Subject: Religious Wars and Programmers with Cognitive Disabilities?

From: Omer Zak <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 21:34:30 +0300 (IDT)

I encountered one possible reason for religious wars between supporters
of different tools with similar objectives (such as vi vs. emacs or Pascal
vs. C).

Some people have cognitive difficulties, which make certain programming
languages and/or GUI styles especially difficult for them.  Such people
usually live in a state of denial (this is why we don't usually hear about
those difficulties).  But woe to anyone who tries to promote a tool or
technology which is difficult for them!

For example, recently I encountered a person, who has difficulty in paying
attention to certain kinds of details in software development.  That
person leaves out spaces in code written, and when the compiler complains,
the person is at loss to find what is wrong.

That person told me that Prolog is very easy, but C++ is hateful.

The other day I was told about a dyslectic programmer who developed an
application in the Access-BASIC variant of MS-Visual Basic.  At the time
it surprised me because I was under the assumption that programming and
being dyslectic are mutually exclusive.  Until I recalled that large
percentage of normally hearing people don't know that deaf people drive,
too, and are in fact get, in the average, into less traffic accidents than
the average driver.

Does anyone have stories about people who do programming for living and/or
for fun, and who have cognitive disabilities which interfere with their
work, so that they have to be creative in overcoming their disabilities?
                                             --- Omer
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