16 ms·
How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio [video]
- GlobalServices 9y agoHow is Xcode for this?
- jareds 9y agoIn 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.
- hacker_9 9y agoI 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.
- rootlocus 9y agoIt's not only sped up, it's using a lot of abbreviations.
- masklinn 9y ago> The answer it seems is to speed up the voice tenfold! That seems very common for systematic text-to-speech users, I saw a video a few months back of a lawyer (?) demonstrating ios's accessibility (rotor, voiceover, blind curtain, …) and the TTS speech was so fast it sounded like white noise to me.
- Accacin 9y agoThat would be interesting to watch. Do you have a link for that?
- masklinn 9y agoSadly no, I tried looking for it but I haven't managed to dig it back up.
- steveax 9y agoI believe this article from David Pogue is the one: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceover-163733668.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/david-pogue-on-iphone-voiceov...
- masklinn 9y agoThat's exactly the one, thank you! The relevant bit is at 4:10
- Semaphor 9y agoI 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 9y agoI'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.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- masklinn 9y ago> 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 9y agoI wonder if any of it is also being directed at just being better at programming.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- johnhattan 9y agoI watched the video twice, and I picked up a lot more the second time. At first, it seemed like he had the speech set to "incomprehensible chirping". I'm still impressed at how he found the syntax error, though.
- Iv 9y agoOne of the company I worked with had to design an audio interface for blind people. I proposed something relying on several stereo located sounds of different pitches and intensity. I was told this would be too hard to use for a normal user. I wish I had such a video at the time to show the kind of bandwidth a blind person is able to get from audio alone.
- Zekio 9y agoDamn, 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 9y agoAnd many modern languages don't have semi-colons. Wonder if they can be removed from C#?
- DiThi 9y agoI think he means the extra quotes that was causing syntax error.
- melling 9y agoOh, 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.
- Pigo 9y agoI know it's no where near the same thing. But this reminds me of when I broke my arm very bad as a kid, and was in a cast without the use of my fingers. I learned how to play Mario Brothers and Zelda with just my left hand in a few weeks. Besides a few key combinations, like working up speed in Mario, I ended up being better with one hand than two.
- joshschreuder 9y agoI imagine even that fix would have been quicker were it not for on-stage nerves and the crowd noise distracting from the TTS
- melling 9y agoI 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.
- dhruvb14 9y agoThis guy took the first step. Its a great watch even though its kind of long https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI
- piyush_soni 9y agoI'm sure someone on HN is seeing this right now and has already started working on it :). Especially with the advent of Google Assistant SDK and the likes, it's clearly very much possible now.
- DiThi 9y agoIMHO I don't think it would fly. The most difficult things of programming are too abstract for that. You may be interested in the guy that did all his coding with voice for a while because he couldn't use his hands, and still uses it to this day about half of the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI
- melling 9y agoYes, I already know many people don't think it will work. I have that url, along with a few others in my Programming by Voice notes: https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/programming_by_voice.org https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/progra... No one said that you have to do everything. Start with what's possible then iterate.
- sosodaft 9y agoVisual Studio seems like an odd choice...
- userbinator 9y agoHe works at Microsoft. But seeing "Visual Studio" and "blind" together did make me look twice.
- strictnein 9y agoWouldn't the IDE with the largest financial backing seem like the best choice? Making complex things accessible isn't cheap or easy.
- lostmsu 9y agoAnd why is that? o-O You think you can rename some class method Add from some project to Enqueue faster in vim?
- expertentipp 9y agoFor me the message is clear here: Listen Mr. Senior Principal Architect, not only cheap H1B Indian guy, but even cheap blind H1B Indian guy can replace you! What I don't like about MS is that in their promo materials developing software is so easy. Drag and drop here, autocomplete there, and here we go, an ERP system! In reality though...
- cdogl 9y agoSaqib Shaikh lives in London. The UK doesn't have H1Bs. His LinkedIn suggests that he went to high school in England. He has (what sounds to me like) an English accent. Put some effort into the lazy racist joke at least.
- snarfy 9y agoIn 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.
- j_s 9y agoHere 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
- rjdavis3 9y agoThis 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 9y agoTo be fair, sighted developers have to filter all that noise out too when we slog through logs visually.
- woliveirajr 9y agoI 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 9y agotwo 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.
- jareds 9y agoI'm totally blind and have what I call no usable vision. I can see light if it's bright or the sun is shining. I can't tell anything about the environment from my vision though other then if there is bright light or not. Anecdotally from talking to other blind people the ability to see light helps set your body clock. Although I keep a fairly normally sleep schedule I know blind people who have no light perception and have a lot harder time keeping a normal schedule with out medicine.
- canes123456 9y agoThe 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 9y agoFor 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-the-vitamin-d-my-body-needs/ https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-do-i-get...)
- vorotato 9y agoWhat screenreader is he using?
- ygra 9y agoSounded 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 9y agoListening 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 9y agowhy 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?