[nfbcs] Learning Programming Languages

[William Grussenmeyer]

It is not the programming languages that have accessibility problems.
You can program in any language using any screen reader and notepad on
windows or texteditor on mac, etc. without any accessibility issues.
As to compile the program, all command line tools are accessible. But
many programmers use what are called development environments which
speed up the process of programming by helping you with auto-complete
of words, sorting library calls, helping to organize your files, etc.
For windows, an accessible development environment is Eclipse or
visual studio.  But they both can be a little difficult to learn at
first.  I would suggest starting with Java to learn basic programming
concepts.  You can program java in Eclipse.  Its a typical type of
language used in many university and used widely in industry.  It is
better than starting with a web language or with  SQL which is a
database language because it teaches you more formal  concepts, has a
better debugging environment, and it is harder to make mistakes in.
Java was design to be easy to learn and hard to make mistakes in.  It
is easy in web languages to screw things up because they do not do any
error checking and wont give you any feedback about  errors.  It is
also easy in web langauges not to learn basic programming concepts or
to misunderstand the ideas because they are so informal in their
syntax.
Setting up eclipse and java on a windows machine takes some time and
you'll have to look up some tutorial to do it.
Another option is to try visual studio and C#.  I don't know much
about those two but they are more formal languages that are easy to
learn in.
There might be some books on bookshare about programming in different
languages like java and C# that you might try to look up.  Online
tutorials are not always good to learn from.  They are usually short
and badly described.



On 4/14/17, Jack Heim via nfbcs <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> I think learning a web programming language like php is a good idea. I
> was at lunch with some tech types last Saturday and one of them related
> how his company had to pay a php programmer just out of college,
> $80,000. Otherwise, he'd have gone somewhere else.  There is a ton of
> stuff being written in python these days too.
>
>
> One of the problems starting with a web programming language would be
> that you'd have to get a web server working first. Early on it might be
> difficult to know if the problem is with your script or with the server.
> On the other hand, with a web app, you could immediately write something
> actually useful. That might be good to keep you motivated.
>
> In terms of how hard they are to learn, the programming language itself
> makes some difference but the biggest thing is going to be the
> development environment. In other words, the biggest issue is probably
> going to be how your screen reader interacts with the program you are
> using to write the code. Personally, I use gedit in linux with the orca
> screen reader.
> On 04/14/2017 08:35 AM, Jim Fettgather via nfbcs wrote:
>> Hello, we have a computer users group in the Midwest consisting of a
>> number of visually impaired individuals who are interested in learning all
>> that they can about programming languages, which work the best with screen
>> readers, and resources for learning this advanced skill.
>> If anyone would care to take a moment and share their experience and
>> knowledge, either on or off list, I would sure appreciate any information
>> regarding the process of learning to program, and which programming
>> languages lend themselves for use with screen readers.
>> Thanks a lot for any information you may wish to share..
>> Jim Fettgather
>>
>> jfettgather at alphapointe.org<mailto:jfettgather at alphapointe.org>
>>
>>
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-- 
William Grussenmeyer
PhD Student, Computer Science
University of Nevada, Reno
NSF Fellow