Types and other techniques as an accessibility tool for the ADHD brain
15 points by felixyz
15 points by felixyz
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEDpmj6fYiI - ‘Jonathan Siebern - How Reason keeps my ADHD out of production | ReasonConf 2019’
Very interesting talk. I experience these mental schisms on a daily basis at my job writing Python and being one of the few people in the company who run a type checker in their editor, and now I’m left wondering whether I should really seek a diagnosis on whether I have some form of ADHD. I don’t think I’ve ever heard somebody speaking about their ADHD symptoms in a way that hits this close to home.
The audience question at the end made me think of something interesting:
One of the symptoms of ADHD is visual impermanence, meaning that whatever is not in your visual field of view will essentially become cache evicted […]
I tend to have several vertical splits open in my editor at all times to remind myself of the context of the code I’m working on. I also do this with windows in general, which is why I like running tiling window managers. Could there be a correlation between running tiling WMs and ADHD?
Could there be a correlation between running tiling WMs and ADHD?
It could be that a person found ways to cope with ADHD symptoms by using a tiling WM, but they might as well find other ways, even with a regular stacking WM! Generally, I would be skeptical of connecting ADHD to everyday activities that are not widely considered to be linked to ADHD. Especially for such a niche subject as window managers.
I’ve never heard of visual impermanence (and quick google also does not give any results), but I’ve heard of object permanence (I suspect it’s a mistranslation since this conference took place in Poland), which is often explained as forgeting that objects exists, e.g.
It’s also important to note that the forgetfulness in ADHD has a cause in being either invested in something or distracted by something, which in turn is thought to be caused by imbalance in the levels of dopamine (that’s what The Meds™ are for).
Generally, I would be skeptical of connecting ADHD to everyday activities that are not widely considered to be linked to ADHD. Especially for such a niche subject as window managers.
I know, that was kind of a joke in the spirit of the talk. Thanks for the thoughtful reply though, I did not know this could be another symptom of ADHD and it’s something I think I also struggle with.
As an isolated data point I can say that I started my tiling window manager library and text editor project specifically to help me with my ADHD. I find most mainstream UIs far to busy for me to be able to focus efficiently.