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To anyone who uses assistive technologies like screen readers and does programming:
How do you perceive different programming languages? Are some easier to use than others, more comfortable to read than others? And what about the major ones? Also interesting: what about the terminal and commands and their output there?

I am asking because I believe not just GUIs should be designed with accessibility in mind, but everything else too. So what could be improved?

#accessibility #Linux #programming

#Accessibility #linux #programming

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in reply to Lorenz

Lukáš Tyrychtr
gotosocial - Link to source
Lukáš Tyrychtr
• •
@alcinnz Good question. Having block delimiters certainly helps, ideally required ones, e. g. Python is much more comfortable with a braille display than, say, Rust, and C might be confusing as well. Also, having a canonical tool to format the code definitely helps, it is just much easier to run rustfmt than read some style guide and athere to it.
@alcinnz
in reply to Lukáš Tyrychtr

Lorenz
mastodon - Link to source
Lorenz
• •
@tyrylu @alcinnz @modulux with block delimiters you mean the tabs and newline in python? also what makes C confusing for you in detail? tbh I would have expected that whitespace is not an issue at all, as well as code formatting. (at least as long as you are the only one working on it)
wouldn't you usually just skip whitespace? But also I don't really know how you use braille displays. I was thinking a lot of people just use screen readers these days.
@alcinnz @modulux @Lukáš Tyrychtr
in reply to Lorenz

modulux
gotosocial - Link to source
modulux
• •

I can answer some of that.

Block delimiters are things like braces {} in C, parentheses () in some other languages, and even begin or end, like Ruby has.

Can't skip whitespace in python, that's the issue with it. Some languages require it.

in reply to modulux

Lorenz
mastodon - Link to source
Lorenz
• •
@modulux @tyrylu @alcinnz I ahevN#t quite understood yet if it is a problem or an advantage to have block delimiters C-style ({}) or python style (with spaces)?
@alcinnz @modulux @Lukáš Tyrychtr
in reply to Lorenz

modulux
gotosocial - Link to source
modulux
• •
It's an advantage to have block delimiters, as the OP says, "Having block delimiters certainly helps". Without block delimiters, so in languages like python, a braille display helps a lot because it is easier to understand the structure of the code than with speech alone.
in reply to modulux

Lukáš Tyrychtr
gotosocial - Link to source
Lukáš Tyrychtr
• •
Also, yes, you can ignore code style when working alone and not publishing the code anywhere and expecting outside contributions, but that's no longer my case. Also, the usability of compiler error messages is important, for example, a C/C++ error message is much longer and harder to understand (at least for me) than, say, a Rust one.
in reply to Lorenz

modulux
gotosocial - Link to source
modulux
• •

I do find some langauges easier to use than others. Overall, block delimiters, lack of whitespace sensitivity, a reasonable and not excessive amount of sigils compared to the text, come to mind as good features. Oh, and avoidance of complex unicode punctuation (Agda, I'm looking (or not looking, as the case may be) at you).

Automatic formatting is great. I often write rust without any indentation and use the autoformatter to give it shape, which does help me as well when I'm using a braille display, but getting the indentation right is too much hassle.

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