Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lucastheisen 4824 days ago
Funny you mention "as long as I can type". Recently had back surgery which makes it difficult to sit, hence difficult to code. Got me to thinking about all the things that could cause me to stop coding... Loss of ability to type (fingers/hands lost). Loss of eyesight (though in college we had a blind developer). Inability to sit (back problems). Loss of mind (dimensia/Alzheimers). Loss of motor control (Parkinsons/paralysis). Im sure theirs more, but like you, i imagine I will be doing this until i cant...
1 comments

fwiw i lost use of my right hand for a few months (it's largely ok now) and it made surprisingly little difference to productivity. i don't think anyone else noticed! turns out i spent more time thinking and less writing than i had assumed.
I've often thought this was the case, but fortunately haven't had an opportunity to test out the theory. Occasionally I've seen software development jobs where they look for the ability to type some number of words per minute. I think that is a red flag.
Check out Tavis Rudd's Using Python To Code By Voice (from Pycon 2013) for a cool demo (that starts at 9:00): http://pyvideo.org/video/1735/using-python-to-code-by-voice