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Voice Recognition and Programming?

Posted by Cliff on from the if-openparen-t-closeparen-open-bracket... dept.

dsaxena asks: "I'm suffering from repetitive-stress injuries to my wrists/foreamrs from typing too much. Luckilly it hasn't progressed into carpal tunnel syndrome yet, but it will if I'm not careful about it. I've been looking at alternative input methods and was wondering how many people have tried using speech recognition for programming? I've seen demos of speech recongition software (Dragon and ViaVoice), but it's awlays been in the context of writing letters or reports. Would it work as an efficient input method when trying to code in C?"

"It's all in the grammar."

Voice recognition still has a ways to mature before it is robust enough for coding since a lot of programming involves the use of symbols, not words. Sure, you can assign "names" to these symbols and start speaking away, but it would be cleaner if voice recognition engines are made aware of the syntax of specific languages and would do this for you (many modern editors have this feature). Is voice recognition moving in this direction, or do coders have a while to wait before they can start using their keyboards as paperweights?

1 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Been there, done that, gave up by mouseman · · Score: 4
    When I was finishing up grad school, I had to deal with RSI. I tried physical therapy, funky keyboards, dvorak, and, yes, dictation software. I wrote much of my dissertation using dragon dictate, and did some programming with it as well. I had voice macros for common symbols, keywords and emacs commands.

    Did it work? Yeah, sort of. For entering normal text, dictation software has gotten to the point that it is definitely usable -- by someone who absolutely can't get by without it (95% accuracy seems really good until you realize it's getting one in 20 words wrong. and your spellchecker won't be any help). But editing programs is harder -- you spend a lot of time making changes to existing text, which is hard to do by voice. After leaving grad school, I gave NaturallySpeaking(TM) a try. I found it better in some ways, worse in others. I think it is far worse for programming than dragon dictate. at least the version i used was (maybe it's been improved), because you could only dictate into a dedicated window, and there was no support for voice macros (IIRC).

    So where am I now? Pain-free most of the time. I have flare-ups from time to time and fully accept that this is a lifetime condition. I still use dvorak; it *feels* better, but that's about all I can say. Since leaving grad school, I spend less time in front of a keyboard, by virtue of spending more time in meetings. :-( That, plus (somewhat) better habits has made a world of difference. I think of RSI as a physical symptom of a psychological condition: compulsiveness. A normal, healthy person does not keep doing something that causes pain. I think the key to dealing with RSI (note: not recovering from -- it's too late for that) is to listen to your body and stop doing things that cause pain. Dictation software might work as a stopgap, but if you don't make a fundamental change in your habits, you'll just end up with a strained voice in addition to your strained wrists.

    good luck!