Frankly she passed a tough interview, learned a tough domain and did really damn well. Not to mention who in their right mind would ever question this persons ability to take on a challenge, damn.

So my only point is, yes you can do what you challenge yourself to do. That does not mean it will be easy, smooth or always 100% rewarding while you are going through the process. I know nothing of your condition or situation but it sounds as though some verbal tutoring might be a first step to help you see if this is what you want. No matter what, good luck and enjoy.

In fairness, she would get most things in pretty good shape formatting wise. I think it was the reverse of reading for her. She could read documents using this machine that would blow them up massively to a few characters at a time, and she'd read across each line having to keep it all in her head. So I think since she was having to assemble the letters a few at a time and read across a page, she had the same ability to apply it to writing and formatting her code. Looking back at it now, her cognitive skills and memory had to be excellent.

As a matter or practicality, we did have her team lead sit with her before she was ready for code review (at least at first), just to help make basic formatting corrections etc. This just reduced us discussing minor formatting issues that the tools missed during a code review. As time went on the amount of effort others put in to help her on formatting was pretty minor, but at the beginning it did take some extra effort.

Another thing I learned working with her, she took great care in thinking through a problem before writing a single character of code. To the point that I feel she would work through things mentally way more than her peers that would do many more compile/test/code cycles. So I think that helped her too.

She also had everything in black and white, no color formatting in her code windows etc.

It was neat to work with her, no one questioned her ability after a little while, but there were people asking us wtf we were thinking hiring her at first. To those of us that interviewed her though, she was qualified and did better in the interview than a lot of the peers, so it was worth a shot.

If you cannot map individual written words to meanings, you will likely find it next to impossible to program using textual representations of programs.

If you don't have problem memorizing and recognizing symbols, but struggle with syntax, then your problems may be mitigated by programming languages having quite regular syntax with few ambiguities, and usually without a very large number of phrase structure forms (grammar rules).

Some languages, like in the Lisp family, have an an unambiguous syntax, in which all grouping of tokens into higher level structures is explicitly marked off with parentheses, and most special syntax uses a very regular prefix notation, often just consisting of one or two characters which alter the meaning of a token or parenthesized group which follow.

Also, most programming languages are written in a two dimensional way with indentation. (A few languages enforce it; in others it is a matter of style which makes no difference to the machine). Most of the time, programmers do not read programs the way they read English sentences; they rely on the visual clues to understand the basic structure of the code.

When we read English sentences, we basically scan the words and feed them to the "natural language processing centre" of the brain, which works out the syntax for us, as if an inner voice were speaking the words to us. If someone has an impairment there, that can create a difficult. However, the expressions in a computer program aren't necessarily processed that way by the brain.

My advice is follows. I would recommend a programming language with the simplest syntax, without the unnecessary policing that most languages entail. Begin with the lambda calculus, or better yet combinatory logic. The best book to slowly work through is "To Mock a Mockingbird", by Raymond Smullyan. After that you'll have a conception of what computation is. All computation is is substituting something in place of something else, or forgetting it, in a systematic way. From that point, you can move to something like the programming language Racket, which has a very simple syntax that is close to the lambda calculus. After this, you ought to be experienced enough to follow whatever path you wish to, for example understanding Javascript and how HTML on a webpage is scripted by it in response to user actions.

My best wishes to you.

Can you see, but poorly, or? And is the need to hear it associated with that, or some other condition?

While I wait, I suggest getting a mentor or tutor. Perhaps you can have them help with little things that can trip you up, allowing you to get the feedback loop started that you need to progress in programming.

The way I see it is the concept of a program breaks down into instructions and data sequenced and arranged in a way that will direct a computer to do something useful.

Understanding that concept and working with it some requires some mastery of a computer language, and with that comes lots of little fiddly things: syntax, operators and other constructs that have to be right in order for anything meaningful to happen.

A lot of people come to grips with programming by using some simple, interactive environment where the syntax and other detail requirements are light enough for them to make progress on the core concept.

Then, they take on mastery of more details, which opens the door to bigger programs and more complex ways to create them.

Seems to me, having somebody able to read to you, parse your instructions, format them, and help with input might really help you out!

The other part of programming that is fundamental is related to having a place in your head for various things. Once those things are familiar, you can "see" them internally, and the flow, and structure of your program will be much easier to think about.

Having a mentor / tutor or friend help with detail just might crack the initial nut for you. And if so, then you may gain some insight as to your potential and desire.

From there, progress might be good, or sustainable.

I know and have worked with both a blind programmer and one that got disabled for a long time. ..broke both hands badly and had to use a voice recognition software to complete a PHP project. (that was ugly)

Both of them got some initial help. Once they got their heads wrapped around the problem areas, they were both able to get things done and make progress.

I second the others here who encourage your efforts. If you can crack this nut, it may well be very rewarding and enabling for you.

It's worth mentioning that the guy did this for himself due to severe RSI in the hands, but there was another talk on using a stenographic keyboard to program and I remember this guy stood up and said he wished he'd known about it earlier as it's another approach for people who suffer from RSI since there's less typing.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/118984/how-can-you-progra...

One thing I learned is that you'll want to avoid python because it relies on significant whitespace.

I'm wondering if golang would be a good choice since it has lots of great language tools, including gofmt, which will help you collaborate with other developers in terms of writing clear well-formatted code.

Is this compatible with your disability?