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Voice Recognition for a Techie?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the are-we-there-yet dept.

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."

5 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. Sysadmining by voice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No, computer, I said, "awk single quote left curly print dollar one right curly single quote file dot txt pipe sort pipe uniq dash see greater than a dot out"

    shudder

    1. Re:Sysadmining by voice by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Funny
      > No, computer, I said, "awk single quote left curly print dollar one right curly single quote file dot txt pipe sort pipe uniq dash see greater than a dot out"


      Oh yeah?


      { } . ! /
      & ; ^ # -
      < > @ \
      { } _ SYSTEM HALTED


      Left titty, right titty, dot bang slash.
      Ampersand semicolon, caret pound dash.
      Less than greater than, at back slash,
      left titty, right titty, under score crash.


      * # ! ! (
      ~ & | )
      ' " . . DEL
      # ^G ! ! working... done.


      Star pound bang bang, open-paren.
      Tilde and pipe, close-paren.
      One quote, two quote, dot dot delete,
      pound bell, bang bang, process complete.


      - Doktor Dynasoar posting some ASCII poetry, and the thread also includes the immortal Hatless Atlas, which I'm not even going to fantasize about getting past the filters.


  2. Hand use by Doomstalk · · Score: 5, Funny

    [...]who needs to seriously curb the usage of his hands.

    Lest they... *ahem* wander.

  3. Speaking WPM != Chars Per Minute by FlameboyC11 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  4. Save your hands -- while you can by Lars512 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Seriously, if you're suffering hand or arm pain, you should think about the way you're doing things now. Speech recognition is unlikely to replace your current coding practices, although it might help with writing reports.

    Instead, try using the keyboard break feature in gnome. To start with, have it kick you off your computer every 30 mins for a 3 min break, and don't allow yourself to postpone breaks. Get some equivalent software for windows too. Use your 3 min breaks to walk around and stretch. Within a week, you won't be a lot less productive, but your arms will feel a lot better. Then you can maybe up it to 40 mins. In the short term, a course of anti-inflams might help (ask your doctor).

    Also, don't come home in the evening and play games on your computer, or do more work. Your arms probably can't take it. Equivalently, inform your employer of your condition and subsequent inability to work reckless overtime hours.

    These two things should get you started for long-term sustainable maintenance of your arms.