5 ms·

The way our industry treats neuro-diversity is autistic. I am very dyslexic, the other day I misspelled the word TAB as TAP when implementing an event listener

by wrnr 8y ago

The way our industry treats neuro-diversity is autistic. I am very dyslexic, the other day I misspelled the word TAB as TAP when implementing an event listener in a codebase +100K lines. It took me half a day just to find this bug. At LastCo I heard the project manager and scrum master joke behind my back "we'll just have the autist with OCD do the programming" while referring to me. In their mind lacking a "theory of mind" also includes not having any peripheral hearing.

zachruss92 8y ago
That is just sad. Even if you weren’t dyslexic everyone messes up by misspelling a word and spending much more time than they should debugging. As a manager I would spend my time trying to figure out how we can help you reduce the likelihood of this happening again and not make fun of you for a mistake that everyone makes. As an example, my first hire was an immigrant from Africa. He can speak English, but his spelling is not ideal - and because English is not his first language his naming structure for things like variable and classes needs improvement. To help with this I implemented specific standards for how naming should work and gave him a ton of concrete examples of how I would name something in a number of scenarios. Now that he’s been working for me for a while, I only actually have to give feedback on naming conventions maybe once a week. Edit: spelling.
- close04 8y ago
  That kind of people will always find something to jab at. If it's not this it's that. They're very willing to throw such insults as "innocent jokes" but when they're at the wrong end of one they never find it acceptable and will complain till the end of time.
ChuckNorris89 8y ago
That joke was a low blow form the PM & scrum master and not remotely funny. You'd think that as working adults they would know better. We always have cheeky banter in our office, but never behind one's back or on account of their difficulties.
digestives 8y ago
Not only totally unprofessional, it is also bad Project Managing as a typo is a common mistake. So rather than making childish comments, I'd be asking how we could improve the debugging process!
holoduke 8y ago
It's a reason to fire that manager. I would report it higher up. If you hear it one time he does it probably all the time.
Waterluvian 8y ago
I wonder if that scrumlord is even capable of writing useful code anymore. At my old school, the worst of managers had just no clue how to dive in and help. Sometimes they'd try and it would make things worse. Their mortgage payments and continued relevance began relying on control, not capability. This would have been okay of we were the appropriate size for so many manager types but we really needed engineers who could lead.
zikzak 8y ago
I make little mistakes like this all the time in a massive code base. What I do is do a diff on the code to see what's changed. Much easier than hunting through. This applies any time it "should work" but does not. Also, I am sorry you have to work in an environment like that.
- keanebean86 8y ago
  I mixed up l and I in my ldap function in some php code. I'm not sure if it was the framework (fat free) or something else but that function would never throw any errors or exceptions. It was maddening and took at least a day to notice. I started questioning my sanity. I never thought to just do a diff...
  - ZeroCool2u 8y ago
    Something that also helps cut down on these types of bugs for me is Semantic Highlighting. I've gotten my whole team to use it. It's great, because you don't have to read the var name, you just have to see if there's any var in a function that doesn't have the same color as anything else and they tend to stick out like a sore thumb. Not sure if that's the best explanation, but if you're using any JetBrains IDE you can try it by going to Settings and searching for Semantic Proximity and hitting the check mark. Easier to show than explain.
  - flyinglizard 8y ago
    I’ve once had a non printable in a header file on a huge codebase (mobile phone OS and apps, pre-iPhone) :(
zerr 8y ago
As a side note, did you consider switching to statically typed language with a good IDE?
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  This isn’t a bad suggestion. I make silly spelling mistakes all of the time. Especially if there are other things going on in the office. When I have to work with large JavaScript codebases I always move for TypeScript for that very reason. It won’t compile if I’ve done something like that and will happily shout the line at me that (paraphrased example): 545: someArray.srt((a: number, b: number) => a-b) - ‘srt’ does not exist on type Array Etc, etc. And good integration with an editor or IDE will produce these errors without needing to run the compile step which saves a lot of time and frustration.
  - pbowyer 8y ago
    The good IDE is key for me (I am dyslexic too). I find Jetbrains' products to be a saviour with all the autocomplete and intellisense. I don't have to worry if I've spelled the variable incorrectly or (more frequently) used a synonym instead of the word I first used; autocomplete catches it.
ghufran_syed 8y ago
Is this necessarily a negative comment? It comes across to me as “we’ll get the person who’s really good at focusing to do the programming”. Unless it was said in a sarcastic way? I think it’s worth asking the person what they meant, if they meant it in a good way, you’ll find out, and if they meant it in a bad way, most people will be embarrassed about being asked about it, so it will put them on notice to avoid saying things like that in future.
- castlecrasher2 8y ago
  I'm struggling to think of a situation when using a disorder to refer to a person is acceptable.
  - ghufran_syed 8y ago
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autist https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autist “Definition of autist: a person affected with autism” This whole discussion is in the context of people with autism being sought out by an employer because they are very good at certain skills. The fact you would take “autist” as a negative term about a person suggests some prejudice on your part against autism, rather than being someone who celebrates people’s differences
    - castlecrasher2 8y ago
      I think saying autism is something employers seek out is quite the reach. I'm on the spectrum myself and if anything my experience tells me that even the best developers are destructive if they don't mesh well with others.
kstenerud 8y ago
And yet so many programming languages don't require you to declare variables. The downside of this (accidentally creating new variables on a typo) are well documented and difficult to track down. What is the upside again?

by wrnr 8y ago

zachruss92 8y ago

That is just sad. Even if you weren’t dyslexic everyone messes up by misspelling a word and spending much more time than they should debugging. As a manager I would spend my time trying to figure out how we can help you reduce the likelihood of this happening again and not make fun of you for a mistake that everyone makes. As an example, my first hire was an immigrant from Africa. He can speak English, but his spelling is not ideal - and because English is not his first language his naming structure for things like variable and classes needs improvement. To help with this I implemented specific standards for how naming should work and gave him a ton of concrete examples of how I would name something in a number of scenarios. Now that he’s been working for me for a while, I only actually have to give feedback on naming conventions maybe once a week. Edit: spelling.

close04 8y ago
That kind of people will always find something to jab at. If it's not this it's that. They're very willing to throw such insults as "innocent jokes" but when they're at the wrong end of one they never find it acceptable and will complain till the end of time.

ChuckNorris89 8y ago

That joke was a low blow form the PM & scrum master and not remotely funny. You'd think that as working adults they would know better. We always have cheeky banter in our office, but never behind one's back or on account of their difficulties.

digestives 8y ago

Not only totally unprofessional, it is also bad Project Managing as a typo is a common mistake. So rather than making childish comments, I'd be asking how we could improve the debugging process!

holoduke 8y ago

It's a reason to fire that manager. I would report it higher up. If you hear it one time he does it probably all the time.

Waterluvian 8y ago

I wonder if that scrumlord is even capable of writing useful code anymore. At my old school, the worst of managers had just no clue how to dive in and help. Sometimes they'd try and it would make things worse. Their mortgage payments and continued relevance began relying on control, not capability. This would have been okay of we were the appropriate size for so many manager types but we really needed engineers who could lead.

zikzak 8y ago

I make little mistakes like this all the time in a massive code base. What I do is do a diff on the code to see what's changed. Much easier than hunting through. This applies any time it "should work" but does not. Also, I am sorry you have to work in an environment like that.

keanebean86 8y ago
I mixed up l and I in my ldap function in some php code. I'm not sure if it was the framework (fat free) or something else but that function would never throw any errors or exceptions. It was maddening and took at least a day to notice. I started questioning my sanity. I never thought to just do a diff...
- ZeroCool2u 8y ago
  Something that also helps cut down on these types of bugs for me is Semantic Highlighting. I've gotten my whole team to use it. It's great, because you don't have to read the var name, you just have to see if there's any var in a function that doesn't have the same color as anything else and they tend to stick out like a sore thumb. Not sure if that's the best explanation, but if you're using any JetBrains IDE you can try it by going to Settings and searching for Semantic Proximity and hitting the check mark. Easier to show than explain.
- flyinglizard 8y ago
  I’ve once had a non printable in a header file on a huge codebase (mobile phone OS and apps, pre-iPhone) :(

zerr 8y ago

As a side note, did you consider switching to statically typed language with a good IDE?

52-6F-62 8y ago
This isn’t a bad suggestion. I make silly spelling mistakes all of the time. Especially if there are other things going on in the office. When I have to work with large JavaScript codebases I always move for TypeScript for that very reason. It won’t compile if I’ve done something like that and will happily shout the line at me that (paraphrased example): 545: someArray.srt((a: number, b: number) => a-b) - ‘srt’ does not exist on type Array Etc, etc. And good integration with an editor or IDE will produce these errors without needing to run the compile step which saves a lot of time and frustration.
- pbowyer 8y ago
  The good IDE is key for me (I am dyslexic too). I find Jetbrains' products to be a saviour with all the autocomplete and intellisense. I don't have to worry if I've spelled the variable incorrectly or (more frequently) used a synonym instead of the word I first used; autocomplete catches it.

ghufran_syed 8y ago

Is this necessarily a negative comment? It comes across to me as “we’ll get the person who’s really good at focusing to do the programming”. Unless it was said in a sarcastic way? I think it’s worth asking the person what they meant, if they meant it in a good way, you’ll find out, and if they meant it in a bad way, most people will be embarrassed about being asked about it, so it will put them on notice to avoid saying things like that in future.

castlecrasher2 8y ago
I'm struggling to think of a situation when using a disorder to refer to a person is acceptable.
- ghufran_syed 8y ago
  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autist https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/autist “Definition of autist: a person affected with autism” This whole discussion is in the context of people with autism being sought out by an employer because they are very good at certain skills. The fact you would take “autist” as a negative term about a person suggests some prejudice on your part against autism, rather than being someone who celebrates people’s differences
  - castlecrasher2 8y ago
    I think saying autism is something employers seek out is quite the reach. I'm on the spectrum myself and if anything my experience tells me that even the best developers are destructive if they don't mesh well with others.

kstenerud 8y ago

And yet so many programming languages don't require you to declare variables. The downside of this (accidentally creating new variables on a typo) are well documented and difficult to track down. What is the upside again?