Of course. I'm a power Mac and Windows user, regularly write my own code, run things in Terminal, and am extremely fast with general computer use. Workarounds are needed when accessibility barriers pop up with various apps, but most issues are manageable. I maintain websites, maintain my file system and do routine OS maintenance, manage git repositories both locally and online, run Terminal scripts to back up data to external media, write my blog, work in Xcode, and do all my other computer work with hardly any problems. It just takes time and practice.

Yeah, definitely. It isn’t hard really. Just takes practice, practice makes perfect.

I have 6 years of experience using screen-readers (mostly VoiceOver on MacOS, but I've used NVDA too) and as far as my experience is concerned, while it's possible to do a lot more than I ever imagine being able to do blind, I can't help the feeling that I'm being dragged down by my blindness, and on top of that I have a lot of trouble trusting myself because I have one less sense to root me into reality, so I don't work anymore.

One problem I have with screen-readers for reading code is that, in order to not go crazy, I read with the punctuation verbosity set to some, which forces me to read character by character some times, and that in turn slows me down and makes me a lot more prone to error. Braille can probably help with this, but I struggle a lot with it am don't feel enough of a need to pay for a Braille display in order to train myself.

The way I think of it is: if screen-readers were all that productive there would be a lot more people using them. I'm not denying that it's possible to be efficient with a screen-reader, but that requires a lot more skill than to be efficient with a visual interface, and that requirement consumes mental resources thus reducing your capacity to reason about code complexity.

Blindness has certainly made me improve as a programmer, because it required me to develop mental abilities that I didn't have in order to just be able to code, but again I can't help the feeling that I'd be much much more efficient if my sight returned and I didn't have to use screen-readers anymore.

Certain things will never be as fast as doing it by sight. I don't think you can really just zip through text as fast as reading it, and the big thing is there isn't really any way to skim stuff or glance around and get a decent impression of roughly what's going on. It's like browsing in shops, you just can't do it. A lot of that you can sort of help yourself out with by just remembering what you have open, though. A lot of it becomes feats of memory. It depends exactly what you're trying to do. What are you trying to do?

it's totally possible. You start with the basics and on time you can make stuff really fast.

From your profile, it looks like you're starting to learn to use a screen reader.

Yes, you can navigate a computer quickly. Obviously, you'll be quicker using apps that are accessible, that you can navigate easily and that you use regularly.