4 ms·

Saqib from Microsoft is blind and demoed using Visual Studio at Build this year https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEe

Saqib from Microsoft is blind and demoed using Visual Studio at Build this year https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0

melling 9y ago
At 2:22 he has to press F5 to build. Personally, I would like to say "Build", "Run", "Next Error", "insert line below", "rename function foo to bar", "Reformat file", "Reformat method", etc in my editor. Wouldn't we all benefit by having an editor that had some voice commands?
- simias 9y ago
  I hope a blind person will be able to answer you but I can't really imagine how voice command would be more efficient than a simple keyboard shortcut. Admittedly the F keys are not the easiest to access though, I prefer emacs-style chording.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    I'm not blind, but personally I would find voice commands to be quite useful, since I can speak much faster than I can type. Keyboard shortcuts are similarly efficient, but they are somewhat hard to memorize when you only infrequently use them. Unfortunately, the state-of-the-art in speech recognition is not quite there yet, especially when you want to use arbitrary identifiers like strncmp that can't be found in any pronunciation dictionary.
    - vram22 9y ago
      >personally I would find voice commands to be quite useful, since I can speak much faster than I can type. Interesting. Wouldn't speech recognition be marginally to somewhat slower in response, than response to keyboard commands, though? More so, considering that a lot of processing has to be done to recognize speech, not to mention the time to receive the audio input via the mic, do analog-to-digital conversion (assuming that is needed, not sure these days), etc.
      - melling 9y ago
        What's a lot of processing? Speech recognition can be done on a phone. Are you sitting with your hands on your keyboard at all times while programming? Do you need to move the cursor to a variable, function, etc to refactor? You are assuming that we can only say commands that are bound to a key? "Set breakpoint on line 20" -- You had to reach for the mouse in your world?
        simias 9y ago
        I admit that I'm pretty mouse-adverse but I wouldn't have to use the mouse for any of that. Actually I mostly only use the mouse to browse the web. But anyway, that's not really important, I agree that good "intelligent" speech recognition would be very useful for uncommon tasks. But building a project, searching and replacing are tasks that are so common that I can't imagine having to reach for the mouse to do them, much less pronounce them out loud. And imagine the mess if you're coding in an open space and everybody chitchats with their computers...
        melling 9y ago
        If you can replace a long variable or function name more quickly than someone can say "rename aLongFunctionName to anotherLongFunctionName then build" then someone didn't implement the voice recognition properly. Yeah, someone always mentions the noise coding in a group. Someone else usually brings up subvocal speech, or something else, but I'll leave that for you to imagine. We need a few more people to imagine what is possible rather than rehash why something can't be done.
        vram22 9y ago
        >What's a lot of processing? Speech recognition can be done on a phone. AFAIK speech recognition is non-trivial processing (though not an expert on it at all). Just a few points: I've read somewhat recently that the reason why Google's speech recognition is good is because it does a lot of the processing on their servers, also because it has a huge volume of data to work with (from worldwide users). All I know is that there are various factors at play (even though I'm aware phones are very powerful nowadays). It was an exploratory question, not meant to suggest that it cannot be done or will necessarily be too slow. And I did say "marginally to somewhat", etc. >Are you sitting with your hands on your keyboard at all times while programming? Obviously not. As a programmer, I'm well aware that there is a lot of think time involved. >Do you need to move the cursor to a variable, function, etc to refactor? You are assuming that we can only say commands that are bound to a key? "Set breakpoint on line 20" -- You had to reach for the mouse in your world? Nope, no assumptions. It was an open-ended question.
  - melling 9y ago
    Ok, imagine that you're sitting in front of a tablet without a keyboard. That's an easy use case. Yes, one can be quite fast if they're sitting with their fingers resting on the keyboard. I wouldn't want to take that away. However, I'm often sitting back reviewing what I wrote, and I'd certainly like the option of have my computer assist via voice without needing to reach for the keyboard.
    - vram22 9y ago
      Yes, that's a good use case. I've often thought it would be useful if I could do some light work (reading, maybe some form of more active work too), when I am not at my PC or laptop - though wouldn't want to do it all the time, just have the option and use it sometimes.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
j_s 9y ago
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347908

Saqib from Microsoft is blind and demoed using Visual Studio at Build this year https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iWXebEeGwn0

melling 9y ago

At 2:22 he has to press F5 to build. Personally, I would like to say "Build", "Run", "Next Error", "insert line below", "rename function foo to bar", "Reformat file", "Reformat method", etc in my editor. Wouldn't we all benefit by having an editor that had some voice commands?

simias 9y ago
I hope a blind person will be able to answer you but I can't really imagine how voice command would be more efficient than a simple keyboard shortcut. Admittedly the F keys are not the easiest to access though, I prefer emacs-style chording.
- yorwba 9y ago
  I'm not blind, but personally I would find voice commands to be quite useful, since I can speak much faster than I can type. Keyboard shortcuts are similarly efficient, but they are somewhat hard to memorize when you only infrequently use them. Unfortunately, the state-of-the-art in speech recognition is not quite there yet, especially when you want to use arbitrary identifiers like strncmp that can't be found in any pronunciation dictionary.
  - vram22 9y ago
    >personally I would find voice commands to be quite useful, since I can speak much faster than I can type. Interesting. Wouldn't speech recognition be marginally to somewhat slower in response, than response to keyboard commands, though? More so, considering that a lot of processing has to be done to recognize speech, not to mention the time to receive the audio input via the mic, do analog-to-digital conversion (assuming that is needed, not sure these days), etc.
    - melling 9y ago
      What's a lot of processing? Speech recognition can be done on a phone. Are you sitting with your hands on your keyboard at all times while programming? Do you need to move the cursor to a variable, function, etc to refactor? You are assuming that we can only say commands that are bound to a key? "Set breakpoint on line 20" -- You had to reach for the mouse in your world?
      - simias 9y ago
        I admit that I'm pretty mouse-adverse but I wouldn't have to use the mouse for any of that. Actually I mostly only use the mouse to browse the web. But anyway, that's not really important, I agree that good "intelligent" speech recognition would be very useful for uncommon tasks. But building a project, searching and replacing are tasks that are so common that I can't imagine having to reach for the mouse to do them, much less pronounce them out loud. And imagine the mess if you're coding in an open space and everybody chitchats with their computers...
        melling 9y ago
        If you can replace a long variable or function name more quickly than someone can say "rename aLongFunctionName to anotherLongFunctionName then build" then someone didn't implement the voice recognition properly. Yeah, someone always mentions the noise coding in a group. Someone else usually brings up subvocal speech, or something else, but I'll leave that for you to imagine. We need a few more people to imagine what is possible rather than rehash why something can't be done.
      - vram22 9y ago
        >What's a lot of processing? Speech recognition can be done on a phone. AFAIK speech recognition is non-trivial processing (though not an expert on it at all). Just a few points: I've read somewhat recently that the reason why Google's speech recognition is good is because it does a lot of the processing on their servers, also because it has a huge volume of data to work with (from worldwide users). All I know is that there are various factors at play (even though I'm aware phones are very powerful nowadays). It was an exploratory question, not meant to suggest that it cannot be done or will necessarily be too slow. And I did say "marginally to somewhat", etc. >Are you sitting with your hands on your keyboard at all times while programming? Obviously not. As a programmer, I'm well aware that there is a lot of think time involved. >Do you need to move the cursor to a variable, function, etc to refactor? You are assuming that we can only say commands that are bound to a key? "Set breakpoint on line 20" -- You had to reach for the mouse in your world? Nope, no assumptions. It was an open-ended question.
- melling 9y ago
  Ok, imagine that you're sitting in front of a tablet without a keyboard. That's an easy use case. Yes, one can be quite fast if they're sitting with their fingers resting on the keyboard. I wouldn't want to take that away. However, I'm often sitting back reviewing what I wrote, and I'd certainly like the option of have my computer assist via voice without needing to reach for the keyboard.
  - vram22 9y ago
    Yes, that's a good use case. I've often thought it would be useful if I could do some light work (reading, maybe some form of more active work too), when I am not at my PC or laptop - though wouldn't want to do it all the time, just have the option and use it sometimes.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

j_s 9y ago

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14347908