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Hands-Free Coding (2020)

joshwcomeau.com

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Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)

#11

Post by cassianoleal »

55555 wrote: post #5

Okay, now I want to use voice commands to iteratively code using AI. You'd start out very high level, like, "Write a react component that does X thing." and then you'd modify it more granularly, like "Re-write the last 5 lines so it doesn't use variable X." I could probably do 90% of my coding without typing.

Integrate that with the IDE and let the integration modify and save files, commit and push, etc., then make it speak back to you with the voice of Majel Barrett and you got a winner.

- "Computer, run unit tests on this codebase."

- "Unable to comply."

Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)

#13

Post by qwertox »

jasfi wrote: post #4
themanmaran wrote: post #2

The demo is incredible. Thinking of adding Talon to my daily workflow simply for the speed improvement. It would be awesome to speak out commands that are slow to type. And honestly, with the custom python scripts support, this seems like a perfect use case for some GPT enabled programming. Something like "command: gpt add react button component".

I don't want to have to speak out anything, but it could be useful as an option. E.g. the author has an RSI.

I can't currently see myself dictating code or code intentions into an editor, but to a chat system, where I can say, "with the code I just copied over to you, ..." or "with the code which is selected in the editor, ..." and then discuss the problem verbally. Because it gets somewhat tiresome to write out all those sentences.

Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)

#14

Post by qumpis »

jna_sh wrote: post #12

I would highly recommend checking out https://www.cursorless.org/ , an editor for voice built on Talon (what’s being used here by Josh) and a VSCode extension. If for nothing else than to watch the dev live code with it.

Looks awesome. Is anyone using it in their everyday workflow (I guess those who WFH)? This seems a bit better than the OP post, with some structure and shortcurs of navigating between code. I think writing comments and later structuring them could be useful in cases where you need to think quite a bit before writing code. Or jumping between search results, opening tabs (tiling on windows through voice doesn't sound bad).

Pity there's no Jetbrains support.

Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)

#15

Post by willjp »

Talon is such an exceptional piece of software. I’ve donated to the project for a few years now. I’m so grateful software like this exists, that it’s cross platform, and that it’s extremely customizable.

Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)

#16

Post by mbork_pl »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #10
Projectiboga wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is dated 2020 in the title.

Yes, that was the joke. Only 2-3 years have passed and yet we have advanced so far past that point, a sign of the accelerating things that are yet to come up to full abstraction over the machine interaction: just say what you want to achieve, let the machine handle the details, from what dependencies to use to the file structure of the repository.

> When someone says “I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done,” give him a lollipop.

(Alan Perlis)

;-)

Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)

#17

Post by willjp »

55555 wrote: post #6
jasfi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to have to speak out anything, but it could be useful as an option. E.g. the author has an RSI.

If every developer at least pretends to embrace verbal programming, they'll have to get rid of open floor plans.

Good riddance! ;)

Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)

#18

Post by willjp »

ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #7
themanmaran wrote: post #2

The demo is incredible. Thinking of adding Talon to my daily workflow simply for the speed improvement. It would be awesome to speak out commands that are slow to type. And honestly, with the custom python scripts support, this seems like a perfect use case for some GPT enabled programming. Something like "command: gpt add react button component".

The demo looks primitive, "go up second and go left third"? What is this, 2020? When now, in 2023, you can say "add parameters". Programming will only become higher and higher in abstraction. Why even say "parameters", just say "handle this use case".

I still appreciate the precision of being able to explicitly describe what I want to type. I also appreciate that this is all running on your machine.

Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)

#19

Post by ly3xqhl8g9 »

mbork_pl wrote: post #16
ly3xqhl8g9 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that was the joke. Only 2-3 years have passed and yet we have advanced so far past that point, a sign of the accelerating things that are yet to come up to full abstraction over the machine interaction: just say what you want to achieve, let the machine handle the details, from what dependencies to use to the file structure of the repository.

> When someone says “I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done,” give him a lollipop. (Alan Perlis) ;-)

Mr. Perlis died in 1990 unfortunately [1] [2], could just as well been in the prehistoric times. Of course, LLMs will not be able to give alone such a programming language, call it JUST, just say what you wish, but 5 or 6 more quantum leaps at the same level as the transformer architecture? I just can't see how it doesn't go that way.

AlexNet [3] was just 10 years, 9 months and 17 days ago, September 2012. The same time from now it would be the year 2034, February. Can anyone really dare to say we won't have the JUST language by 2034? I'll raise you even one further: in 30-40, hopefully 20, years we will have a JUST anatomical compiler and we will say programatically to the cells of various bodies: just build an eye here [4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Perlis

[2] The lolliquote is from 1982, Epigrams on Programming, epigram 93, http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/perlis-alan/quotes.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlexNet some prior work was 2011, Dan C. Cireșan et al., "High-Performance Neural Networks for Visual Object Classification", also quoted in the AlexNet paper. Both papers relied on "Convolutional Neural Networks designs introduced by Yann LeCun et al. (1989)". Curious if Mr. Perlis knew about Mr. LeCun's work. Here is Jürgen Schmidhuber giving a talk about the paper in October 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkCNbi26Hds The 10-year-old YouTube comment "I was still under the impression neural networks were rarely used any longer." is particularly funny.

[4] "The Collective Intelligence of Cells During Morphogenesis with Dr. Michael Levin", https://youtu.be/p4Fm7jLNrpg?t=3898 from 1:04:58 to 1:07:30, but the entire presentation is showing the future that is to come, in biology, in programming, in bio-programming.

Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)

#20

Post by rickydroll »

As someone with RSI who writes code using speech recognition, before copilot, something like Talon was a pretty good solution. Awkward, kinda rough on the throat, not something you would use in the long term but better than the other options. I've always thought that a editor based on the abstract syntax tree in the language was a far better solution but that's a hard to solve problem and needs to be redone with every language.

I now use copilot almost exclusively when writing code. I've learned how to give it prompts so that writes code the way I would've written code. Occasionally it surprises me but when I dig into the solution, I realize that's a good one and start using it intentionally.

That said, navigation still a pain (sometimes literally). I mostly use the arrow keys and page up/page down to get to where I want to go. It is usually not worth the hassle to build special macros for editor specific navigation. I believe having meat macros like I developed with Emacs is no longer a win. Maybe if I had abstract syntax tree driven navigation, it would be worthwhile.

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