
How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio [video] - nevatiaritika
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0&feature=youtu.be
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hacker_9
I always wondered how someone could use text-to-speech effectively, especially
with a programming language full of symbols with long names such as 'semi-
colon', 'underscore', 'left parenthesis' etc. The answer it seems is to speed
up the voice tenfold! Honestly incredible he's fine-tuned his other senses
well enough to be able to code at a reasonable speed again.

~~~
Semaphor
I was at a web design conference once with a talk by a heavily vision-impaired
guy. I was amazed at the speed when he went to his IDE to fix a bug. I
couldn't make out a word it was saying and he didn't seem slower working with
it than I would be.

~~~
Pigo
I'm glad you mentioned that. After watching this it made me wonder if this is
normal, or if this guy is some sort of auditory wizard. It seems like an awful
lot of work to master, but maybe not if it's a skill you're using everyday.

~~~
masklinn
> After watching this it made me wonder if this is normal, or if this guy is
> some sort of auditory wizard.

The "visual cortex" area is not deactivated but gets re-tasked with non-visual
processing tasks, even in "late blind" people (people who lost their sight
after age 12):
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667661/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667661/)

Considering the amount of visual information the sighted process more or less
effortlessly, that's a pretty significant amount of processing capabilities
which can get retasked with e.g. auditory processing.

~~~
sssilver
I wonder if any of it is also being directed at just being better at
programming.

------
j_s
Here is a link to the Stack Overflow answer mentioned in the intro portion of
the video:

"How can you program if you're blind?" |
[http://stackoverflow.com/a/453758](http://stackoverflow.com/a/453758)

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woliveirajr
I met two blind programmers. The process they used was exactly how it's
described in this video.

What was odd was that:

1 - they were given the worst place in the room: no windows, literally facing
a wall. Took some time to realize why they didn't complain.

2 - The computer had monitors. Then I learnt that Windows (don't know what
version it was) wouldn't work it no monitor was attached.

~~~
joyofdata
two thoughts:

1 - does sun light have no physiological/psychological value for blind people?
the sun light might still be captured on the skin or even in the eyes and
trigger relevant biological processes.

2 - having a monitor is also important for a blind person when working in a
team.

~~~
canes123456
The vast majority of visually impaired and legally blind have some degree of
sight or at least light perception. The tiny percentage that does not still
needs/like sunlight for vitamin D etc, but you don't get much sunlight form a
window.

~~~
Someone
For those wondering: you can get lots of sunlight, but not any UVB
([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19614895](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19614895):
"All glasses totally blocked UVB radiation."), and that's what your body needs
to make vitamin D ([https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-do-i-
get...](https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-do-i-get-the-
vitamin-d-my-body-needs/))

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melling
I imagine many would benefit if we had a smart developer assistant where it
could have a higher level understanding of programming.

"Jarvis import library foo" \- could be said from anywhere in file

"Jarvis jump to file bar.c"

"Jarvis declare var current temperature equals zero" \- var currentTemperature
= 0

"Jarvis write for enumeration on var word over var name list"

"Jarvis build and run" or simply "Jarvis run"

By the way, I know many people don't like to talk to a computer, can't imagine
how it could be faster than typing, etc. However, I believe that once an
assistant is done right, more than a few people would be converts.

~~~
jcadam
And then one day there will be a generation of programmers who have only known
coding via a voice-driven developer assistant. Imagine trying to interview
such a person.

"Please stop shouting at the whiteboard. It doesn't work that way. I need you
to pick up one of the dry-erase markers and write your algorithm to invert a
binary tree."

"What? Who codes with their hands? I need my assistant!"

~~~
lurker456
Would that be a bad thing though ? Assuming assistants are ubiquitous. We
don't use punch cards in interviews today. Even today whiteboard interviews
are sometimes not the best method to fill certain roles.

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rjdavis3
This is great. I always wondered how blind developers managed to navigate IDEs
at a decent pace.

I can't help but wonder how Saqib Shaikh navigates through log files for large
applications though. Log files usually generate a large amount of noise in the
form of time stamps, thread names, log levels, stack traces, etc. that
overtime I've learned to "scan" instead of read to find what I am looking for.
I would love to see a video of him navigating through a log file to see how he
does it. Maybe just lots of string searches?

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
To be fair, sighted developers have to filter all that noise out too when we
slog through logs visually.

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Zekio
Damn, he works faster than me... the only thing I could have done faster was
removing the "

Edit: wrote semi colon instead of " double quote

~~~
melling
And many modern languages don't have semi-colons. Wonder if they can be
removed from C#?

~~~
DiThi
I think he means the extra quotes that was causing syntax error.

~~~
melling
Oh, that one hanging out at the end of the line? Hopefully, a better assistant
could suggest that as a fix then you'd simply have to say "fix line 11", for
example. It has got to get increasingly difficult to find even simple syntax
errors in a lot of code, if you are visually impaired.

------
snarfy
In my first developer job, I worked with a blind developer. Back then it was
green screens, ksh, vi, and a screen reader. That was over twenty years ago.

I'm surprised the process is very much the same today as it was then.

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vorotato
What screenreader is he using?

~~~
ygra
Sounded and behaved like the default narrator that comes with Windows. They
all tend to rely on the same APIs, though, so what they “see” of the screen or
the focused control is very similar.

~~~
jareds
Listening to the beginning of that video as a blind programmer I'm 99% sure
he's using Jaws for Windows.
[http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS](http://www.freedomscientific.com/Products/Blindness/JAWS)
I program in Java and Eclipse for my day job but have found Visual Studio to
be really nice to use and accessible with Jaws.

------
jlebrech
why can't we code like this "remove that comma on line 3" or "move line 4
inside the braces above"? surely it would benefit everyone?

you could even ask "which lines have if statements?"

for something like this wouldn't you be talking to an AST rather than a text
editor?

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GlobalServices
How is Xcode for this?

~~~
jareds
In my experience it's pretty much impossible to get any kind of UI done in
Xcode, at least as of Xcode 7. I'm a totally blind programmer who has a
Macbook Air that I run windows on most of the time. I'm not sure if my issues
with Xcode were do to a lack of experience with Voiceover on the Mac, lack of
knowledge about iOS programming, or lack of accessibility in Xcode. It would
be nice if Apple could come out with a basic guide targeted at Voiceover users
to create a simple app that allowed you to enter text into a text box, click a
couple of buttons and have something happen, etc. I've had a really ahrd time
following any guides online to get started with iOS programming. Not sure what
other blind developers experiences are though.

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sosodaft
Visual Studio seems like an odd choice...

~~~
userbinator
He works at Microsoft.

But seeing " _Visual_ Studio" and "blind" together did make me look twice.

