this is great , even that seems complicated and hard to get used to ... it's a fantastic option when nothing else works.
Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard
71–80 of 137 posts
Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard
#72I guess it depends on the type of software you're working on, but input speed has never been close to being the bottleneck with coding for me... Most of the time I'm trying to figure out what to do or how to implement an algorithm. Rarely do I get those mad-scientist frenzies where I'm typing away frantically trying to get all the words down as they come into my mind in a flash of inspiration.
It's one thing to not be able to write code as fast as you can type. It's another to use a speech to text input method that's designed for long-form prose and try to use it to code. Can you imagine the frustration of trying to enter longCamelCaseVariableNames without a special macro to do so? I don't know the usual commands in Dragon, but I imagine it would be something like: "long delete space uppercase camel delete space uppercase case delete space upper case variable delete space uppercase names", possibly with a few false starts and undos in there as it interprets some of your words as commands rather than code.
To experience something like it, try using your phone keyboard, with word prediction on, to write code. It will be slow, and frustrating, and have a lot of false starts.
There's a big difference between "not the fastest way to enter text" and "so slow it's unusable", and the impression I get is that without extensive macros like this, most speech to text systems are so slow as to be unusable for writing code.
Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard
#73A few months ago I had an RSI problem so bad - able to type only a minute at a time, even sitting with hands on keyboard hurt - that I started down this route. This video was, literally, a life-altering motivator for me, and I was quite obsessed with it. Ironically, after seeing a physical therapist - which, let me tell you , you should do at the first sign of pain, because while they can't help some people I persona…
Having suffered with RSI for years (before the advent of current-gen speech recognition, so it really sucked), I heartily echo this advice:
which, let me tell you, you should do at the first sign of pain
Do that. REALLY REALLY do that.
Also, this book is superb:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Its-Carpal-Tunnel-Syndrome-Professio...
Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice people also judge those who try to shame people (not all of whom are native speakers of English) into silence on health-related forum threads by picking on irrelevancies.
Yes, let's ignore non-native English speakers' mistakes. That way, they will never learn, and we can continue to subjugate them, along with those for whom English is a first language, but cannot speak it correctly, probably because they were never taught that "should have" is not spelt "should of" and that their "they're"s aren't quite there.
"Spelt", in my dialect, is incorrectly spelled, and is a noun referring to a variety of wheat.
Now, was the "correction" I just offered you effective and useful, or was it merely irrelevant, provincial, chauvinistic, uninvited, uninviting, and just plain rude?
(A note to downthread grammar trolls: I just used an Oxford comma, boldly, without apology. Have fun.)
Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard
#75What I think is interesting is that a lot can be done to make typing easier and more human when you can type like you speak (and think). For example: we say/think for each item in list but in a lot of languages you need to type something like foreach(item in list) { A step further: we say/think let a be the substring of b from 1 to the end we need to type a = b.substring(1) Ofcourse the last example is much shorter a…
I disagree. You could argue that a musician probably thinks "I have to play a D# for one and a half beats" as well. Or they can draw a dotted quarter on the sheet. We have symbolic languages for a reason - they are, once learnt, superior. If anything code needs to move further away from spoken language, more in the direction of APL and its descendants. A skilled musician likely doesn't engage the speech centres of th…
"they see a note on the sheet and translate it to motion"
Indeed. I think notes are more 'human' than most programming languages. If the music goes up, the notes go up. If the notes are short they look short (and more dense).
But I agree that typing "let a be the subtring of b from 1 to the end" is no fun. So I'm glad we have symbolic languages. But I think they could be made more 'human'.
Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard
#76I guess it depends on the type of software you're working on, but input speed has never been close to being the bottleneck with coding for me... Most of the time I'm trying to figure out what to do or how to implement an algorithm. Rarely do I get those mad-scientist frenzies where I'm typing away frantically trying to get all the words down as they come into my mind in a flash of inspiration.
People say the same thing about learning a good text editor. Personally I find that while I spend most of my time thinking, when it comes time to enter or edit code it helps a lot if I can do it as quickly as possible. That way I stay in flow instead of getting bored and clicking over to HN.
Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard
#77A few months ago I had an RSI problem so bad - able to type only a minute at a time, even sitting with hands on keyboard hurt - that I started down this route. This video was, literally, a life-altering motivator for me, and I was quite obsessed with it. Ironically, after seeing a physical therapist - which, let me tell you , you should do at the first sign of pain, because while they can't help some people I persona…
As someone with a disability (quadriplegic), who types/codes with one finger, I find it appalling that Nuance, Apple and Google haven't opened up their speech recognition systems through a rudimentary API that would allow innovation that would _directly_ help the lives of me and many other disabled people whether it's RSI or worse.
It was a shock to me to discover that the livelihood and happiness of so many people depends on a dubiously-reliable unofficial API that was hacked into Dragon years ago and that has been lovingly preserved ever since, just below the radar. It feels like being critically dependent on Windows 95.
Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard
#78Interesting talk. Naturally it made me think about steps I should take to prevent any kind of RSI. Should I be seriously concerned if I type for about 4-5 hours on average per day? How can I prevent it?
Anecdotal: I was getting soreness in my finger joints, and about that time went to a presentation talking about repetitive motion causing arthritis for a lot of typists. It was pretty grisly. Padding in finger joints wears down, and little chips of bone start breaking off, causing pain from bone chips and realignment of fingers to fit the new bone faces. Padding restores with rest, so it helps a lot to catch it early.
I bought a couple nice mechanical keyboards with Cherry switches (red and brown). I type very lightly on them, seldom bottoming out the keys. Finger troubles went away.
Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard
#79Whenever I see posts about voice controlling your computer, I spontaneously think "thank the heavens I don't have to share an office with you." I realize some people work alone, at home or in a sound proof office, but every work environment I've worked in has had a shared acoustic space. These voice control schemes almost always end up as a cool gimmick, and rarely as a productivity boosting solution.
Because you're thinking about it wrong. Together with HUD, it will be a godsend for anybody who needs to have hands free and yet work with a computer. And if the microphone is close enough your mouth, you won't have to talk loudly to it. For example, I could go to tend garden and yet think about some problem, take notes, even code. Or check email, browse internet. I can work on hardware thing and have schematics or s…
None of those usecases seem like something I would find useful, and talking with my mouth full doesn't seem convenient, I'm guessing your recognition ratio would go way down.
Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard
#80I wonder if we should also be voice coding in a language drastically different then for example, C++? Maybe a language more syntactically friendly for voice?
I've been wondering if lisp languages would be a good fit for this, as they have a minimum of syntax.