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Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

That's not what it's like for me.

I simply can't tell the difference between symbols that have been rotated or reversed. So I made it through an engineering degree with "the alligator eats the bigger number" mnemonics for > and <.

The first thing I do when I get a new dev machine is take a pen and write "\r\n" up above the delete key. I've never gotten the slashes in the right direction on that key sequence from memory even though I type them several times a day (I just had to edit my post after looking it up right now and realizing I'd typed it wrong on my new laptop).

Anything that can be reversed, I reverse roughly 50% of the time. Because to my brain, they're interchangeable.

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Pulling and pushing doors is what always gets me. I had a friend I did an interhship with for half a year and he'd always get a kick out of my inability to use doors in work correctly even when it said pull/push on it.

Mixing up my p's and q's, and my b's and d's were a big problem when I was young but I luckily grew out of that since they were considering putting me into remedial education because of it.

I also find I've developed a lot of my own pneumonics. So for > and < I know that the converging side is narrow and therefore it is the lesser side, the divering side is broad and as such is the greater side. Or as someone from the west coast of an island - I figure out east and west by imaging my country knowing that I'm on the west coast.

Funnily enough north/south or up/down don't cause me trouble. It's only things that have vertical symmetry or that can rotate that confuse me.

So, I am dyslexic too? That's new.

I mean, I thought it was just like the article, but if it's also confounding directions (sometimes I have to think about left and right, I sometimes think that California is on the east coast, I make a mess with clockwise/counterclockwise) then I have that problem too.

It's horrible if you're coming from languages such as Portuguese in which "puche" literally means pull!!

Almost 10 years in the states and I still have to think before every single git commit.

note that "puche" in Portuguese is pronounced exactly like "push" in English.

I thought it was more like "pushy" with the y more of a schwa sound.

Just a small correction. It's not "puche", but "puxe", with X. Both sound the same, but the first one is not correct.

Source: I'm Portuguese.

oh god! I guess that's what 10 years in the states did to me! -ashamed face-

> pneumonics

mnemonics :P

I've been diagnosed with dyacalculia and I always have to use a similar trick to the alligator mnemonics to figure out which is "greater than" and "less than". But I think it has more to do with telling left from right, which I also have problems with.

I pretty sure that if someone stopped me away from a computer and asked me to draw a slash and a backslash I'd probably get it wrong.

The cue I learned for that was "the stick man is standing on the line | and leaning forward / or backward \ " (Which is of course western reading direction sensitive)

I always remembered it as, apparently they are both handwritten as an upwards stroke. Assuming western LTR reading direction, it means the slash forward goes forward, and the backslash goes backwards with respect to the reading direction.

I mean, I never really thought about it, but that's how I "know" which is slash forward and which is backslash.

I think that's mostly due to inconsistent terminology, with maybe a sprinkling of windows file paths. I think if most people used sed for a week they'd figure out which one goes between sections and which one escapes characters pretty quickly, even if they didn't know which one was the "back"slash.

the reason for the name of the slashs is: if they'd fall, do they fall forward or backward?

/ forward slash

\ backward slash

For me, “forward” and “backward” are not applicable to the text, because they are in the different plane. Forward-backward vector lies on the line of sight, that's orthogonal to monitor or paper/book.

Slash and back Slack. [0]

[0] https://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/Slash_066306_2216065.jpg

Second that. Half the time I get directions wrong, whether it's adding/subtracting, multiplying/dividing, up/down, etc. Math was a mess and finance was an absolute nightmare, especially with derivatives.

I actually think as a layman, that people just confuse opposites period. I've actually heard Japanese people say in Japanese, "other left" (context: contest with blindfolded driver getting directions from seeing passenger). So my evidence is that plus other similar occurrences, across cultures. I think some dyslexics may be trying to explain their experiences using something that isn't particularly diagnostic (though they have a real issue, opposites isn't the real issue) Like a heart patient who says "I hate climbing stairs" We all hate climbing stairs.

Any apparent effect on your Tetris skill level?

Interesting question, although there are standards to Tetrimino block coloring.

This is interesting. Is it both rotated or reversed? Because your < > example, and your \ / example, can be defined as either one. So for example:

- Do you have problems disambiguating P and d?

- Do you have problems disambiguating d and b?

Probably just reversed. I always got my J's backwards as a kid, but never upside down.

If I have an external visual queue I can use, I'm good to go. That's what made the >< thing work. I got the intersection/union symbols down because union happens to both look like and start with a U.

For me it was number 7. I fought with it for a number of years. I went on summer break one year around 8 or 9, came back and all my 7's were backwards again. Thing is I couldn't see it till the teacher pointed it out.

Unrelated, but I found that (uni) students find it easier to remember what conCAVE and conVex mean by recalling the shape of an entrance to a 'cave' and the shape of letter 'v'. Visual cues are very useful, even if you do not suffer from dyslexia.

> I made it through an engineering degree with "the alligator eats the bigger number" mnemonics for > and <.

I don't understand this at all. The bigger number is at the bigger end, that's the whole point of the symbols. What does the alligator introduce, apart from an extra step and doubt over whether it's larger or smaller numbers they are said to eat?

It's memorable.

But how is it helpful? You need to know which is the bigger side already in order to place your alligator the right way round.

Reading a scene involving a predator is more firmly wired into our brains than associating a wider distance with a higher number.

>The bigger number is at the bigger end, that's the whole point of the symbols.

It probably has to do with how it was taught. I was never taught "the bigger number is at the bigger end", it was simply "> means greater than and < means less than" and we were supposed to memorize that. The alligator mneumonic is just a way of recovering the original meaning.

> Anything that can be reversed, I reverse roughly 50% of the time

For me, it's any arbitrary, binary, convention. Left and right. Clockwise and counterclockwise. \ and /. Whether time zone offsets are added or subtracted from the UTC time. Interestingly, < and > never gave me a problem, perhaps because I've internalized the alligator mnemonic you mentioned.

Wow, seems like I have dislexia too, some mild form probably, as I often mix up the < and > and arrows etc... Weird I haven't been diagnosed, I remember having much trouble in earlier grades of school having to differentiate b d p q...

Do any of the dyslexia fonts help?

we should note, there are multiple types of dyslexia, each are very different. I am pretty darn dyslexic, and the dyslexic fonts don't help me at all, in fact they make it harder to read. But my issue wasn't really with reading, I have more problems writing.

It sounds like it would be helpful if the symbols we use for writing were unambiguous even if rotated or reversed?

Do you use some special fonts that help with symbols such as > and <, b and d and so on?

Nah, it's not really a big deal. I've never considered it as holding me back or anything. Apart from having to fix the occasional unescaped character in a string, it doesn't have any meaningful effect on my life.

How about not remember right-from-left hand? Not remembering if the hot water is on the right vs left? Switching syllables in longer words? <- all of these are me.

Richard Feynman had to consult a mole on his left hand to remember the difference between left and right.

Once I got tattoos on my forearms it made figure out left and right so much easier.

When I was a kid I once wrote L and R on my forearms with a marker both for remembering which was which and to learn their name in english. I think it worked, because I always think of the corresponding forearm when I have to tell left from right.

I have to refer to the hand I hold a mouse in, before that I used to imagine holding an n64 controller.

Hold out your left hand and write "left" in the air using it as the L. After a few years of doing this (maybe two), this fixed the problem for me 99.99% of the time.

I actually have a rather big mark on my left hand and my grandmother taught me to differentiate left and right with that mark on my hand, which I still use as I sometimes get confused. Weird but true.

For most people, the right hand is the one you write with.

For left-handed people, it's a bit more complicated.

It the one I don't write with...

Not so complicated.

my left hand is the one that makes an L shape. Hands flat, plams down, which index finger + thumb looks like an L? That's your left hand.

that has never worked for me. The hand I automatically pick up a pencil with is the right hand. So I make like I'm holding a pencil and then use that hand.

that is totally what it like for me. However I have not been able to put my finger on it until you just spelt it out just now. other characters such as £$& are a pain to do whilst writing.

does it mix dynamically whole reading, like in the example or is it static like this: "Peoqle like hot bogs."

Letters never appear reversed. For me, it's only output that's affected, and touch typing fixes that for text.

It's more in the translation step between your vision and your mental image.

If you ever stare at a single word it's never muddled or back to front, but when you scan a sentence and think back over what you have seen words may be in different orders, perhaps based on a typical grouping for those words.

For example if you scanned over your comment, it could come out as, "it does mix dynamical while reading". "It does" and your typo being corrected.

Try staring at a group of 5-6 words quickly, close your eyes, visualize them and read them back.

For me it's like there is a limited buffer, so when I parse a sentence and then read it back in context the start may have become corrupted.

woot! I never knew this one. I always see them as little slides, but then forget what means what.

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