Discussion on: How does dyslexia make it hard to be a developer?

There are ways to lessen the effects of dyslexia when coding:

Most modern code editors will let you bring your own font. Find a font with clear distinctions between commonly confused letters. I especially like Hack and Source Code Pro. OpenDyslexic is also an excellent option.

Color themes also matter! Avoid high contrast colors like white-on-black and black-on-white. Play with themes until you find one that works for you specifically. (Dark mode and lower screen brightness also may help. Anything to reduce eyestrain, which worsens dyslexic symptoms.)

One challenge I have is whitespace. I always turn on "visible whitespace" so I can see how many spaces or tabs I have. Extensions like indent-rainbow in VSCode also help.

Another issue I commonly run into is brackets. There are two ways I fix this: one is to use the Allman bracketing style, which requires a bracket to be on its own line, like this:

void amazing_function()
{
    if (true)
    {
        // something here
    }
}

This makes the brackets MUCH harder for me to "misplace" visually. The Bracket Pair Colorizer extension for VSCode also helps.

On a larger point, make more use of vertical space in your coding style. Avoid one-liners. Put spaces around operators. Do everything you can to avoid dense code. Give your eyes room to "breathe", even if that means your code file is twice as "long".

A good autoformatter will allow you to switch between your ideal style and that of your team.

Integrating a good linter into your IDE is also helpful, as it will draw your attention to many typos.

Turn on your editor's settings for highlighting your current line. This makes a huge difference with "vertical" dyslexia, such as mine.

Also, explore any extension which highlights important components of your code. I use Comment Anchors and TODO Highlight to help me find important comments later.

All of these tips are fairly general, however. Know your own dyslexia: it's a bit different for everyone.

I don't want to leave off on a note of "your brain is broken" sort of note! Living with dyslexia, I've learned something interesting: dyslexia is the ability to rearrange the world around me mentally! It simply happens on the page (or screen) without me wanting it to. I've talked to many fellow dyslexics, and they indeed share this ability (in varying, unique forms).

This provides a unique advantage as a coder! You'll likely find that you are good at mental visualization. Practice this and use it. When trained, it'll enable you to work with algorithms, software architecture, and design patterns in a way that most coders only dream about.