How One Programmer Is Coding Faster By Voice Than Keyboard

mikejuk writes "Is it possible that we have been wasting our time typing programs. Could voice recognition, with a little help from an invented spoken language, be the solution we didn't know we needed? About two years ago Tavis Rudd, developed a bad case of RSI caused by typing lots of code using Emacs. It was so severe that he couldn't code. As he puts it: 'Desperate, I tried voice recognition'. The Dragon Naturally Speaking system used by Rudd supported standard language quite well, but it wasn't adapted to program editing commands. The solution was to use a Python speech extension, DragonFly, to program custom commands. OK, so far so good, but ... the commands weren't quite what you might have expected. Instead of English words for commands he used short vocalizations — you have to hear it to believe it. Now programming sounds like a conversation with R2D2. The advantage is that it is faster and the recognition is easier — it also sounds very cool and very techie. it is claimed that the system is faster than typing. So much so that it is still in use after the RSI cleared up."

Re:Try that with LISP

[Anonymous Coward]

The first demo in the talk is editing lisp.

Re:You can't win..

[Seumas]

If you watch the video, he discusses that. He does about 40-60% of his coding with this system and he does keep voice-strain in mind (in fact, he was sucking on a hard candy during the demonstration to keep his voice from drying out). You may not do 100% of your work in it, but just imagine if you could cut the amount of typing you do down to about half of normal? Suddenly, you're spreading some of the load to your voice, keeping either from being excessively stressed.

autocomplete as done in Borland C++ ..

[dgharmon]

> I'd have a hard time believing that this could be faster than someone using something like autocomplete as done in .NET ..

autocomplete was around long before .NET as was context-sensitive-help before Microsoft renamed it Intellisense ..

Re:The secret is hot sauce

[Anonymous Coward]

Capsaicin is used for pain relief in various cases, applied topically. Typically it involves putting some other short term, local anestetic on the area, then putting really high strength capsaicin paste on the area. It overloads the nerves, so after it is removed, perception of pain is reduced for quite a while later. Although I would be careful about using it for RSI. While capsaicin can reduce very specific kinds of inflammation that are caused due to response of nerves, if that isn't relevant to your situation, you might just be treating the symptom. You could end up continuing to damage things, just not feel it while it happens.