5 ms·

> All a "learning disability" is is a requirement for a different approach from the instructor than the one-size-fits-all nonsense that we push down poor kids'

> All a "learning disability" is is a requirement for a different approach from the instructor than the one-size-fits-all nonsense that we push down poor kids' throats as "education". Tell that to my Dyslexia, I had many mentors growing up, and was taught by many people using many different approaches. I still can’t spell for shit, and my phonic processing is still garbage. No about of different teaching methods is going to change the fundamentals fact that my brain struggles to turn sounds into words, resulting in me hearing noise rather than speech, and turning ideas into written words. I’m perfectly articulate, indeed I’ve been accused of being “too articulate”, whatever that means, by my written prose is poor because I struggle translating phonic sounds into letters and words. Even simple words like “because”, “through”, “thought” etc which I’ve written and read correctly millions of times, I still struggle with, and need help from a spellchecker to get correct. If that isn’t a learning disability, then I have no idea what it is. But it sure as shit isn’t a teaching failure.

xupybd 5y ago
I've had similar problems with spelling but have never been diagnosed with anything. Sometimes I've memorized a words spelling but when I write it down it looks wrong to me. So I look it up or use a spell checker. The biggest problem for me has been noticing spelling mistakes in variable names. I can't find the bug yet it's just two letters swapped. Oh and the frustration some people have when they spot an error.
- romwell 5y ago
  Question: would always sticking to verbose variable names address the first problem? As in, ditching names like loc/iloc and adopting getValueByKey/getValueByIndex (hello, Pandas API!). The bugs of that sort bite even the most experienced programmers. And by using verbose names, the typo would be much more likely caught by the compiler. (And you can wrap ungodly APIs with less typo-friendly names too). That's one of the reasons verbose names are a coding standard e.g. in Google. The people who get frustrated by either verbose names or small spelling errors are welcome to go and frustrate themselves, preferably in solitude and far from either of us. I'm sorry that you run into them.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    Oh yeah verbose names help heaps. But on legacy code bases or when using a library often you have to deal with someone else's naming. I was first introduced to verbose syntax when I first used objective c. I loved it.
romwell 5y ago
The teaching failure lies making what you struggle with a required component of education, and measuring you on it in the same way as others, while providing you with no alternative route to success that doesn't require you jumping through hoops. To give an analogy: someone who can't walk has a disability, but it would be a failure of the instructor to make 5K running the only way to get a passing grade in physical education, while simultaneously not making barbells available. And looking at your very well-written and perfectly structured comment, I struggle to accept its conclusion. If all you need to write this well is spell-checker — a tool more common than a ballpoint pen at this point, and one that's been around for decades — then the instructors that didn't teach you to use it were failing at teaching. If you can speak well, and they never even suggested dictation software (again, something that's been around for a long time), it's a teaching failure. Writing is not about spelling words the same way dictionary spells them. Writing is about communicating ideas clearly, and your written prose is great. You can't write without a spell-checker; your tutors can't write with a quill, most likely. There's no difference. That you think that your prose is poor — there's the teaching failure. Do you see what I mean now?
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  > To give an analogy: someone who can't walk has a disability, but it would be a failure of the instructor to make 5K running the only way to get a passing grade in physical education And that individualized education would have no effect whatsoever on their place in the eventual statistic that x% of Americans cannot run 5k.
  - romwell 5y ago
    And why would that statistic be important? Also, imagine running 5K being a requirement for admission to college.
    - lazyasciiart 5y ago
      God knows, dude, it was your analogy. If you want to argue that 6th grade literacy is a bullshit stat that shouldn't be relevant to college admissions, knock yourself out.

xupybd 5y ago

I've had similar problems with spelling but have never been diagnosed with anything. Sometimes I've memorized a words spelling but when I write it down it looks wrong to me. So I look it up or use a spell checker. The biggest problem for me has been noticing spelling mistakes in variable names. I can't find the bug yet it's just two letters swapped. Oh and the frustration some people have when they spot an error.

romwell 5y ago
Question: would always sticking to verbose variable names address the first problem? As in, ditching names like loc/iloc and adopting getValueByKey/getValueByIndex (hello, Pandas API!). The bugs of that sort bite even the most experienced programmers. And by using verbose names, the typo would be much more likely caught by the compiler. (And you can wrap ungodly APIs with less typo-friendly names too). That's one of the reasons verbose names are a coding standard e.g. in Google. The people who get frustrated by either verbose names or small spelling errors are welcome to go and frustrate themselves, preferably in solitude and far from either of us. I'm sorry that you run into them.
- xupybd 5y ago
  Oh yeah verbose names help heaps. But on legacy code bases or when using a library often you have to deal with someone else's naming. I was first introduced to verbose syntax when I first used objective c. I loved it.

romwell 5y ago

The teaching failure lies making what you struggle with a required component of education, and measuring you on it in the same way as others, while providing you with no alternative route to success that doesn't require you jumping through hoops. To give an analogy: someone who can't walk has a disability, but it would be a failure of the instructor to make 5K running the only way to get a passing grade in physical education, while simultaneously not making barbells available. And looking at your very well-written and perfectly structured comment, I struggle to accept its conclusion. If all you need to write this well is spell-checker — a tool more common than a ballpoint pen at this point, and one that's been around for decades — then the instructors that didn't teach you to use it were failing at teaching. If you can speak well, and they never even suggested dictation software (again, something that's been around for a long time), it's a teaching failure. Writing is not about spelling words the same way dictionary spells them. Writing is about communicating ideas clearly, and your written prose is great. You can't write without a spell-checker; your tutors can't write with a quill, most likely. There's no difference. That you think that your prose is poor — there's the teaching failure. Do you see what I mean now?

lazyasciiart 5y ago
> To give an analogy: someone who can't walk has a disability, but it would be a failure of the instructor to make 5K running the only way to get a passing grade in physical education And that individualized education would have no effect whatsoever on their place in the eventual statistic that x% of Americans cannot run 5k.
- romwell 5y ago
  And why would that statistic be important? Also, imagine running 5K being a requirement for admission to college.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    God knows, dude, it was your analogy. If you want to argue that 6th grade literacy is a bullshit stat that shouldn't be relevant to college admissions, knock yourself out.