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Blind since birth, writing code at Amazon since 2013
- harshulpandav 9y agoCurious about his mental map for code/software. Often times when I 'visualize' mapping between modules in a software, I observe a latency in visualization because in my mind I navigate through squares or blocks, literally. Obviously he does it differently, and faster. He has an unique ability which probably most of us don't.
- melling 9y agoI have a few links on blind programming. https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/blind_programming.org https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/blind_... And a lot more on programming by voice: https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/programming_by_voice.org https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes/blob/master/progra... The section on Silvius seems to be a more recent project.
- lgregg 9y agoI found this video, it's pretty insightful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0&feature=youtu.be Thanks for sharing.
- rectang 9y agoHi-speed screen readers seem to unlock the potential of talented visually-impaired programmers. Forzano and others train up to shockingly fast rates. The plasticity of the human brain has so many uses!
- VectorLock 9y agoHow does that work anyways? Do the screen readers just speak ultra-fast? Do they say things like "parenthesis" or "right bracket?" Is there some kind of audio coding of whats on the screen?
- thedirt0115 9y agoYes, they speak ultra fast and literally say the punctuation verbatim. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0&vl=en for an example ("How a Blind Developer uses Visual Studio"). You can hear it saying "right brace", etc. edit: typo and clarify what I'm linking to.
- uglycoyote 9y agoAfter watching this I can kind of understand how a blind person would write new code. But I find so much of working on a team with a large codebase is about hunting through mass quantities of code without really knowing what you are looking for, which always seemed like a very visual process to me. Sometimes I find myself scrolling through a 2000 line file looking for a particular shape of the code that I would not even be able to articulate but know it when I see it. I'd be really curious to know how a blind person navigates a large, unfamiliar codebase.
- bob_theslob646 9y agoThat was an amazing story! I just hope that he is being payed fairly. Here is an example of someone who is disabled and not being payed fairly in my opinion. >Kandu Industries can pay Chris and roughly 150 other workers substantially below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour because of a 1938 provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act that permits employers, who apply to the Department of Labor for a waiver, to pay lower wages to people with disabilities.[1] >According to the department, about 20 percent of people with disabilities participate in the workforce, and of that group, about 3 percent, or approximately 195,000 workers, are being paid subminimum wages. These workers typically make well below the minimum wage, sometimes as low as “pennies per hour,” according to the Department of Justice.[1] (Many People With Disabilities Are Being Paid Way Below the Minimum Wage, and It’s Perfectly Legal)[https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/08/many-people-with-disabilities-are-being-paid-way-below-the-minimum-wage-and-its-perfectly-legal/][1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/08/many-people-wit...
- Anderkent 9y agoWhy is minimum wage fair, and why is it better for people with disabilities severe enough that no one wants to pay them above minimum wage to not earn anything?
- jacquesm 9y agoThat's totally disgusting. Not only do they start out with a bad hand, this is then used to exploit them with the blessings of the government.
- __s 9y agoThe idea is to offset a bias against hiring them. But ideally in these situations taxes would fill the gap, justified as having the disabled in the workforce keeps them off welfare programs
- brightball 9y agoDon’t they receive disability assistance money as well though?
- Bahamut 9y agoI always love reading stories like this - even with such a disability, he has been able to accomplish a feat that is relatively difficult to accomplish for most devs. I have heard my own company has blind developers as well, and accessibility is a first rate concern for us. I do wish more companies invested in being accessibility friendly - not doing so automatically shuts a portion of population away from the product(s) by default.
- hi41 9y agoThis story is very inspiring. How is he able to do his work without looking at block diagrams, complicated entity relationship diagrams, writing on paper to clarify among other things which I as a sighted person normally do?
- JonnyNova 9y agoI wonder how much that can get in the way. I'm sure he adds insights into the development team from likely conceptualizing data and architecture vastly different than most people.
- aje403 9y agoF$@? diagrams
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- coldtea 9y agoI thought you were being sarcastic, but apparently not. Well, programmers have been doing their job for half a century without BS Entity-Relationship-Diagrams, UML and the like.
- cup-of-tea 9y agoI don't think he's talking about the BS but merely scribbling down notes on paper which very often helps when trying to figure out complicated processes.
- hi41 9y agoNo, I was not sarcastic at all. I admire the programmer. I was just trying to understand something which was far outside my own experiences. I couldn't fathom how he was able to a successful programmer without the tools most of us use during the normal course of the day.
- coldtea 9y agoSure, but that's perhaps true for more essential tools: seeing the code, the debugger window, the output, going through logs, etc. The ability to see diagrams would be quite low in utility.
- ssalazars 9y agoI know this guy, he lives, or used to live in the same apartment complex as I did, and I would see him almost every day at the bus stop. He is a real warrior. Whenever the Front seats were busy he will encourage people to stay seated and he would find an empty seat. It's very nice to see Amazon wrote the article about him!
- misiti3780 9y agodamn that is incredible! i had a hard time understanding the function names they were being spoken so fast, i wonder if his ears have adjusted and tuned to that speed?
- burritofanatic 9y agoHere is another video about Michael Forzano from SUNY Binghamton, where he attended to study computer science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWF8SDFju4M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWF8SDFju4M
- PunchTornado 9y agoI hope he doesn't need to pee into a bottle like other amazon employees..
- iririrj 9y agoI also used to live in the same building as him. I'm sure he's a good guy but I can help but feel terrible for his dog. I've never seen someone blind or not treat their pet as bad as him. The dog always seemed miserable when I would see them in the building or outside. He was constantly yanking on the leash jerking the dog around. It couldn't even piss half the time because he doesn't stop yanking the leash long enough for the dog to pee. I'm glad he's achieved what he has and it's no small feat but I still feel bad for the dog
- AndrewKemendo 9y agoIn your ideal world, what would be my takeaway/conclusion as a reader from this story? How do you hope it changes or informs my view of this person and the Amazon piece?
- gliboc 9y ago"Developpers are assholes - even blind ones."
- daenz 9y agoThis feels really inappropriate. You're a 15 minute old account claiming that the subject of the article abuses his dog. The appropriate time and place to air that grievance, if it actually happened, would have been to the police, when you witnessed it. It sounds like you're trying to assassinate his character otherwise.
- jrs95 9y agoBut if it’s true he totally deserves it.
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoIf what's true? The complaint isn't even clear. And what does he deserve exactly, a lynch-mob? I can't believe people have the audacity to write unsubstatiated claims of animal abuse about a blind person's guide dog on a post about their achievements as a developer. They should be ashamed of themselves.
- orliesaurus 9y agoWhat an inspiring story, shows that true passion overcomes every barrier. And yet, sadly, I have to add this to this beautiful story: is it just me or does this feel like Amazon marketing at its finest?
- lobotryas 9y agoOf course it's amazon PR. They are trying to rehabilitate their less than flattering image as both an engineering shop and how they treat their warehouse employees (the latter: terribly, like something out of a Dickensian novel).
- mlevental 9y agoof course it's Amazon or: it's on their site
- themodelplumber 9y agoIt's on this site, too ;-)
- akhilcacharya 9y agoAs an engineering shop? In what way? Disclosure: I interned at Amazon
- Who828 9y agoEven if it's done for marketing, I think it's a small price to pay if it can inspire even one visually challenged person to take up programming professionally. Perhaps someone who loved computers might be wondering around the world if he/she can ever work as a programmer. He/She might not have explored how to go about it or he/she might not be confident enough to try. So if this story can change one person's mind, I think it's a sin worth committing.
- mindfulplay 9y agoAgain if it is about the person I'd agree. This is a fluff piece FOR amazon.
- Who828 9y agoThis reminded me of RubyConf India talk I attended back in 2013 titled “Turning blind eye to rails development by Siddhant Chothe”, that was also quite inspiring. It made me realize, how rarely we think about accessibility when developing software. Here is the link to the talk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqL89VcYd6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqL89VcYd6g
- chongli 9y agoQuestion for anyone who knows: How do they accommodate blind students for university math exams? Calculus in particular seems like it would be crazy hard to do without a pencil.
- notyourwork 9y agoMy understanding is they give a proctor and provide assistance. How a student declares their solution is an interesting question though.
- throwawayjava 9y agoYou might be interested in this overview of strategies: http://itd.athenpro.org/volume1/number4/article3.html http://itd.athenpro.org/volume1/number4/article3.html Although in practice the answer is that instructors have to lean heavily on the learner and the university's resource center.
- andy-wu 9y agoI'm a disabled student, not blind, but I work extensively with my university's Student Disability Center. For a blind student, common accommodations are extra time on the exam and a scribe to note the answers down.
- blindgeek 9y agoWhen I was studying math, a lot of times, I got to take tests at home. Prof would email me a copy of the test in LaTeX (they used it anyway), and I'd mail my answers back in LaTeX or PDF. Worked well for us. I'd just slip out the door on test days, walk the three blocks to my apartment, type up my answers, and mail them back. In one case, one of my profs actually wrote his own textbook. It was for an intro to theorem proving / symbolic logic class. He also used LaTeX. While everyone else got a printout of the course text, I got a copy of the source code that I could read with a screenreader.
- fouc 9y agoI think it would be very interesting to spend some time doing my development from audio only. Any idea on the easiest way to get going? My environment is osx, iTerm, vim, and safari mainly.
- tetha 9y agoYeah, I've been thinking about that too. I'm doing a lot of work in grafana with timeseries data, so how would you this kind of work and trend discovery non-visually? I guess now I'll need to experiment if you could do something by mapping the graph into an audio signal with changing pitches or something.
- kolanos 9y ago1. To turn on VoiceOver: CMD+F5 2. To turn on screen curtain: Right Option+C 3. For VoiceOver help: Ctrl+Option+H 4. For keyboard help: Ctrl+Option+K Ctrl+Option is your VoiceOver key combo as well. Good luck.
- daenz 9y agoSometimes I imagine how I would cope with writing software if I lost my eyesight, and I don't have an answer so far. The fact that this man is able to overcome that kind of obstacle and work in software is extremely inspiring.
- kahlonel 9y agoAs a guy who writes code for a living, one of my biggest fears is losing eyesight. Looking at this guy, I fear a little less now :) There is definitely a need for the tech to evolve for blind programmers.
- ThrustVectoring 9y agoGet disability insurance.
- themodelplumber 9y agoFor real, insurance is an afterthought to many but you are looking at a little money spent for peace of mind.
- bastijn 9y agoWhile true this deserves a comment that money may be only second and not the first reason for those fears. Losing the ability to do something you love might be the reason for the comment. The article comforts by showing that being blind does not mean coding ends. You can still be a first class citizen. Though to spoil it a bit, being blind from birth vs. at later age might be different. At least you need a huge period to adapt I guess, which is where the insurance comes in again. Full circle!
- softawre 9y agoMy brother had a stroke at 30 years old and became blind. It's just so unfair. I've always had this fear but it's gotten much worse since this has happened to my family.
- taeric 9y agoI have had one real migraine in my life. It was the kind you lose vision before the headache. It was truly terrifying to have my vision quickly go away. To the point that I was so happy to be seeing when the headache hit.
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- cryptozeus 9y agoThat screen reader speed is insane !
- cup-of-tea 9y agoYeah, the difference in human ability between trained and untrained is always amazing. What's funny is I'm sure this blind man is more efficient than people who use mouse-driven software to work. When you use keyboard-driven software like emacs or vim it gives you the ability to develop similar speed.
- VectorLock 9y agoI wonder what his development environment looks like. How does the audio reader work when reading code? What language does he work in? I'd be fascinated to get some insight into how he mentally models the code. I can get a lot of information just looking at the way a bloc k of code is structured.
- maxmaxmax2 9y agoThere is a video that shows how is environment looks like and what his screen-reader sounds like. It reads very fast. To the untrained ear it is unintelligible.
- davidu 9y agoGreat story. The curious part of me would love to see a video of how he codes and how fast / accurate / contextual the screen-reading software is. Yes, I see the irony in wanting to see a video of that. Still, want to see what the experience is like for him, at least to the degree I could understand.
- Link_Cable 9y agoLooks like Amazon made a supplementary video about this, but it's pretty short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57P_dCEPtRw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57P_dCEPtRw
- davidu 9y agoThat little vignette was actually perfect. Mind blown.
- Barrin92 9y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0 Here's a video of another blind dev. What I find fascinating in both cases is the speed at which they use voice assistance. I can barely make anything out.
- davidu 9y agoWow. This is amazing. Makes me want to make my software way more accessible to users.
- ybrah 9y agoUsed to work with a blind programmer at my old job. He was an interesting fellow
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- egocentric 9y agoFor anyone interested: How Blind People Type and Dial Numbers on a Touchscreen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16897415 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16897415
- baruchthescribe 9y agoI did a large project with a blind programmer many years ago. He was the sysadmin of a server I had in the Bahamas. When on the phone with him, I could always hear the speech software gabbling out directory listings and stuff. He was really good too - always been very inspiring to me.
- nickthemagicman 9y agoHow do they use Stack Overflow?
- fizixer 9y agoI have this weird idea of an experiment, actually two experiments: - I want to use my computer with my eyes closed (or blindfolded). Because I'm really interested in exploring the limits of my sense of hearing combined with my speech, plus my ability to use keyboard and mouse. It's like learning to ride a bike. I have not used any accessibility features of any of my OSes (linux, and windows) mainly because of my bias that those features are more like "lip service" than making sure that they are a full fledged replacement of visual user interface (well I have many gripes with the state of visual user interfaces, and by extrapolation, non-visual UIs can only be equal or worse, not better). So a big part of my experiment would be to explore, from first principles, what an ideal non-visual UI would look like, and then develop that software. The funny thing is that my interest in this experiment is not fueled primarily by the desire to help others, sorry to say, but by the fun and the thrill of being able to efficiently use a computer with eyes closed, almost like getting a new mini-superpower. (Surprisingly, my interest in this experiment came about as a result of thinking about going from mouse/keyboard based GUI usage, to keyboard-only vim and tiling window managers and touch typing, while your four fingers of each hand are constantly in the home row and move away only to carry out a specific task. It's almost as if restricting yourself makes you more efficient in some sense). - As an extension to this, I'm interested in being able to live in my apartment for a few days blindfolded (including leaving-the-apartment in the experiment would make it too open-ended/challenging). I'm allowed to plan as much as I can beforehand, to memorize what is where in my rooms, kitchen, restroom, etc, and also make a list of strict rules about where a certain thing should be placed after it has been used (e.g., a toothbrush, etc), and then I blindfold myself and see how far I can get. I would need to know where each thing is, but there are too many things in my apartment, so maybe I would want to reduce the number of things I have, and this way it connects to the idea of minimalism, another interest of mine. And again part of the reason for this experiment is the fun, but also to learn what changes can be made in typical apartment indoor so a person doesn't have to rely on his/her sense of sight to live fully (e.g., cook, clean, move around, etc). I guess this is the kind of experiment that vsauce gets to conduct. I think it would be interesting if he creates an episode based around this. (Though I'm ignoring the biggest effect of being in this experiment, the psychological effect of not being able to see). (edit: It also appears to me that there is a connection between trying to carry out operations blindfolded, and trying to code up something by imagining what that code would do in run-time, because a piece of code running on a computer is almost like a blind/blindfolder agent carrying out operations based on values of variables, etc. So does such an experiment make you a better programmer in some way? or give you a new perspective about running code?).
- jareds 9y agoArticles like this make me worried about my future as a blind programmer. I enjoy back-end database and web services development, not accessibility work. A lot of the I'm a blind programmer articles I've scene appear to be blind developers who work on accessibility. I hope they work on accessibility do to interest not because everyone assumes if you a blind programmer accessibility must be the type of work you want to do.
- bitwize 9y agoA lot of the blind programmer articles I've seen are of the "l33t hax0r who can root your box by whistling into the phone" variety. So... the press is not entirely uniform.
- balls187 9y agoWhistler was one of the best characters in Sneakers.
- mindfulplay 9y agoI would take this article with a huge grain of salt. Amazon doesn't give two shits about blind or deaf or gay programmers. This is a nice fluff piece. The programmers there are under absolute stress and high-stakes programming. I doubt that this one story about one nice programmer can be generalized to Amazon. I would bet if you are a blind programmer you would have a much harder time even getting past the interview loop given how biased the whole company is with their Ayn Rand-ish tactics that would obviously not give two shits about diversity or disability.
- GabrielF00 9y agoI worked with one person at Amazon who had a significant physical disability. I can't speak for him, but he is highly valued by the organization because of the quality of his work.
- mindfulplay 9y ago
- chroem- 9y agoAs someone with vision loss, this is a wonderful feel-good story, but I think the reason why Amazon PR picked it up in the first place is because it's a surprising exception that proves the rule. I've interviewed with quite a few tech companies, some in SV, and was turned down for a combination of "culture fit" and the gaps on my resume caused by my vision loss. I think the fact that everyone, even Amazon, is so amazed that they hired a blind programmer is indicative of a real problem here.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- RickJWagner 9y agoAwesome story. More power to this guy, he's an inspiration.
- alkonaut 9y agoI literally can't shut off my machine with my eyes closed. And the screen reader is even worse, I can't even shut that off with my eyes open when I accidentally enable it.
- coffeeiscold 9y agoIf you are interested in the internals of a screen reader, how they work, or what it is like to use one, check out the NVDA project (https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda). NVDA is a popular screen reader for Windows, developed by the blind for the blind, the story of its origin is great stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAkYw9ZcgQM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAkYw9ZcgQM Full disclosure, I am one of the maintainers of the project.
- latchkey 9y agohttps://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/giang-the-adventurer-grab-s-first-blind-coder-makes-the-world-9312236 https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/giang-the-ad...