Voice Recognition for a Techie?

kaybee asks: "I am a long-time developer, sysadmin, and general computer junkie (for fun and for work) who needs to seriously curb the usage of his hands. I'm curious as to the current voice recognition options, preferably usable on Linux and Windows. I prefer the command-line to a GUI, I prefer Vim to anything else, and I still read my email with Pine. I'd like to hear options for sending email via voice, which I hope is easy, and I'd love to hear of any solutions that allow effective coding via voice, which seems much more difficult."

Comments

Speaking WPM != Chars Per Minute

[FlameboyC11]

The main issue I see with coding by voice is that each character needs to be said by a word. We only have 26 single sounds we can make (at least us english speakers) and so pretty much everything besides the basic sounds have to be the result of multiple letters strung together. Here's some math:

Lets say you type at about 40wpm, or about 160characters per minute (this is a low estimate of 4 chars per word), or about 2.5 characters per second.
To be as productive speaking, you'd probabily have to speak about the same number of words per second as you type characters, or 2.5 words. That's really fast.

Sorry bub, doesn't look speech is a very good alternative. Hell, Brain Implants on the other hand...

Re:Speaking WPM != Chars Per Minute

[jonabbey]

The best thing to do is take a rest on your hands, and get professional help. Voice recognition for coding sucks.. believe me. You're better off doing something else altogether if it comes to that.

Coding is very precise work, and voice recognition just isn't good at that. If you try coding with your voice, you'll soon find that your voice hurts, and you've been immensely frustrated at the whole experience.

Have you had medical attention to your hands?