Can dyslexic be good for coding?

I was a Web Designer for many years as I always had the impression that learning code would be too difficult for me.

dyslexia + words = difficult.

Of course but clients kept asking to build newsletter subscribers or forums (back in the day 2008) and eventually I had to bite the bullet and learn to code.

My first resource was a rather substantial 2000+ page book on PHP, and I had no intention on reading the whole thing, oh no... But just scanning the pages and examples for what I need to achieve, which in this case was writing a script that would take a CSV file of name and emails and process them into a sql database.

Sounds so simple to me now, but when you don’t know, you don’t know and that’s ok 👌 we all start somewhere.

It took me about a month to write this first script and get it right. When I need to know something new I would look up the function in the Index at the back and see what pages had references and examples of use, then I would try it out. Trial and error.

It was also the first time I had to actually setup my local dev environment to run server side code. Back then you had to extract zip and install the php.dll into you apache folder and then edit the configs by hand (noobs are like what’s apache?) and yes it was hard and Frustrating at times... but it was much more fun then I was suspecting have, I was so surprised.

The everlasting cloud of knowledge

PHP for me, changed my life. It made me fall in love with solving problems with code. But there was a problem, It seemed to be an ever lasting list of built in functions that took an impossible to remember number of arguments, how in the world would I possibly remember everything? Part of the issue you have when you suffer from dyslexia is the ability to remember a particular thing at a specific time, usually the present moment, when you need that very thing 😟

Well it turned out that actually the world of code and the number of functions and packages and libraries would never stop growing, expanding exponentially across the internet and actually nobody could know it all! let alone remember it all.

Just In Time Knowledge.

So what I learned... what we all learned, was, to know of a function and roughly what it mite do and then look up the arguments/implementation when I needed it, this probably sounds what we do today with NPM packages.

Apps and communities and IDEs and Spelling correctors all came into our life’s and saved us from really having to remember to much of the details. Which was a real blessing. The next big thing was Application Architecture having started with the most notoriously messiest language the need for code cleanness and solid logic structure was of paramount importance.

Got in the Gang Of Four

When I discovered design patterns my world changed again as they really helped form why code goes in particularly places and that bits of code have one role and other bits of code another, building logical systems and modules and solving common problems with off the shelf solutions. Bingo, It was beautiful it was design again but in code format this time and mostly important, I was good at it, In fact Dyslexia was helping me. 👍

Dyslexia effects reading and writing of course and is considered a disability but that's not the end of the story, i guess if you loose one sense you gain another and for most of us it’s the ability to see patterns, usually this ability is demonstrated in visual art but coding, as we know also has patterns of code. Take DRY for instance says Don’t Repeat Yourself and I was particularly good at spotting when to wrap up some useful set of code for reuses.

Of course I still make spelling errors in code but as long as you spell it incorrectly every time then you good to go. But seriously I would recommend anyone with dyslexia to give coding a go and make the effort to learn it. It is rewarding and you will be good at it, mostly.

Coding today with the fantastic level of support and tools at our fingertips is easier then ever. But that doesn’t mean it’s still not a daunting task, where to start, what to do etc.

So I have told myself that it’s time for me as a 15 years senior developer to finally start giving back to the community that has given me so much the lessons and knowledge that I’ve gained so I’ll be writing articles here in Dev.to which for me is much more of a daunting task, but I hope we can share the journey together.

If your starting on your journey what ever your level, even if you don’t have the extra ability I have 🤣😭 to see patterns, then follow along as I take you though the full stack, from the beginning.

Your comments are very welcome and thank you 🙏 for reading my very first blog post