For those that didn't read the whole thing. The author is blind !
Very impressive effort to work on something as technical as optimising a Rust compiler.
And to write about it so eloquently just makes it even more impressive.
Very impressive effort to work on something as technical as optimising a Rust compiler.
And to write about it so eloquently just makes it even more impressive.
[1]: https://www.gofundme.com/fund-libaudioverse-development
I wonder how many people have actually read through such a huge amount of specialized source code. I know I haven't, and I don't need a screen reader to do so! Now I actually feel quite ashamed.
Mad props to you, Austin! Keep up the outstanding work!
P.S. Mozilla, hire this guy.
Man I suck as a programmer; I complain about every little thing and barely ever program.
I make the effort to match formatting but I hate it because I get basically no benefit, and the early reviews here had lots of places where eddyb made me change it until I finally learned all the rules for this project. A standard formatting tool and official list of rules for Rust is in the works. That'll be nice to have.
People have started going down the blind programming language road; look up Quorum. What's not obvious about it is that mostly it's used at schools for the blind.
But I think it's incredibly stupid. I'm a very good C++ programmer. I'm at least reasonable at Python. I know enough Haskell that I'm no longer actively frightened of the monad (i.e. a newbie, but past the biggest hurdle). Obviously I both know and actively like Rust.
You can make a programming language for the blind. You can't make people use it. if we go down that path, we end up in a world where blind programmers work for the blind programming shop because the rehab agencies push you there. And then you make less money.
I know at least 10 other blind programmers. 3 of them either work or have worked at Microsoft. 2 of them maintain my screen reader, which is something around 40000 lines of C++ and Python doing incredibly complicated things to fully hook into the OS. One of them is either currently at or has worked at Google; I'm not in touch with him anymore, so I don't know if he moved on or not.
We don't need programming languages for the blind. We need people to stop tying technologies closely to IDEs and then not making said IDEs accessible.
My other project, Libaudioverse, is cross platform. The irony is that this is because VS was inaccessible. I used CMake instead and learned cdb when I needed a debugger. VS is at the point of dreadfully inconvenient but workable now, but I still don't use the Microsoft stack. It puts me in the position of being at their mercy--if they roll out a new UI tomorrow and it's inaccessible (as they did with 2010), all my personal projects stop instantly, and I maybe lose my job when my employer upgrades it, depending how bad it is. Microsoft is one of the better places for accessibility; there are issues with VS for screen reader users that have been around and reported for years.