i learnt them (and being form the UK, a lot of programming terms are spellet incorrectly anyway.)

When it came to documentation it just took me a bit longer to insure that it was readable by everyone else on the team. But that's something that is done for any job i do.

I'm sure they everyone on a team you work for loves the fact you a condescending and see that someone with a disability is lower then you, and is not capable of doing the job as good as you.

I have seen plenty of code, and comments that was done by people who don't have dyslexic that is a mess. Bad coding is not just the domain of people who are unable to spell.

showsovervor 12 Jahren

I don't think accusing the GP is going to help. Working with cryptic words day in day out is not something especially suited for someone who has trouble with reading / writing.

> I have seen plenty of code, and comments that was done by people who don't have dyslexic that is a mess. Bad coding is not just the domain of people who are unable to spell.

I suspect it's more the other way around. That code from dyslexic programmers tends to have more mistakes than code from non-dyslexic programmers.

bethlyvor 12 Jahren

I actually found programming easy. I started taking CS classes because they were a simple way to boost my GPA. When all words are cryptic, programming can be extremely well-suited.

Coding mistakes come from a lack of attention and tooling, not from innate skill. Being willing to take the time to proofread, use a spellchecker and write unit tests is important for anyone, regardless of learning disabilities.