Reading Glasses Lot

Will reading glasses permanently affect vision?

I'm a graduate student in the field of computer science. My optometrist prescribed me a pair of reading glasses (+0.75 for both eyes) for when I'm using the computer and studying. He says my eyes are in great condition though, just that the strain on my eyes can be harmful in the long run and I should use the glasses if I plan to be doing a lot of work in front of the computer/studying. I've heard that wearing glasses alter your eyes, sometimes to the point where you constantly need them. Does this hold true for reading glasses?

Your optometrist truly deserves a monument made of marble, covered with the purest gold and no smaller than the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Most optometrists are not like yours and they are totally unaware of any form of prevention, especially when it comes to myopia (nearsightedness) which is the most common vision problem and it's when distant things appear blurry. All they usually do is give their patients glasses for myopia when they're already myopic and inevitably their eyesight gets worse every six months until their mid 20's. The simplest way to prevent myopia,or slowing down its progression, is the use of reading glasses, which is exactly what your wonderful optometrist did. He's surely up to date with the most important researches on myopia published in the last 20 years and I fail to understand why so many of his colleagues all over the world ignore those things.

It's difficult to explain in a few words why it's absolutely correct to use reading glasses in a situation like yours, but I'll try.
It has been proven beyond doubt that a young person who has perfect eyesight can easily become myopic if he/she spends most of the time looking at things that are too close. The first thing that can happen is pseudo-myopia, i.e. a form of nearsightedness caused by a spasm of the ciliary muscle. It's not a terrible thing but it's enough to make your vision blurry when you look at something distant. If the person keeps doing the same things that caused the pseudo-myopia, it's highly probable that his/her pseudo-myopia will turn into real myopia, which is an abnormal increase of the eye's length . From that moment on, that young person will have no hope, because as I said he won't be helped at all. They'll only give him/her glasses for nearsightedness which will make things worse.
The use of reading glasses (but only when looking at something close) would be a blessing instead , because those glasses make one simple but important thing: they shift the focus of the light rays which get into your eyes exactly as if you were farther from what you're looking at. In other words, if you want to prevent your eyesight from deteriorating, you should avoid (or reduce a lot) near work, such as computer, books, and so on. It's not always possible, especially in your case , but reading glasses can do that for you. Although things appear bigger and therefore closer to you when you wear those glasses, your eyes "feel" that you're looking at something more distant and therefore the eye-strain is greatly reduced. That means that those glasses protect your eyesight and it will be much easier to keep it as good as it is now.
You eyes won't become dependent on those glasses because they just reduce eye-strain. What you heard ("wearing glasses alter your eyes, sometimes to the point where you constantly need them) applies to a different type of glasses, those for nearsightedness. Their improper use helps eyesight to deteriorate because with those glasses the focus of the light rays gets closer to the retina. A myope who wears full-prescription glasses makes an effort to see close things and it's that effort which makes the eyesight worse.