S'funny. I have no artistic aptitude to mention, and I have a tendancy to be "word-blind", though it generally only affects my own writing, and only when it is newly written. Not the classic dyslexia.

But I rely strongly on visualisation when programming. When I "see" the solution to a code problem, I can generally code it directly and, beyind typis, it usually runs first time.

When I struggle to "see" the solution, it can take me hours to code even relatively simple things.

The weirdest thing is that, if the first time I ever try to code something fairly complex but self contained, I get a strong "vision" of how it should be--and if it works. Then I never have a problem re-coding it from scratch.

Conversely, those algorithms that I struggled to see and code the first time, I always have trouble doing them again, no matter how often I have to do it.

Likewise there are some words that I struggled with as a kid, that I still struggle with every time.

My lack of visualization meant that I learned different ways to process information. I think some of these have let me work with abstract reasoning in a much more flexible way. I also very quickly recognize abstract patterns amongst wildly different domains (witness the less-than-a-moment's thought that eventually became the schwartzian transform).

Also, since I don't "picture" a conversation I'm having, I'm terribly efficient with word puns. I "hear" all similar words, and all different meanings, for each word in a conversation. I suspect that people who visualize an actual dog when I say "dog" would have a harder time doing that.

Like a blind person getting better hearing in exchange, my mental "blindness" has created a number of very useful skills.