Programming was so much easier when I was in my thirties. I wore glasses then. I had no problems reading the VT220 terminal screens.
I could casually stand behind colleagues and read the screen over their shoulder and answer questions.
It started getting harder in my forties. I had to concentrate harder and lean forward to clearly see the screen.
Now in my mid fifties my deteriorating eyesight is interfering with my work. I do a lot of staff support. Gone are the days of reading the screen over their shoulder. Now I have to sit in their chair and pull the monitor closer to me.
I needed to write a COBOL program a few days ago. It took me three times as long because I was straining to read what I had typed. I had a shitload of compiler errors. I used to pride myself on getting less than 3 on a thousand line program. That was when I could read the damn screen. I find myself relying more on printouts because they’re easier to read.
I’m beginning to wonder if I can continue to work until 65. I get so frustrated and embarrassed.
I just got new glasses. My opthalmologist is monitoring my cataracts. I’ll need surgery in a few years.
Getting old sucks.
IT work is a job for young studs with good eyesight.
I had one cataract. It came on fast. They replaced it with a lens that is good for distance AND reading. In my ‘good’ eye, I now where a contact lens. It is also good for distance and reading. Problem solved.
But my opthalmologist warned me that 20/20 sight in one eye would throw off my balance. Because the other eye is weak. He’ll give me a weaker lens.
My left cataract is the most advanced. That’s because shingles attacked it in 2005. I have cornea scarring. I’ll be a surgery candidate pretty soon. I see the opthalmologist every year for an evaluation.
My right eye cataract is normal for my age. It’s probably 7 years away from needing surgery.
Well, I’m not a programmer, but my eyesight has certainly deteriorated. My hearing is shot as well, which is, to me, a worse issue at this stage. I have a constant ringing in my ears and a reduced range of hearing from years in data centers. Back in the old days there wasn’t such a thing as hearing protection for data centers and I never thought twice about it.
Wrt my eyesight, I do well with bifocals for close in stuff and I have 4 28" screens in my office. I have set the resolution and icon size to a lot larger and I have my browsers also enlarged, and that seems to be fine. I should be good until I’m 65, which is also when I plan to retire.
I have thought about going in for eye surgery. A lot of my contemporary peers have done so and they all seem to think it’s a good thing, but I just haven’t wanted to do it. Still seems a bit icky to me in some ways and, well, I’m a bit scared even though a lot of folks say it’s no big deal. Kind of how I feel about going to the dentist.
Hm…I have curved screens and LED lights in my office set fairly low power, so I don’t actually get a lot of glare. Short of corrective surgery I’m not sure what else you could do, unfortunately, if you still want to code or troubleshoot your teams code.
I do a lot of CAD work. Bigger monitors have helped greatly, as have flat-screen monitors (way less glare). I use a pair of reading glasses one notch weaker than the ones I would use for reading (2.00 for computer, 2.50 for reading). That puts the focus at monitor distance (for me).
I used to set my text editor and my email program to display everything in 9 point type. Then it was 10, and nowadays 11. And I use dedicated computer glasses instead of my regular specs, which have been bifocals for 15+ years btw.
Most of what I have to look at professionally that is beyond my immediate control is still larger than that, just by a lesser margin than it once was.
Back when my eyes worked well, I would have wanted an iPhone sized screen displaying at 1920 x 1080. Any characters larger than the ingredients list on the back of medicine bottle is wasting screen space. Etc.
Did you tell the opthamologist that your job is sitting at a computer? Because they can prescribe glasses for computer users different than the ones for reading or distance. And 19" monitors are small nowadays. Where I work, we’ve pretty much standardized on 22" widescreen monitors. If you’re using Windows, you can leave the resolution at the monitor default and select larger fonts.
I see the opthalmologist in June. I’ll ask about computer glasses.
Meanwhile, I’ll play with my windows font sizes.
Chrome has a magnifier feature. I keep it on 125%. I can change the font too. But that can mess up the web page. They’re designed and laid out for a certain font size.
I got computer glasses for work a couple of years ago and they are great. I noticed that I was always looking over the top of my regular glasses at my screen because the top part of my bifocals was for distance. Of course the downside is that when I am wearing my computer glasses and someone waves at me from the far end of the hallway, I can’t tell who it is because now my distance vision is crap. But it’s definitely worth the trade-off if you spend a large part of your day in front of a screen.
I don’t know what editor(s) you use for coding but along with increasing the font size you might look at different color schemes and see if there is a high contrast one that works better for you. One thing I’ve seen a lot lately is people setting up their code editors with bright text on a dark background, rather than the other way around.
I have three contacts prescriptions. Left eye and right eye for regular vision and a left eye contact that focuses at about 24". That’s how far I sit from my monitor. I drive to work in regular lenses (-4 and -3.25) and then change the left eye to a -2.25 from the -4. So my left eye can read my monitor and paperwork and the right eye can see who’s coming or check what’s going on across the room. Incidentally, it doesn’t mess with my depth perception, I have astigmatism, and I got used to it in about 20 minutes. (covering all the usual objections to monovision)
Yeah, try being a detail-oriented artist in his 70s.
I’ve made costly mistakes because I can’t always accurately cut precisely on a line. If it’s a little over to the right I can always trim a little more off. But if I cut a little too much off, I’m screwed.
Why don’t you try telling the optometrist in great detail what your issue is? My SIL, for example, is a professional violinist and had glasses made specifically for sight-reading sheet music on a stand, and found them very helpful. I also use a computer monitor constantly at work and have found progressive lenses to be awesome.
ETA: also anti-reflective coating is awesome for preventing eye strain.
I’ll second this. I wear progressives for everything except in front of my computer since the intermediate area is too small and dedicated computer glasses for that. The issue I have is that I’m in a meeting I can wear my progressives and see the screen through the distance portion and squint at my laptop or I can wear my computer glasses and not see the board.
I went into my optician a few weeks ago and after explaining the issue, she suggested lined bifocals with the bottom 2/3 being computer focal length and the top 1/3 for distance. Not a traditional layout, but it works fro me.
BTW, the OP poses the question to IT staff, but lots of office workers outside of IT spend their entire days in front of PCs. So it’s quite a widespread issue. And I’m a little surprised that the opthamologist didn’t proactively ask if you spend your days on a PC, since it’s so common. (Actually today it’s probably more common to spend one’s days on a smartphone screen.)
Deteriorating eyesight is making everything more difficult.
But yes, I’m 18 inches from the screen to read stuff, and I’m typing this without being able to read what I write.
The hard part isn’t that I have to lean in to read. The hard part is that I miss things I don’t know where to look for, or things I don’t know I should be leaning in to see.
My computer is just fine, but it’s my students’ computers that cause the problem. When they have a problem that I need to look at, they’ll be sitting and I’ll be standing. Our classroom lab computers have monitors that aren’t that clear, and is worse when viewing from above.
The bigger problem is the students with cheap laptops; their screens are always “fuzzy”. As Shoeless mentioned earlier, it doesn’t help that the “hip” look nowadays is to have dark backgrounds with light text, which is horrible. That was OK back in the IBM 3270 terminal days, but those had only 24 lines on a monitor and the green text was pretty bright.
I tell the programming students to increase their font size, not just for me, but so they can also tell the difference between a : and a ; which can cause all kinds of programming errors.
I know where you’re coming from, because after many years of perfect vision, my eyes are now declining with age. I find that normal reading glasses do work with my computer monitor. These are just the 1.25+ ones from Costco that are 3 for $20, and they help reading my computer screen sitting at a normal distance. I don’t often use them on my big monitor at work, but sometimes my eyes are just tired, and they do help. I’m probably 18-24 inches from the screen. I’m more likely to use them on my laptop, because I’m trying to squeeze the same content onto a smaller display.
I find myself relying more on printouts because they’re easier to read.