One of the most gifted programmers I've ever worked with is dyslexic. His ability to conceive a total system is spooky great. He never graduated high school,

One of the most gifted programmers I've ever worked with is dyslexic. His ability to conceive a total system is spooky great. He never graduated high school, was lacking a lot of formal training and had an understandable hostility to orthodox approaches. Our boss paired us together because I was able to find ways to make certain computer science fundamentals palatable to him. It was a wonderful, humbling opportunity to help make someone incredibly valuable even better. People used to give this guy crap because he made lots of typos in his comments and misspelled variables. It really pissed me off because it was such a superficial critique and as far as I was concerned embarrassed the critic by exposing their inability to recognize other much more pertinent qualities. But to his credit he was also very personable and was able to defuse their foolishness, just laughing it off and preserving productive working relationships. I would caution that this fellow's dyslexia was not an asset — it was a hindrance that he was able to swamp through immense talent in other areas and strong dedication. Not everyone brings such outrageous gifts to bear. But we all have our own gifts, and when placed in a suitable environment we can all become much better that we would otherwise.