Ever since I was young I knew there was an issue with my reading and spelling, but never knew what it was specifically. It wasn't until Year 8 (Jun...
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Wow... I never thought I'd read a post I relate so much with... Keeping my dyslexia to myself so my mates won't see me as dumb... Couldn't read or spell till I was about 12... Thanks for sharing your story
Can preach to this, as much as it hurts to do its what we end up doing. Hope you're doing better now!
I am getting better... Learning to code helped me fight it even better even though it makes learning to code hard but constantly trying is really paying of
Don't get bogged down in the details of one language. They are all the same. They all have assignment, math[s] operators, conditional, loops, and functions. They key to programming is to visualize the moving parts in a language independent way, like in an old school flow chart or as legos. Then you write a description of the parts and connectors in human language. Finally you convert that essay into code. And if you don't exactly remember how a particular language specific graphics or string manipulation or socket function works. Then you pull out the documentation or just Google it. Know what you want to do and what questions to ask is more important than knowing what the order of the parameters for a socket select function are. Or event knowing how to create that socket in the first place.
Reading this and your other post has really helped me take a different look towards Dyslexia. When I was first diagnosed my initial thought was "Aw fuck who's going to want to hire a programmer who can barely spell" but hearing your story, your outlook on the condition has just brought like to the fact that yes it's shit but we learn to make the best of it and the best of our careers and the fact that just because we have this that we shouldn't be putting ourselves down or be looked at differently.
Thank you for writing this. It truly means a lot and is a beautiful post.
Thanks for the post!
I've had the somewhat frustrating lifetime experience of having some kind of issues and it could have to do with possible dyslexia. But I'm really just not sure. A weird brain is all I know. I've never been officially tested and I would like to. Thank you for the reminder.
Certainly worth getting it checked, even if its nothing well worth it. Best of luck with it!
Thanks George!
I suspect I have dyspraxia but it is not well known in the US so I haven't been formally diagnosed. I might have some dyslexia and dyscalculia as well, hard to know since I was homeschooled and once you're an adult it can be challenging to access diagnostics. I think a lot of people find the way I work "weird" or even "infuriating" but it works for me. I think an advantage is I'm a lot more careful with my work, I can't take things for granted. When I first heard of Test Driven Development I adopted it immediately because it is an extra layer of protection from myself. Other people need it too...I just need it the most 😂.
The most challenging things for me job-wise are probably white boarding and pair programming. I don't really work out things the same way as most people.
It seems like dyspraxia is a realitvely new term in the UK as well with only recently being diagnosed as a condition. I have a friend in the US that was diagnosed with dyspraxia after he came out of school, he shared the same issue as you trying to get a diagnosis. He recommended this site that has some great information and help on the condition.
A lot of people often find my methods of working to be weird, annoying or just dumb and often have to explain to people why I do X in X way instead of their ways. At the end of the day if it works for you then that's the main thing.
If you do get tested I wish you the best of luck!
I'm a tad older than you. I wasn't diagnosed as Dyslexic until I was in college. By then I had been programming for nearly 10 years. I started at age 10 as part of gifted and talented education program. Which I got kicked out of for a while because I couldn't spell or read very well. But my grammar, writing, math (sic. I'm American) and logic abilities were top notch, so I got put back in. Programming languages just came easy to me, because they are basically all the same, just in different word orders or with different decorations. My memory is also amazing as long as the subject is completely useless or computer related. For example: I don't know when my next meeting is, but I know that the largest lake in the world is the Caspian Sea. Thankfully, we now have spell checkers and e-calendars and all sorts of wonderful interweb enabled gadgets, so not remembering the important things really doesn't matter anymore. Which, you would think, should make them easier to remember. Anyway, you should see my desk. I have 4x4 post-its all over my monitors (3 of them). I call them my engrams, little bits of memory stuck where I can see them. I am not ashamed of being Dyslexic. I see it as a super power where words are kryptonite. I don't even say "I have Dyslexia." That "I have" bit makes it sound like a curable disease. It is not a disease and it is not curable. It is a condition of my existence. I am Dyslexic. Just as I am a man, I am an American of mixed Irish, Spanish, Native Mexican, Hungarian, Slovak, and Finnish descent, I am 5'9". You wouldn't say "I have Masculinity" or "I have Average Height Syndrome." or "American Hyper-Admix-osis." No. Embrace your super powers. Can you read backwards, upside down, and out of order all at the same time? Do you go on incredible adventurers looking for the "Parking Barn Tram" only to end up finding "Parker's Tramp Band"? It can be disappointing to discover the sign you thought said "Portable cantaloupe traps" really said "Portable canopies and tarps", but, hey, you had an adventure and a giggle. My "favorite" Dyslexic Super Power is that I am non-handed. It's sort of like being ambidextrous, except instead of being able to use either hand equally well, the non-handed are equally crap with either hand and generally have no sense of direction. It also means I can easily switch driving modes from US to UK, just by sitting in the driver's seat. In genius school we had a word for the kids that were not there with us. We called them "normals". Dyslexia is not a disease or a disorder. It is a state of being that lets you see the world Dyferentli. And what you see is not wrong. Only a wizard, with a couple of blinks of the eye, wave of the hand, and a pirouette, can change "Portable cantaloupe traps" into "Portable canopies and tarps". We're magic. We are Extraordinary. I don't want to be a normal.
Nice post, very inspiring! I don't have dyslexia and I still can't remember that piece of code, not in a way that would allow me to write it myself from scratch. In fact, I copy paste most of times from stack overflow things that require a certain, more obscure syntax. The only things I do remember correctly are certain function names from certain libraries. That's kinda it really. We're not machines, we aren't supposed to remember code too well.
I agree, I can never remember methods line by line or word by word, my main issue was remembering how they would work and the structure I used to outline them. Generally once you've used a method so many times you can write it freely without having to look at a resource, but that wasn't the case.
Oh, I get it now. It's a good thing that programming is more about understanding than memorizing.
As a fellow dyslexic, who was fortunate enough to be diagnosed early, and gone through similar struggles - I will place strong emphasis on It doesn't make you a bad programmer.
All the best, and keep coding!
Side note : Regarding remembering - for me I trim it down to remembering how to google, and truncate the rest - from then on for exact library functions, etc, it is always searched up.
More than a specific diagnosis, getting the tools that help you are super important important. I was quite fortunate to be diagnosed when I was 9 and have a very supportive school that helped me discover the best ways for me to learn. My memory is the worst but my strength is spacial and since code is (usually) highly structured I always very deliberately build a mental structure of the code. It goes so far as if you gave me one 10,000 line file I would never be able to understand the structure since it is presented linearly, but give me 20 500 line files, or 100 100 line files and I'll do so much better because there is already the basis of a physical tree structure to understand
Thank you for posting this!!! I am dyslexic also and I resonate with this!!