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Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

neurrone.com

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Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#31

Post by mbb70 »

thunderbong wrote: post #28

From the article - > Windows might not be trendy among developers, but it’s where accessibility works best. I don’t have to worry about whether I can get audio working reliably. The NVDA screen reader works on Windows and is free and open source, actively maintained, and designed by people who are screen reader users themselves. > That said, I’m not actually developing on Windows in the traditional sense. WSL2 gives…

His comments on VS Code reminds me of the quote "Good accessibility design is mostly just good design":

> Consistent keyboard shortcuts across all features, and the ability to jump to any part of the interface by keyboard

This is something I notice and appreciate about VS Code as a fully sighted person. Just like I appreciate slopped sidewalk cutouts when I'm walking with luggage.

A11y is a big commitment and cost, and of course not all a11y features benefit everyone equally, but it has a larger impact than most people realize.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#32

Post by Neurrone »

collectedparts wrote: post #14

Just FYI OP (assuming OP is the author of the post) there's no margin on your blog. Text goes all the way to the edges. As a related sidenote, I wonder how quickly ChatGPT replaces much of the customized tools here? ChatGPT is probably pretty proficient at being able to describe the contents of eg a screenshare, or a screenshot of a website.

Edit: typo

I didn't post this onto HN, so I only just found out about this thread.

Thanks for mentioning the margin issue, I've tried fixing it now. Let me know if its still an issue.

> I wonder how quickly ChatGPT replaces much of the customized tools here?

Probably not many. It is prone to Hallucinations, and the latency involved for getting a response means that I only use it when I have to.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#34

Post by Neurrone »

mbb70 wrote: post #31
thunderbong wrote: post #28

From the article - > Windows might not be trendy among developers, but it’s where accessibility works best. I don’t have to worry about whether I can get audio working reliably. The NVDA screen reader works on Windows and is free and open source, actively maintained, and designed by people who are screen reader users themselves. > That said, I’m not actually developing on Windows in the traditional sense. WSL2 gives…

His comments on VS Code reminds me of the quote "Good accessibility design is mostly just good design": > Consistent keyboard shortcuts across all features, and the ability to jump to any part of the interface by keyboard This is something I notice and appreciate about VS Code as a fully sighted person. Just like I appreciate slopped sidewalk cutouts when I'm walking with luggage. A11y is a big commitment and cost, a…

Yup, it does. I was an early adopter of VS Code. It has been extremely satisfying seeing the progress they've made with accessibility. I provide feedback on a semi-frequent basis. Nowadays its only to flag regressions.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#35

Post by Neurrone »

gizmo686 wrote: post #5

Some vaguely related research: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2594 If you compare different languages, the speed people tend to speak (measured in syllables per second) varies significantly. However, the number of possible syllables also varies significantly. Once you account for that, the speed of speaking in terms of information is fairly consistent across languages. I'm not aware of any specific res…

I was referring to how synthetic speech always talk in exactly the same way down to inflection and pauses whenever it encounters the same phrase, which isn't how people talk. So this helps a lot with comprehension. Structure of the content does help as well.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#36

Post by Neurrone »

Fokamul wrote: post #15

Big respect to you, I cannot imagine being functional without sight. Pretty interesting post. "I use my computer during natural pauses in the conversation or presentation." Casually dropping that everyone is speaking so slow. That you must use the time between sentences for something meaningful, pretty funny. :-)

> Casually dropping that everyone is speaking so slow. That you must use the time between sentences for something meaningful, pretty funny. :-)

Didn't mean it that way . But that is truly the only way that I can use the computer while in a meeting.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#37

Post by Neurrone »

ray__ wrote: post #2

This is really interesting. I wonder–would it be possible to listen to an audiobook or PDF at 800 wpm once one learns how to understand the screenreader "language"? Presumably the cognitive load would get heavy if the content were a stream of unstructured prose as opposed to code.

Yes, that is how I usually consume my content. Cognitive load is actually lower for unstructured prose compared to code, think about fiction for example. Code is much denser.

When I read to relax, it is for enjoyment, so I don't aim to read as fast as possible. This is why I still listen to human narrated audiobooks, since a good narrator adds to the experience.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#38

Post by Neurrone »

klabb3 wrote: post #30
markasoftware wrote: post #7

ok, so you can understand the words at 800wpm...can you really comprehend what's being said? When I listen to youtube videos at 2x speed I can usually pick apart all the words just fine but I often have to slow it down to properly process the meaning behind those words.

I think it’s about different modes of operation. If I’m skimming an academic text, it’s not that I’m reading faster, I’m just jumping between text to find interesting keywords and sentences. A way to pick out raisins from the cookie. When listening to a podcast or reading a book the pleasure is important, so I almost never speed up. If the pacing (or information density) is too low, I just don’t listen. On the contra…

Yes, exactly.

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#39

Post by Vinnl »

Neurrone wrote: post #33

Author here, surprised this somehow got onto HN since I only posted on Mastodon. Happy to answer any questions.

Great post. When you're reading a Mermaid diagram, do you just happen to have memorised that "dash dash greater than" means "arrow"? I assume the screen reader doesn't understand ASCII art.

And how painful is reading emails? HTML email is notoriously limited compared to HTML (and CSS) in the browser, but it's pretty hard to add structure to a plain text email too. How annoying is it when I do so using e.g. a "line" made out of repeated dashes?

Re: Software Development at 800 Words per Minute

#40

Post by Vinnl »

mtlynch wrote: post #24

I'm getting intense deja vu reading this. I remember a very similar article from 3-5 years ago. Even the title feels like I've seen it before. I thought this was a repost from that one but I remember the previous post had a photo of the author's desk with a keyboard, desktop, and no monitor. I tried searching algolia, but I can't find it.

It looks like it's not the article you were looking for, but there was also this similar article about one of the original authors of NVDA, who hits 900 WPM, also including an audio sample: https://www.9news.com.au/national/the-secret-language-only-b...
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