7 ms·

Drop the "Hey Github" nonsense (hopefully it's only for illustration purposes anyways) and … this will be a generational paradigm change in how to write code… i

by singularity2001 4y ago

Drop the "Hey Github" nonsense (hopefully it's only for illustration purposes anyways) and … this will be a generational paradigm change in how to write code… if it works. The hard part will be editing code with your voice too. Like "no, I meant …" etc. VERY PROMISING, in any case you can just manually fill the gaps with the keyboard!

wiseowise 4y ago
> this will be a generational paradigm change in how to write code… if it works Why?
- mkmk3 4y ago
  I could see it maybe being important once github codepilot is embedded in it? You tell it roughly what you want and then adapt by hand. But it is kinda funny seeing parent make such claims so early
  - singularity2001 4y ago
    > once github codepilot is embedded That's exactly the point of the demo, no?
    - mkmk3 4y ago
      Yup my bad for jumping to conclusions. This certainly seems worthwhile exploring
- wokwokwok 4y ago
  How can it not be a paradigm change when it changes the way people write code from “write by hand” to “generated by ai with natural language”? The problem with speech to code has always been that precise syntax is hard, but AI codegen solves that. So, no, it might not take off, but I feel like if it does, then it means ai-codegen will become the dominant way code is crafted. That would be paradigm shifting. It’s inconceivable that it wouldn’t be.
  - creata 4y ago
    > generated by ai with natural language I don't want to disparage their work, because it's really impressive, but "fill null values of column Fare with average column values" is closer to AppleScript than it is to natural language.
    - wokwokwok 4y ago
      It doesn’t matter. It solves the issue of trying to speak obscure code syntax like “close parenthesis semicolon newline”. That’s enough to lower the barrier to entry for many people; I don’t know how good it is practically but it’s disingenuous to suggest it’s not offering a novel solution to an old problem.
      - xigoi 4y ago
        If you prefer that, why not just use a language like AppleScript or Inform 7?
  - wiseowise 4y ago
    > …because speaking is easier than writing, obviously? Easier isn’t always better.
  - randomdata 4y ago
    > The problem with speech to code has always been that precise syntax is hard The biggest problem is that talking sucks. You presumably can handle voice input as well as is possible, yet here we are typing to you anyway, and for good reason. Even if the natural language part is nailed, you may as well type in that natural language. I imagine it will bring some quality of life improvements to those with certain disabilities, but I don't see why the typical developer would want to go in that direction.
- jpalomaki 4y ago
  The example puts it quite well. You kind of know what you want to achieve, step by step, but are not so comfortable with your tools. Usually this kind of exploratory work involves a lot of Googling and copy-pasting snippets from Stackoverflow without putting too much time in trying to deeply understand things. If you get out what you want - great, if not, back to Google.
creata 4y ago
It seems wonderful for people who can't as easily use a keyboard, but for most people, this doesn't seem any easier than using a keyboard. Am I missing something?
- jonathanstrange 4y ago
  If voice dictation was a killer feature, everybody would use it all the time for ordinary texts. But for some reason only few (lawyers? doctors?) use it.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    I believe that's mostly because it doesn't work reliably. Doctors, lawyers, architects etc have a somewhat limited professional vocabulary and often say the same things, so voice recognition works pretty well for them. But when you write a random message, you have a much broader range of topics, and dictation that fails quickly makes the whole thing change from an improvement to an ordeal. "No, not 'or deal'. delete word. delete word. delete word. O-R-D-E-A-L. Yes, that's it. No, don't write that, sigh".
- TheUndead96 4y ago
  https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52094111 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52094111
- Toutouxc 4y ago
  I use a Czech keyboard layout on my Mac, because Czech has some letters that don't exist on a US keyboard, and I don't like switching between layouts. So basically all "programming" characters (braces, brackets, parentheses, apostrophes, quotation marks, pipes, colons) are behind modifiers. I would totally enjoy being able to tell my IDE to "call foo with bar and string hello there end string with a block of gee times two" or something, instead of: foo(:bar, "Hello there") { |gee| gee * 2 } Just that, not having to think about typing different symbols would be a serious quality of life feature for me.
  - 4y ago
chrisandchris 4y ago
If it works equally good like Apple Siri or Google Hey (or whatever its's called), then it will be ... totally useless? I can't imagine that they bring a better product than two of the richest companies in the world even can't figure out (perfectly). And if I need to read and adjust all my code for typos, I can just write it myself. Because in my experience it is very often like "Call Peter" -> "Today it's sunny in NY".
- insanitybit 4y ago
  > I can't imagine that they bring a better product than two of the richest companies in the world even can't figure out Are either of those companies investing particularly heavily into voice agents? Certainly neither of them has anywhere near the kind of power of something like Copilot. Also, a general agent is way different from one that's specific to writing code.
- isthisthingon99 4y ago
  Somehow Google has gotten worse in the last couple of years.
- smcleod 4y ago
  To be fair Siri was really good before iOS15 on the phone - very rarely got a word wrong then I don't know what they changed but it went belly up for me and many other people have said the same. On macOS it still seems pretty good - I have carpal tunnel syndrome and by Thursday or Friday most weeks I end up using Siri to dictate not code but a lot of conversations in Slack, pull requests, iMessage, etc. In fact, I wrote this reply with Siri right now.
  - adwww 4y ago
    I don't know what version number, but when it was new I could depend on it to do things like sending SMS while driving, changing the navigation, etc. Now it's barely worth attempting, because it gets it wrong more than it gets it right.
    - 4y ago
stackbutterflow 4y ago
Works only in remote. Used in the office that'd be madness.
tgv 4y ago
Generational? Idk. I work for a company that regularly sends out surveys, and there are several tools to integrate voice into it. Willingness to speak instead of type is quite low across respondents (which is a representative population sample). It looks as if speaking to a machine does not hold the same appeal as speaking to a human (something that can also be seen in telephone queue screener questions).
- pflenker 4y ago
  This is not marketed as an alternative input mechanism for people who have otherwise no difficulty typing code. It's an input mechanism for people whose abilities to type are limited.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    Yes, but this answers to the grandparent, not the parent. This means it's an assistive technology, but hardly "a generational paradigm change in how to write code".
- Semaphor 4y ago
  I hate talking to machines. Sometimes it’s the best option (I love using a voice assistant in the kitchen), but almost always I’d have a full keyboard as an interface instead. If machines were amazing at Speech-to-Text, okay, sure. But while the capabilities are impressive, they still kinda suck at it.
  - invalidusernam3 4y ago
    The only voice control anything I use is to create reminders on my iPhone, and the only reason I use that is because the default reminders app's UX is really bad that it's quicker to use the voice commands. I don't see how text to code would be faster than typing. And even if it is, typing speed is not really a limiting factor in the speed at which I can produce code.
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    The first amazing result would not be for you to program with this, but for somebody with a phone to be able to automate a few small tasks with just the voice.
imron 4y ago
> The hard part will be editing code with your voice too The hard part will be open plan offices. It’s bad enough that so many meetings are now zoom/teams and proximity to coworkers means you end up hearing their side of their meetings. Just wait until all the devs are coding this way too.
- mlajtos 4y ago
  Crazy idea – whisper to use your computer. Might produce some quality ASMR in open plan office.
- willsmith72 4y ago
  I dunno, we already have stuff like Krisp AI background voice cancellation. I don't think it's far away to completely cancel background talking out. This is already huge for things like pair programming while one person's in the office, one is at home. If you have noise cancelling headphones for the person in the office too (with a bit of white noise), you can have a pretty perfect call in a noisy room. (not sponsored) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILfTrUreS00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILfTrUreS00
  - imron 4y ago
    I'm not bothered by my call quality, which as you noticed is fine, I'm bothered by all the other people speaking (sometimes quite loudly) on their calls while I'm not on a call :-)
    - willsmith72 4y ago
      True, that's where I find noise-cancelling headphones with some white noise helps a lot. But I feel you
- klabb3 4y ago
  It's the future I always imagined as a child. A vast divider-less cubicle scape of people in Patagonia vests who define all caps constants by yelling at their standing desks. "USER!! UNDERSCORE LIMIT!! EQUALS TWO THOUSAND AND FORTY EIGHT!"
bamboozled 4y ago
"… this will be a generational paradigm change in how to write code… if it works." Why? Can't really see myself working like this in an office, plane, cafe, with music on (my favorite way to code), in the house where my partner is also working. Then as others have said, editing might suck. If it was a neural link then I'd be in agreement.
Maken 4y ago
I can't wait to edit my Unreal blueprints using voice commands. Truly the future of programming.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

wiseowise 4y ago

> this will be a generational paradigm change in how to write code… if it works Why?

mkmk3 4y ago
I could see it maybe being important once github codepilot is embedded in it? You tell it roughly what you want and then adapt by hand. But it is kinda funny seeing parent make such claims so early
- singularity2001 4y ago
  > once github codepilot is embedded That's exactly the point of the demo, no?
  - mkmk3 4y ago
    Yup my bad for jumping to conclusions. This certainly seems worthwhile exploring
wokwokwok 4y ago
How can it not be a paradigm change when it changes the way people write code from “write by hand” to “generated by ai with natural language”? The problem with speech to code has always been that precise syntax is hard, but AI codegen solves that. So, no, it might not take off, but I feel like if it does, then it means ai-codegen will become the dominant way code is crafted. That would be paradigm shifting. It’s inconceivable that it wouldn’t be.
- creata 4y ago
  > generated by ai with natural language I don't want to disparage their work, because it's really impressive, but "fill null values of column Fare with average column values" is closer to AppleScript than it is to natural language.
  - wokwokwok 4y ago
    It doesn’t matter. It solves the issue of trying to speak obscure code syntax like “close parenthesis semicolon newline”. That’s enough to lower the barrier to entry for many people; I don’t know how good it is practically but it’s disingenuous to suggest it’s not offering a novel solution to an old problem.
    - xigoi 4y ago
      If you prefer that, why not just use a language like AppleScript or Inform 7?
- wiseowise 4y ago
  > …because speaking is easier than writing, obviously? Easier isn’t always better.
- randomdata 4y ago
  > The problem with speech to code has always been that precise syntax is hard The biggest problem is that talking sucks. You presumably can handle voice input as well as is possible, yet here we are typing to you anyway, and for good reason. Even if the natural language part is nailed, you may as well type in that natural language. I imagine it will bring some quality of life improvements to those with certain disabilities, but I don't see why the typical developer would want to go in that direction.
jpalomaki 4y ago
The example puts it quite well. You kind of know what you want to achieve, step by step, but are not so comfortable with your tools. Usually this kind of exploratory work involves a lot of Googling and copy-pasting snippets from Stackoverflow without putting too much time in trying to deeply understand things. If you get out what you want - great, if not, back to Google.

creata 4y ago

It seems wonderful for people who can't as easily use a keyboard, but for most people, this doesn't seem any easier than using a keyboard. Am I missing something?

jonathanstrange 4y ago
If voice dictation was a killer feature, everybody would use it all the time for ordinary texts. But for some reason only few (lawyers? doctors?) use it.
- luckylion 4y ago
  I believe that's mostly because it doesn't work reliably. Doctors, lawyers, architects etc have a somewhat limited professional vocabulary and often say the same things, so voice recognition works pretty well for them. But when you write a random message, you have a much broader range of topics, and dictation that fails quickly makes the whole thing change from an improvement to an ordeal. "No, not 'or deal'. delete word. delete word. delete word. O-R-D-E-A-L. Yes, that's it. No, don't write that, sigh".
TheUndead96 4y ago
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52094111 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52094111
Toutouxc 4y ago
I use a Czech keyboard layout on my Mac, because Czech has some letters that don't exist on a US keyboard, and I don't like switching between layouts. So basically all "programming" characters (braces, brackets, parentheses, apostrophes, quotation marks, pipes, colons) are behind modifiers. I would totally enjoy being able to tell my IDE to "call foo with bar and string hello there end string with a block of gee times two" or something, instead of: foo(:bar, "Hello there") { |gee| gee * 2 } Just that, not having to think about typing different symbols would be a serious quality of life feature for me.
- 4y ago

chrisandchris 4y ago

If it works equally good like Apple Siri or Google Hey (or whatever its's called), then it will be ... totally useless? I can't imagine that they bring a better product than two of the richest companies in the world even can't figure out (perfectly). And if I need to read and adjust all my code for typos, I can just write it myself. Because in my experience it is very often like "Call Peter" -> "Today it's sunny in NY".

insanitybit 4y ago
> I can't imagine that they bring a better product than two of the richest companies in the world even can't figure out Are either of those companies investing particularly heavily into voice agents? Certainly neither of them has anywhere near the kind of power of something like Copilot. Also, a general agent is way different from one that's specific to writing code.
isthisthingon99 4y ago
Somehow Google has gotten worse in the last couple of years.
smcleod 4y ago
To be fair Siri was really good before iOS15 on the phone - very rarely got a word wrong then I don't know what they changed but it went belly up for me and many other people have said the same. On macOS it still seems pretty good - I have carpal tunnel syndrome and by Thursday or Friday most weeks I end up using Siri to dictate not code but a lot of conversations in Slack, pull requests, iMessage, etc. In fact, I wrote this reply with Siri right now.
- adwww 4y ago
  I don't know what version number, but when it was new I could depend on it to do things like sending SMS while driving, changing the navigation, etc. Now it's barely worth attempting, because it gets it wrong more than it gets it right.
  - 4y ago

stackbutterflow 4y ago

Works only in remote. Used in the office that'd be madness.

tgv 4y ago

Generational? Idk. I work for a company that regularly sends out surveys, and there are several tools to integrate voice into it. Willingness to speak instead of type is quite low across respondents (which is a representative population sample). It looks as if speaking to a machine does not hold the same appeal as speaking to a human (something that can also be seen in telephone queue screener questions).

pflenker 4y ago
This is not marketed as an alternative input mechanism for people who have otherwise no difficulty typing code. It's an input mechanism for people whose abilities to type are limited.
- coldtea 4y ago
  Yes, but this answers to the grandparent, not the parent. This means it's an assistive technology, but hardly "a generational paradigm change in how to write code".
Semaphor 4y ago
I hate talking to machines. Sometimes it’s the best option (I love using a voice assistant in the kitchen), but almost always I’d have a full keyboard as an interface instead. If machines were amazing at Speech-to-Text, okay, sure. But while the capabilities are impressive, they still kinda suck at it.
- invalidusernam3 4y ago
  The only voice control anything I use is to create reminders on my iPhone, and the only reason I use that is because the default reminders app's UX is really bad that it's quicker to use the voice commands. I don't see how text to code would be faster than typing. And even if it is, typing speed is not really a limiting factor in the speed at which I can produce code.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  The first amazing result would not be for you to program with this, but for somebody with a phone to be able to automate a few small tasks with just the voice.

imron 4y ago

> The hard part will be editing code with your voice too The hard part will be open plan offices. It’s bad enough that so many meetings are now zoom/teams and proximity to coworkers means you end up hearing their side of their meetings. Just wait until all the devs are coding this way too.

mlajtos 4y ago
Crazy idea – whisper to use your computer. Might produce some quality ASMR in open plan office.
willsmith72 4y ago
I dunno, we already have stuff like Krisp AI background voice cancellation. I don't think it's far away to completely cancel background talking out. This is already huge for things like pair programming while one person's in the office, one is at home. If you have noise cancelling headphones for the person in the office too (with a bit of white noise), you can have a pretty perfect call in a noisy room. (not sponsored) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILfTrUreS00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILfTrUreS00
- imron 4y ago
  I'm not bothered by my call quality, which as you noticed is fine, I'm bothered by all the other people speaking (sometimes quite loudly) on their calls while I'm not on a call :-)
  - willsmith72 4y ago
    True, that's where I find noise-cancelling headphones with some white noise helps a lot. But I feel you
klabb3 4y ago
It's the future I always imagined as a child. A vast divider-less cubicle scape of people in Patagonia vests who define all caps constants by yelling at their standing desks. "USER!! UNDERSCORE LIMIT!! EQUALS TWO THOUSAND AND FORTY EIGHT!"

bamboozled 4y ago

"… this will be a generational paradigm change in how to write code… if it works." Why? Can't really see myself working like this in an office, plane, cafe, with music on (my favorite way to code), in the house where my partner is also working. Then as others have said, editing might suck. If it was a neural link then I'd be in agreement.

Maken 4y ago

I can't wait to edit my Unreal blueprints using voice commands. Truly the future of programming.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]