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Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

ergoemacs.org

81–90 of 137 posts

Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

#81

"Emacs pinkie" is a non-issue if you use a keyboard with thumb clusters, e.g a Maltron or a Kinesis model. Investing in a good keyboard is just as crucial as investing in a good chair, especially if you make a living by coding. The time that you spend compensating for a bad input device by hacking your own workarounds can be more costly then spending money on a proper solution. Once you are an adequate touch typist t…

Do those keyboards really make a difference? I'd be happy to try them and give it a fair chance, but I'm not okay with a 455 pounds gamble.

The pedals look like a good idea (I'm an emacs user)... but they do seem pretty goofy.

Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

#82

"Emacs pinkie" is a non-issue if you use a keyboard with thumb clusters, e.g a Maltron or a Kinesis model. Investing in a good keyboard is just as crucial as investing in a good chair, especially if you make a living by coding. The time that you spend compensating for a bad input device by hacking your own workarounds can be more costly then spending money on a proper solution. Once you are an adequate touch typist t…

Do those keyboards really make a difference? I'd be happy to try them and give it a fair chance, but I'm not okay with a 455 pounds gamble. The pedals look like a good idea (I'm an emacs user)... but they do seem pretty goofy.

I had VERY bad RSI and had tried everything under the sun. Moving the the Kinesis stopped it dead. No more typing pain. Warning: it does take a bit to get used to.

Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

#83
In the video he mentions that he wish he had known about the previous talk. Looked it up - http://pyvideo.org/video/1706/plover-thought-to-text-at-240-.... Pretty interesting. They are applying court reporter techniques to coding, cutting down on the keystrokes immensely.

Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

[deleted]

Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

#85

A 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.

Here's some recent (very promising) work on open source dictation: http://grasch.net/node/23

Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

#86
post #56
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personal anecdote: I correlated my RSI directly to drinking coffee (tea is okay). I notice when I'm caffeinated that my posture is very different and I hold postures (e.g. holding down the shift key) for much longer. If RSI starts to blight you, try substituting your morning coffee for tea or water. For me, a break program just increased the stress levels of 'wanting to get something done', which I think is the root…

> try substituting your morning coffee for tea or water. Syntax [edit:] tip: "try substituting tea or water for your morning coffee" or "try replacing your morning coffee with tea or water" EDIT: For the downvoters: Fairly or unfairly, in the non-tech world people judge you by your choice and arrangement of words. (Compilers do much the same thing, of course.)

For the life of me, I can't understand what you found wrong with that use of "substituting". It's correct. It's clear. It's perhaps less colloquial, but it's hardly inscrutable tech jargon.

Surely there are better targets for your editor's urges...

Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

#87

"Emacs pinkie" is a non-issue if you use a keyboard with thumb clusters, e.g a Maltron or a Kinesis model. Investing in a good keyboard is just as crucial as investing in a good chair, especially if you make a living by coding. The time that you spend compensating for a bad input device by hacking your own workarounds can be more costly then spending money on a proper solution. Once you are an adequate touch typist t…

It's similarly much less an issue when you map your keys correctly. Control goes to the left of "A", meta below "/". Much less pinky travel. Sun got this right way back in the 80's with the Type 3 keyboard (vi users prefer its placement of ESC too).

Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

#88
post #86
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> try substituting your morning coffee for tea or water. Syntax [edit:] tip: "try substituting tea or water for your morning coffee" or "try replacing your morning coffee with tea or water" EDIT: For the downvoters: Fairly or unfairly, in the non-tech world people judge you by your choice and arrangement of words. (Compilers do much the same thing, of course.)

For the life of me, I can't understand what you found wrong with that use of "substituting". It's correct. It's clear. It's perhaps less colloquial, but it's hardly inscrutable tech jargon. Surely there are better targets for your editor's urges...

> For the life of me, I can't understand what you found wrong with that use of "substituting". It's correct. It's clear. It's perhaps less colloquial, but it's hardly inscrutable tech jargon.

It's an issue of standard word meaning, not tech jargon. In the context of what 'muxxa appeared to be saying, his (or her?) use of substituting was exactly backwards.

What 'muxxa said was that caffeine seemed to exacerbate his RSI, and that substituting his morning coffee for tea or water helped. But the conventional use of the verb to substitute is to put or use in the place of another [1].

According to that conventional usage, therefore, 'muxxa was recommending putting his morning coffee in the place of tea or water. That seems to be exactly the opposite of what he was saying in the rest of the paragraph about the adverse effect of caffeine on his RSI.

[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/substitute

Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

#89
post #72

I 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…

...Did you watch the video?

Re: Using Voice to Code Faster than Keyboard

#90
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the day the average programmer gets an office, well... I don't even get a cube where I work

Mentioned this on HN previously but as a nearly 40 year old developer who has been developing professionally for nearly 20 years -- it used to be the norm for programmers to get their own offices, even just the regular joe programmers... Places really tight for space might put two guys in a very spacious shared corner office... A few years into my career the idea of cubicles caught on and quickly became the norm, and…

The fundamental issue is a mismatch between crafting and coordinating roles.

When I'm in a coordination role, open concept is better because I can hear everything in the office and route information accordingly.

When I'm in a crafting role, open concept is death to productivity.

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