Developed RSI and overcame it through learning stenography with Plover. I've used it exclusively (only using the keyboard to login to the computer) for 2 years. I'm a full time developer and it works great. There's a learning curve for a few months before being able to switch to stenography completely. Practice was running drills with a metronome for 15 minutes or so a day, progressing to the next lesson after hittin…
Hands-Free Coding (2020)
51–60 of 60 posts
Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)
#52As 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 ever…
> It is usually not worth the hassle to build special macros for editor specific navigation. Why not? Wouldn't macros be more useful to customize your editing experience now that you use speech recognition, given that it's pretty unusual? In general, I'd expect customizations to have more value for people who use tools/languages in an abnormal way, not less.
Creating macros is a way someone can take control back from the disability. If I write some macros to do some of my work, I've taken back some of what I've lost. I used to be very critical of all these not fully useful solutions that disabled developers can come up with and I've become much kinder about it because it's more about the process of learning how to live with a disability and take back some of your agency that it is about creating any sort of accessibility tool.
It's hard to convey just how different the user experience is in your hands don't work and you try new speech recognition. One way to think of the relationship between the disabled person and UI customization tools is that customization tools are my agent or proxy for my hands. The macro solution send you down the path of having to memorize context specific commands and say a whole lot of words to get a small effect. A good adaptation looks inside the application context both in terms of what can be done and what data has to be operated on and then interprets natural language to generate what the system thinks is the desired result. That's the beauty of things like chatGPT. It's interpretation was right is usually pretty damn close.
With coding, this is why I like copilot. It takes my natural language and context of the code generated and generates code that is pretty darn close to correct. I speak a little bit and get a big result. I'll never have a force multiplier like chatGPT or copilot with macros.
btw, small pushback. The way we use tools and programs is not abnormal. Your comment shows just how much judgment people have when a user violates a designers UI vision or perceived physical norms. They think that speech interface is mediated by some form of artificial stupid should be the normalize standard but, whom I to judge. :-)
If a user can't make use of the UI provided, it's not the users fault, that belong squarely on the UI developer.
Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been living with this problem since 1994. Some of the symptoms match up with cubital tunnel syndrome in that my hands feel split along the middle finger ring finger line. At the same time, the palms hands feel like they are burning, and my shoulders are caused me low-level discomfort. If I overdo it, the pain migrates up into my neck. sometimes my forearms and fingers swell. When the finger swelling happens, I l…
I don't want do downplay what you have been through and all the effort you have put in to trying to get an accurate diagnosis, and I know how discouraging navigating the US medical system is, but there have been a lot of advancements/changes in the area of orthopedic disorders since the 90s. If lidocaine in your shoulders is the only thing that has given you relief, you most likely have some form of Thoracic Outlet S…
Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been living with this problem since 1994. Some of the symptoms match up with cubital tunnel syndrome in that my hands feel split along the middle finger ring finger line. At the same time, the palms hands feel like they are burning, and my shoulders are caused me low-level discomfort. If I overdo it, the pain migrates up into my neck. sometimes my forearms and fingers swell. When the finger swelling happens, I l…
Have you tried float therapy? I did it twice a week for a while and it helped me a ton. Also talk Therapy and a lot of cardio seem to be key for me too. after years of inconsistent answers and shrugging from docs I was frustrated. After reading about chronic pain and psychosomatic disorders I think it’s ridiculous how many providers don’t know much about that or are afraid to even mention it. Even after little talks…
Talking about the chronic pain in therapy or not, reminds me of how I got injured and how I was treated by my former employer. The more I talk about these feelings and these events, it triggers significant rage some 30 years later. The only way I found to deal with it is by practicing nonattachment. The easiest way to explain is that it's not that I don't feel the anger but it's an attenuated emotion. It passes by without sticking (much) and with some breathing, fades into nothingness till the next time.
Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not beneficial to believe that you have "RSI". That's like saying you have "cancer" and are treating it with chemotherapy. What if you just had Thyroid Cancer, in which case you merely needed to take a special iodine pill. In other words, both cancer and "RSI" do not have a single treatment. RSI doesn't have to be this chronic, debilitating condition... but in my experience, you can't put too much faith in ortho…
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Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)
#56Developed RSI and overcame it through learning stenography with Plover. I've used it exclusively (only using the keyboard to login to the computer) for 2 years. I'm a full time developer and it works great. There's a learning curve for a few months before being able to switch to stenography completely. Practice was running drills with a metronome for 15 minutes or so a day, progressing to the next lesson after hittin…
Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want do downplay what you have been through and all the effort you have put in to trying to get an accurate diagnosis, and I know how discouraging navigating the US medical system is, but there have been a lot of advancements/changes in the area of orthopedic disorders since the 90s. If lidocaine in your shoulders is the only thing that has given you relief, you most likely have some form of Thoracic Outlet S…
Thoracic outlet was one of the proposed diagnoses but back in the 90s they had no idea how to treat it except very low success rate surgery. I went to physical therapy route and it didn't do anything for me. The PT person found a couple places on my spine and my right shoulder blade were frozen. I put up with a lot of pain when they tried to get it to loosen up.
Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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As far as I know I didn't vote down the comment. If I did,, it was by accident as this site is not very friendly to speech recognition and shaky hands..
Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)
#59As 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 ever…
> It is usually not worth the hassle to build special macros for editor specific navigation. Why not? Wouldn't macros be more useful to customize your editing experience now that you use speech recognition, given that it's pretty unusual? In general, I'd expect customizations to have more value for people who use tools/languages in an abnormal way, not less.
Re: Hands-Free Coding (2020)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is usually not worth the hassle to build special macros for editor specific navigation. Why not? Wouldn't macros be more useful to customize your editing experience now that you use speech recognition, given that it's pretty unusual? In general, I'd expect customizations to have more value for people who use tools/languages in an abnormal way, not less.
I think I know why many injured developers turn to macros to try and solve their problem. When you acquire disability as an adult, it really fucks with your head. Every time you turn around, you're confronted with what you can't do anymore. Even a mild disability like mine I've had days where I could barely feed myself because it hurts too much to whole silverware. Thankfully those days are gone. Now things are bette…
The macros that I'm talking about are exactly the opposite - you say a small number of words to produce a large effect (or, however much effect you programmed into them), e.g. when you define an Emacs function. What macros are you talking about?
> btw, small pushback. The way we use tools and programs is not abnormal.
The vast majority of people do not use speech interfaces to tools and programs, so this use is abnormal by definition - abnormal means "outside of the norm" and this is very much outside of the norm.
> Your comment shows just how much judgment people have when a user violates a designers UI vision or perceived physical norms.
No, it does not. "Abnormal" is not a judgement or a negative term - it literally just means "several standard deviations from the mean" (for some value of "several") - you can describe someone having "abnormal intelligence" (and the connotation with that phrase is almost universally positive). Don't read negative meaning into other peoples' comments where it doesn't exist.
> If a user can't make use of the UI provided, it's not the users fault, that belong squarely on the UI developer.
I'm not assigning fault to the user. You're assuming things here also.