[school-discuss] Dyslexia and Programming

[Joel Kahn <jj2kk4@xxxxxxxxx>]

Marilyn wrote:
> Researchers say that dyslexic individuals exhibit "big picture
> thinking."  Does that fit with programming?

It varies enormously. Some of the largest programs
ever written (systems of programs, really) involve
thinking of the biggest "pictures" possible; to
take a really extreme example, there are cosmologists
who are using super-computers as they attempt to
model how the entire observable universe functions.

Children starting out in programming would be at the
opposite extreme, producing very small pieces of code
narrowly focused on simple goals. Any "big picture"
advantage possessed by dyslexics (assuming that the
researchers are correct) would appear at a somewhat
more advanced level, as students looked at each others'
work and started thinking about how their individual
interests might fit together and produce bigger and
more complicated structures.

Anyway, it sounds like one more interesting angle to
study further. Speaking of which: I ran the term
"dyslexia" through the search engine at the National
Science Foundation web site, and I didn't encounter
anything that looks much like what we're discussing.
If anyone with more experience and better credentials
than me wants to start drafting a grant proposal, I'm
ready to start talking about how I might help....

Joel

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