4 ms·

I've always thought it'd be nice to be able to code at the speed of thought - you can often envisage the code or classes that'll make up part of a solution, it'

I've always thought it'd be nice to be able to code at the speed of thought - you can often envisage the code or classes that'll make up part of a solution, it's just so slow filtering that through your fingers and the keyboard; if the neural interface 'thing' could be solved that'd be a winner I think, both for coding and manipulating the 'UI'. It seems within the bounds of possibility to me (from having no experience in the field ;), if patterns could be predictably matched in real-time or better time than it takes to whack the keyboard or move the mouse (can EEG or FMRI make predictable sort of patterns like that?).

snakeboy 8y ago
Unfortunately commercial-grade non-invasive EEG headsets can only reliably respond to things like intense emotional changes and the difference between sleep/awake state, but not much more than that. Awhile ago I had some moderate success classifying the difference between a subject watching an emotional short film vs. stand-up comedy. Mostly they are effective at picking up background noise and muscular movement and not much else. This is based on my experience with the Muse [1] headset, which has 4 electrodes plus a reference electrode. I know there are similar devices with around a dozen or so electrodes, but I can't imagine they're a significant improvement. So I think we're still a long way off from what you're describing :( [1] http://www.choosemuse.com http://www.choosemuse.com
Retra 8y ago
I can't envision code or classes hardly at all. Most of my thoughts are so nebulous it takes my full concentration just to write them down. I doubt we're going to make much progress there anytime soon.
zeth___ 8y ago
>I've always thought it'd be nice to be able to code at the speed of thought - you can often envisage the code or classes that'll make up part of a solution, In my experience that 'solution' isn't a solution but rather a poorly guessed attempt at one single part of it. Whenever I've thought I have the architecture of a class all figured out there is one corner case that destroys all the lovely logic and you either start from scratch on yet another brittle monolith, or accept that you are essentially writing spaghetti code. At that point documentation that explains what does what and why is the only way to 'solve' the issue of coding.

snakeboy 8y ago

Unfortunately commercial-grade non-invasive EEG headsets can only reliably respond to things like intense emotional changes and the difference between sleep/awake state, but not much more than that. Awhile ago I had some moderate success classifying the difference between a subject watching an emotional short film vs. stand-up comedy. Mostly they are effective at picking up background noise and muscular movement and not much else. This is based on my experience with the Muse [1] headset, which has 4 electrodes plus a reference electrode. I know there are similar devices with around a dozen or so electrodes, but I can't imagine they're a significant improvement. So I think we're still a long way off from what you're describing :( [1] http://www.choosemuse.com http://www.choosemuse.com

Retra 8y ago

I can't envision code or classes hardly at all. Most of my thoughts are so nebulous it takes my full concentration just to write them down. I doubt we're going to make much progress there anytime soon.

zeth___ 8y ago

>I've always thought it'd be nice to be able to code at the speed of thought - you can often envisage the code or classes that'll make up part of a solution, In my experience that 'solution' isn't a solution but rather a poorly guessed attempt at one single part of it. Whenever I've thought I have the architecture of a class all figured out there is one corner case that destroys all the lovely logic and you either start from scratch on yet another brittle monolith, or accept that you are essentially writing spaghetti code. At that point documentation that explains what does what and why is the only way to 'solve' the issue of coding.