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Comment by jly | Hacker News Reader

I've been wearing glasses for my horrible vision since early grade school and now well into my 30s. I don't know why anyone would wear them if there is an option not to. They constantly smudge, fog, awful in any weather situation, etc. I carry a microfiber cloth with me at all times just to be able to clean them. What a nightmare. It's fine if you wear non-refractive glasses as a fashion accessory because those can just be taken off when inconvenient. When you can't drive or barely walk without them, it's another story.

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This is what drove me to use contacts full-time. It was so frustrating keeping my glasses clean. They'd smudge, and I'd clean them, and it wouldn't be all gone, and I'd clean them some more, and then it would be OK for a bit, and then I'd get something on them, and....

I decided not to go with LASIK just because it doesn't seem worth the tradeoff. Contacts take me about thirty seconds per day to insert and remove, not a big deal. Just making up the LASIK recovery period would take a long time. Plus the risk of permanent side-effects. Contacts have those too, but it can be substantially mitigated by using them properly (always washing hands, never sleeping in them, always changing them at the appropriate time, etc.).

I totally understand why people might see the tradeoffs differently, of course.

contacts irritated my eyes if I wore them for more than 12 hours. I'd have to decide if I was going to go out in the evening or not, and if so, I'd wear glasses during the day. If I wore them more than 12 hours, I'd have to wear glasses for the next few days because of the irritation. Don't get me started on what happened if I fell asleep with them in my eyes.

the last 4 or so years before lasik I mostly wore glasses except for special occasions where I'd wear contacts.

This is basically me. I wear contacts for "special occasions" but have really been considering lasik recently.

What has your post-lasik experience been like?

I had to try many brands. Finally found one I can wear 18 hours a day. Hard to think of a benefit to Lasik. Maybe open water swimming I fear losing a contact, but has never happened yet.

i wore contacts up until age 26 or so when they became unbearable due to dryness and worsening astigmatism. optometrist told me the same happens to a lot of people. I can handle certain brands of dailies for about 4 hrs but just way more hassle than glasses.

For me the 2 main reasons I dislike glasses are:

1. Peripheral, especially when driving.

2. Uncomfortable, pinches nose, laying down on side with them on.

Also: Modification of scale of things. Makes things smaller the further they are from my eyes. Not a big deal, but I always feel kind of satisfied when I go back to contacts because of accuracy of perception. I suppose if I can get glasses with thinner material this might be less of an issue.

Keeping them clean and smudge free isn't that big of a deal for me, I just wipe them with my shirt, and normally it's not bad enough to bother me. Fogging is slightly annoying I suppose, but goes away quick.

I also seemed to have an ever-increasing strength of prescription. The last time I had them checked was in 2010, and my optometrist changed my brand from Coopervision to Acuvue because I was refusing to take mine off at night, and the Oasis is supposed to be more meant for that. I then had two bouts of some sort of pink eye (after nights of heavy drinking, but still didn't happen with my Coopervision even then), and also in general my eyes would feel drier in them. They had these slits that would become uncomfortable fairly quickly.

I switched back to my old Coopervision prescription from 2008 or 2009 and they have been working fine for me. From my own anecdotal experience, it's my theory that the constant stronger prescriptions are what makes your eyes worse. I've also heard anecdotes from other people about them just stopping wearing eye correction and their eyes get better.

You are a perfect case study for why anecdotal evidence is categorically useless. More than a century of carefully studied evidence still hasn't managed to squash this way of thinking.

>>> I also seemed to have an ever-increasing strength of prescription.

I have a hunch that optometrists tend to slightly overprescribe the strength. Every time I would get a new prescription, I would walk out with superhuman vision, but than after a few days my eyes would adjust. At my last visit to the optometrist, I actually requested a lower strength and they obliged. And while I might have to squint here and there to read something really far away, I spend a good chunk of my time in front of computer, so I prefer the lower strength.

And I agree on increasing your eye strength as well. I try to take off my glasses frequently, and I have noticed that if I go for a while without them, my vision seems a little better when I put them back on. Also there are some apps that help as well [1]

[1] Came across this link on HN a while back: https://github.com/Fordi/eyegame

>> Just making up the LASIK recovery period would take a long time.

LASIK recovery is just 2 days or so - PRK can be 2 weeks

Even with just two lost days, I'm looking at something like a decade before LASIK pulls ahead.

Glasses are amazing. They help me see better and they make my face look like my face. Been wearing them since I was 7 or 8. 29 now, no regrets, never want to get away from glasses.

I clean them with a t-shirt when smudges happen to impede vision. Happens only when somebody pokes them with a finger. If your pillow is soft enough, you can even lie down on them and the glasses are just fine. They don't care, they just bend a bit.

No weird shit to put in your eyes. Take them off whenever they annoy you. Change your entire face every few years when buying a new pair. That's always exciting.

I guess I'm lucky that I can do sports and such without glasses. Means I can just take them off when they'd get in the way. Same for fogging when I transition from cold to warm. Take them off, carry on.

My doctors always said I should avoid wearing glasses 24/7 because something about eye laziness, but I am much more comfortable when the world isn't blurry. So I wear them 24/7 except for certain sports and sleep.

<3 glasses

> they make my face look like my face

Yes, my face looks weird without my glasses, the overall shape is very different!

When I was a kid, I really wanted glasses because I thought they looked cool. My vision was 20/10 and 20/15 all through school.

Finally, when I was about 27, I broke down and got glasses as I noticed my vision was slipping.

I can still walk around and drive without them. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and do some on-call work for 20min while squinting at the screen. I can spend a few hours walking around the house without them.

But I never leave home without them, and I never drive or work without them, and I never take them off. I simply don't see the problems you see; yes, they get dirty, i clean them perhaps once a week. I don't smudge them because I'm careful not to.

I still rather quite like them and the way they look. I have no desire to poke my fingers into my eyes or get lasers shot into them.

I'm sure you could argue that it's different for me because I don't have to wear them to see, but it's really not that different -- I wear them every minute of every waking day except those extraordinarily rare days I mention.

It helps that I go out of my way to get glasses I like. I have a few pair of colorful titanium and carbon fiber frames. Yes, it's a bit painful to spend $600+ every year or two, but worth it to have something I like the look of.

I like my glasses. I too have worn them since early grade school. The feeling of something on my face just feels familiar and right nowadays.

Definitely has downsides. Smudging and fogging is so frustrating, but I've gotten used to it.

I got used to my glasses, very fast in fact, they feel like part of my personality and I think I look weird without them.

Glasses have some upsides too. For instance when it's windy, they're a shield that makes you less likely to have unwanted things get into your eye :)

I've been wearing glasses since I was an infant. I'm used to them so they aren't that bad. Contacts are a huge pain in the ass and I can't see as well with contacts as I can with glasses. It took me 20+ years to find a pair that actually look good on me (odd face size) so I treasure them now and I bought four pairs of them so I don't ever have to worry about it again. As a bonus I've found out I can sleep in them comfortably.

So the only time I ever take off my glasses is in the shower.

As an aside I always wondered how they are able to measure an infant's vision before they can really communicate.

They measure infants (and adults for that matter) by measuring the eye. The whole "which is better" routine is just a personal preference thing. There are a couple of startups in here in Boston that strap a VR looking thing to your head and that tells you your prescription.

Man I hate "which is better" routine. I like "1, no 2, no 1, idk!"

I remember colored lights being involved in eye exams when I was very, very, very young... But that may be a false memory, it's hard to really know.

Apply a cycloplegic such as atropine to the eye to force the eye muscles to relax and focus as far away as possible. Then use a retinoscope to shine light on the retina and observe it while adjusting lenses over the eye.

And of course slightly older babies have ways of communicating without words! https://youtube.com/watch?v=84-Cuc-Tz2o

Thanks for the information! Are you an opthalmologist by any chance?

As far as babies being able to communicate in other ways, my mom noticed that it seemed like I was having trouble with vision well before I could talk, that's how I ended up in the opthalmologist's office in the first place. :)

I'm not an ophthalmologist but I did a lot of reading and talking to optometrists when I couldn't quite get a prescription I liked. It was one of the tests I considered.

For what it's worth I solved my own issue by insisting on a slightly stronger prescription (-0.25) for my myopia. It's well worth a try, especially for driving at night. The easiest way to tell if it would help is if green traffic lights look significantly blurrier than than red traffic lights in the distance.

I love the way all the kids with the glasses go :OOO THIS IS AWESOME!

People do wear glasses for many reasons (in addition to correcting vision).

- Some think glasses look good - Glasses protect the eyes from wind, rain and flying particles

Yes, the glasses do get foggy and smudgy. But when riding a bike, they shield the eyes. Also, at the age of 50, I've had several eyeglass lenses scratched by things like a piece of metal or stone flying off an angle grinder, or dust/sand blown by a pneumatic nailgun. Without glasses, the same things would have hit my eyes.

I think that there are better tools for that, however, such as activity specific goggles. Glasses you need to have to see, everything else you can take off if you need to or are done with the activity.

Yes, activity specific goggles have their strong points. My eyeglasses have the strong point that they're always there. Even when I'd forgotten the specific goggles.

Good points.

> But when riding a bike, they shield the eyes.

In my experience, they shield the eyes from sand and small debris, but they also tunnel the wind in from the top and bottom with more force, resulting in constantly flowing tears if going at any decent biking speed. I always hated riding with glasses because of that, especially as the tears would end up staining the glasses and making it harder to see.

Hmm, that likely depends on the shape of the glasses, and possibly the shape of face, and riding position. I have tried riding with contacts and find that I feel much better with my glasses.

When it rains (particularly -0°C water) the glasses are indeed quite difficult to see through, but then the eyes would be very irritated too.

Depends on the glasses. These days, I always ride with glasses, but they're cheap safety glasses, not corrective lenses of any kind. Safety glasses are made specifically to protect your eyes from flying debris, so theoretically they're safer if a big rock flies into your eye or something. But they also are shaped to fit closer to your face, so I don't have any problems with the wind-tunnel effect you complain about. Best of all, they keep the wind out of my eyes, which is a problem at speed.

Now if I could just find something comfortable to block out all the wind noise.

That's why they invented "safety glasses". They're specifically designed to protect against stuff like that, probably better than your expensive corrective lenses, and they're dirt cheap. They're required wear in any hazardous environment (factory, workshop, etc.).

Pro-tip: Ultrasonic glasses / jewellery cleaners are ~30 USD on Amazon [insert affiliate link here].

I dunk my glasses into my cleaner every morning while I'm showering.

ah, I guess that's what the glasses shop are using (or close enough I guess)

THANKS

My vision is good enough that I can drive without glasses. I still wear them almost constantly because they're a comfortable thing, to the degree that a slight increase in my visual acuity is worth the minor inconveniences. They help me not to strain while reading small text, and I don't feel like the surgery would be worth it for me, so I wear them.

This post here is my life. I've had glasses for basically as long as I can remember and I hate them. I don't feel comfortable touching my eyes and stuff for contacts though so I reckon laser eye surgery is probably an option for me, maybe in five to ten years.

p.s. disposable wipes with rubbing alcohol are great for keeping them clean (although terrible for the environment), and getting a non-reflective coating definitely helps keep the effects of the smudging to a minimum.

they have 1 month sleep in contacts now.... I was like you and hated the process. Once a month changing rocks and I have zero desire for Lasix

Do they make these in toric lenses too?

>> I reckon laser eye surgery is probably an option for me, maybe in five to ten years.

Do it now. When you're older (40 or so) you're going to need glasses for driving/reading anyway

Maybe you should be thankful. The option to not wear glasses is way too convenient. My eyes are unprotected from UV and impact. I might remember when operating a chainsaw or pouring sulfuric acid, but that's about it. Operating a circular saw or pouring bug killer without any protection is too damn convenient.

Also, glasses do not correct your peripheral vision the way contacts (and I presume LASIK) do.

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