5 ms·

As someone with RSI who writes code using speech recognition, before copilot, something like Talon was a pretty good solution. Awkward, kinda rough on the throa

As someone with RSI who writes code using speech recognition, before copilot, something like Talon was a pretty good solution. Awkward, kinda rough on the throat, not something you would use in the long term but better than the other options. I've always thought that a editor based on the abstract syntax tree in the language was a far better solution but that's a hard to solve problem and needs to be redone with every language. I now use copilot almost exclusively when writing code. I've learned how to give it prompts so that writes code the way I would've written code. Occasionally it surprises me but when I dig into the solution, I realize that's a good one and start using it intentionally. That said, navigation still a pain (sometimes literally). I mostly use the arrow keys and page up/page down to get to where I want to go. It is usually not worth the hassle to build special macros for editor specific navigation. I believe having meat macros like I developed with Emacs is no longer a win. Maybe if I had abstract syntax tree driven navigation, it would be worthwhile.

gymbeaux 3y ago
It's not beneficial to believe that you have "RSI". That's like saying you have "cancer" and are treating it with chemotherapy. What if you just had Thyroid Cancer, in which case you merely needed to take a special iodine pill. In other words, both cancer and "RSI" do not have a single treatment. RSI doesn't have to be this chronic, debilitating condition... but in my experience, you can't put too much faith in orthopedic docs/surgeons, either. I find orthobullets.com to be a very useful source of information on orthopedic conditions. Give it a look and see if your symptoms really do align... https://www.orthobullets.com/hand/6021/cubital-tunnel-syndrome https://www.orthobullets.com/hand/6021/cubital-tunnel-syndro...
- rickydroll 3y ago
  I've been living with this problem since 1994. Some of the symptoms match up with cubital tunnel syndrome in that my hands feel split along the middle finger ring finger line. At the same time, the palms hands feel like they are burning, and my shoulders are caused me low-level discomfort. If I overdo it, the pain migrates up into my neck. sometimes my forearms and fingers swell. When the finger swelling happens, I lose mobility in my fingers. I've also lost fine motor control and can no longer do things like write. One of the drugs they put me on gave me tremors that have not gone away so now I can no longer write or use a soldering iron. Sometimes tremors are bad enough typing is literally hit or miss. I miss juggling and cartooning. For the first 10 years I chased doctor after doctor hand surgeon orthopedic surgeon etc. looking for a cure. Nobody gave me consistent diagnosis and even some of the recommended surgical interventions for some of my symptoms were not recommended because I didn't present in a way that indicated the surgery would be successful. I've tried numerous things acupuncture, physical therapy, trigger point massage, and drugs like gabapentin and tricyclic antidepressants. The only thing that gave me any relief whatsoever was lidocaine injections in trigger points around my shoulders. The release lasted only 48 hours but it was so wonderful. I've given up that there's any medical intervention that will help and I just have to live with it the rest of my life.
  - stronglikedan 3y ago
    I went to a few MDs as well, for what presented like de quervain's tenosynovitis. It was only in my right hand, thankfully, so I could still mouse with my left. I also could use nothing but a split keyboard, which made it tough to use a laptop. And I could no longer use my phone with my right hand either. But after a while, I started getting symptoms in my left as well. Obviously, no where near as bad as your case, but there nonetheless, for years. MD after MD told me there was nothing wrong with my hand, so nothing they could do. Finally, after no longer being able to trust my right hand at all, because it would just randomly let go of whatever I was holding, no matter what size object, I finally went to a DO who takes a wholistic approach. After a few sessions of soft tissue therapy, involving massage, scraping and cupping, combined with stretching and strength training exercises, I'm pretty much back to normal. He worked from my neck down, to get the nerves to "floss" correctly through my system, down to my hand. I've now moved past the treatment part, but as long as I maintain the daily stretches and strength training, both hands are pretty much back to normal. I do have minimal pain in the right hand if I have a particularly grueling work week, but I'm back to using normal keyboards and even laptop keyboards. And I can mouse and use my phone with my right hand again. I can even trust my right hand to not drop things anymore. Of course, YMMV, but traditional doctors couldn't get the job done for me. I'm so grateful it didn't discourage me after a years long journey, and I'm grateful for the wholistic approach that worked.
    - gymbeaux 3y ago
      My experience has been that orthopedic surgeons are BAD at diagnosis. This is at least partially because they are always in such a hurry (in the US anyway). You were smart to persist and I'm glad you found a solution. Your solution is essentially one that has not only helped me tremendously, but I think would help so many others too. So many who blindly trust what the docs tell them. I don't blame people for trusting in medical professionals, but I do blame them for believing what these docs tell them when it goes against what they believe (e.g. doc says hands are fine but they hurt constantly). At that point you MUST take responsibility for your diagnosis and treatment, and it sucks, and it's not ideal, but if I hadn't done it, I'd be unemployed and on disability by now.
  - 3y ago
- gymbeaux 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - rickydroll 3y ago
    As far as I know I didn't vote down the comment. If I did,, it was by accident as this site is not very friendly to speech recognition and shaky hands..
    - gymbeaux 3y ago
      No worries, I just have to imagine the downvotes are coming from people who aren't familiar with orthopedics, otherwise I don't see why they'd downvote... but downvoting reduces visibility, so potentally-valuable content is seen by far fewer people. If something I said is incorrect, that's what you want to see happen, but if it's not, it's only hurting others. No skin off my back if I lose fake Internet points.
fouric 3y ago
> It is usually not worth the hassle to build special macros for editor specific navigation. Why not? Wouldn't macros be more useful to customize your editing experience now that you use speech recognition, given that it's pretty unusual? In general, I'd expect customizations to have more value for people who use tools/languages in an abnormal way, not less.
- rickydroll 3y ago
  I think I know why many injured developers turn to macros to try and solve their problem. When you acquire disability as an adult, it really fucks with your head. Every time you turn around, you're confronted with what you can't do anymore. Even a mild disability like mine I've had days where I could barely feed myself because it hurts too much to whole silverware. Thankfully those days are gone. Now things are better although I still need to hold the bottom as well as the sides of the glass to keep from dropping it when my hand spasms open. Creating macros is a way someone can take control back from the disability. If I write some macros to do some of my work, I've taken back some of what I've lost. I used to be very critical of all these not fully useful solutions that disabled developers can come up with and I've become much kinder about it because it's more about the process of learning how to live with a disability and take back some of your agency that it is about creating any sort of accessibility tool. It's hard to convey just how different the user experience is in your hands don't work and you try new speech recognition. One way to think of the relationship between the disabled person and UI customization tools is that customization tools are my agent or proxy for my hands. The macro solution send you down the path of having to memorize context specific commands and say a whole lot of words to get a small effect. A good adaptation looks inside the application context both in terms of what can be done and what data has to be operated on and then interprets natural language to generate what the system thinks is the desired result. That's the beauty of things like chatGPT. It's interpretation was right is usually pretty damn close. With coding, this is why I like copilot. It takes my natural language and context of the code generated and generates code that is pretty darn close to correct. I speak a little bit and get a big result. I'll never have a force multiplier like chatGPT or copilot with macros. btw, small pushback. The way we use tools and programs is not abnormal. Your comment shows just how much judgment people have when a user violates a designers UI vision or perceived physical norms. They think that speech interface is mediated by some form of artificial stupid should be the normalize standard but, whom I to judge. :-) If a user can't make use of the UI provided, it's not the users fault, that belong squarely on the UI developer.

gymbeaux 3y ago

It's not beneficial to believe that you have "RSI". That's like saying you have "cancer" and are treating it with chemotherapy. What if you just had Thyroid Cancer, in which case you merely needed to take a special iodine pill. In other words, both cancer and "RSI" do not have a single treatment. RSI doesn't have to be this chronic, debilitating condition... but in my experience, you can't put too much faith in orthopedic docs/surgeons, either. I find orthobullets.com to be a very useful source of information on orthopedic conditions. Give it a look and see if your symptoms really do align... https://www.orthobullets.com/hand/6021/cubital-tunnel-syndrome https://www.orthobullets.com/hand/6021/cubital-tunnel-syndro...

rickydroll 3y ago
I've been living with this problem since 1994. Some of the symptoms match up with cubital tunnel syndrome in that my hands feel split along the middle finger ring finger line. At the same time, the palms hands feel like they are burning, and my shoulders are caused me low-level discomfort. If I overdo it, the pain migrates up into my neck. sometimes my forearms and fingers swell. When the finger swelling happens, I lose mobility in my fingers. I've also lost fine motor control and can no longer do things like write. One of the drugs they put me on gave me tremors that have not gone away so now I can no longer write or use a soldering iron. Sometimes tremors are bad enough typing is literally hit or miss. I miss juggling and cartooning. For the first 10 years I chased doctor after doctor hand surgeon orthopedic surgeon etc. looking for a cure. Nobody gave me consistent diagnosis and even some of the recommended surgical interventions for some of my symptoms were not recommended because I didn't present in a way that indicated the surgery would be successful. I've tried numerous things acupuncture, physical therapy, trigger point massage, and drugs like gabapentin and tricyclic antidepressants. The only thing that gave me any relief whatsoever was lidocaine injections in trigger points around my shoulders. The release lasted only 48 hours but it was so wonderful. I've given up that there's any medical intervention that will help and I just have to live with it the rest of my life.
- stronglikedan 3y ago
  I went to a few MDs as well, for what presented like de quervain's tenosynovitis. It was only in my right hand, thankfully, so I could still mouse with my left. I also could use nothing but a split keyboard, which made it tough to use a laptop. And I could no longer use my phone with my right hand either. But after a while, I started getting symptoms in my left as well. Obviously, no where near as bad as your case, but there nonetheless, for years. MD after MD told me there was nothing wrong with my hand, so nothing they could do. Finally, after no longer being able to trust my right hand at all, because it would just randomly let go of whatever I was holding, no matter what size object, I finally went to a DO who takes a wholistic approach. After a few sessions of soft tissue therapy, involving massage, scraping and cupping, combined with stretching and strength training exercises, I'm pretty much back to normal. He worked from my neck down, to get the nerves to "floss" correctly through my system, down to my hand. I've now moved past the treatment part, but as long as I maintain the daily stretches and strength training, both hands are pretty much back to normal. I do have minimal pain in the right hand if I have a particularly grueling work week, but I'm back to using normal keyboards and even laptop keyboards. And I can mouse and use my phone with my right hand again. I can even trust my right hand to not drop things anymore. Of course, YMMV, but traditional doctors couldn't get the job done for me. I'm so grateful it didn't discourage me after a years long journey, and I'm grateful for the wholistic approach that worked.
  - gymbeaux 3y ago
    My experience has been that orthopedic surgeons are BAD at diagnosis. This is at least partially because they are always in such a hurry (in the US anyway). You were smart to persist and I'm glad you found a solution. Your solution is essentially one that has not only helped me tremendously, but I think would help so many others too. So many who blindly trust what the docs tell them. I don't blame people for trusting in medical professionals, but I do blame them for believing what these docs tell them when it goes against what they believe (e.g. doc says hands are fine but they hurt constantly). At that point you MUST take responsibility for your diagnosis and treatment, and it sucks, and it's not ideal, but if I hadn't done it, I'd be unemployed and on disability by now.
- 3y ago
gymbeaux 3y ago
[flagged]
- rickydroll 3y ago
  As far as I know I didn't vote down the comment. If I did,, it was by accident as this site is not very friendly to speech recognition and shaky hands..
  - gymbeaux 3y ago
    No worries, I just have to imagine the downvotes are coming from people who aren't familiar with orthopedics, otherwise I don't see why they'd downvote... but downvoting reduces visibility, so potentally-valuable content is seen by far fewer people. If something I said is incorrect, that's what you want to see happen, but if it's not, it's only hurting others. No skin off my back if I lose fake Internet points.

fouric 3y ago

> It is usually not worth the hassle to build special macros for editor specific navigation. Why not? Wouldn't macros be more useful to customize your editing experience now that you use speech recognition, given that it's pretty unusual? In general, I'd expect customizations to have more value for people who use tools/languages in an abnormal way, not less.

rickydroll 3y ago
I think I know why many injured developers turn to macros to try and solve their problem. When you acquire disability as an adult, it really fucks with your head. Every time you turn around, you're confronted with what you can't do anymore. Even a mild disability like mine I've had days where I could barely feed myself because it hurts too much to whole silverware. Thankfully those days are gone. Now things are better although I still need to hold the bottom as well as the sides of the glass to keep from dropping it when my hand spasms open. Creating macros is a way someone can take control back from the disability. If I write some macros to do some of my work, I've taken back some of what I've lost. I used to be very critical of all these not fully useful solutions that disabled developers can come up with and I've become much kinder about it because it's more about the process of learning how to live with a disability and take back some of your agency that it is about creating any sort of accessibility tool. It's hard to convey just how different the user experience is in your hands don't work and you try new speech recognition. One way to think of the relationship between the disabled person and UI customization tools is that customization tools are my agent or proxy for my hands. The macro solution send you down the path of having to memorize context specific commands and say a whole lot of words to get a small effect. A good adaptation looks inside the application context both in terms of what can be done and what data has to be operated on and then interprets natural language to generate what the system thinks is the desired result. That's the beauty of things like chatGPT. It's interpretation was right is usually pretty damn close. With coding, this is why I like copilot. It takes my natural language and context of the code generated and generates code that is pretty darn close to correct. I speak a little bit and get a big result. I'll never have a force multiplier like chatGPT or copilot with macros. btw, small pushback. The way we use tools and programs is not abnormal. Your comment shows just how much judgment people have when a user violates a designers UI vision or perceived physical norms. They think that speech interface is mediated by some form of artificial stupid should be the normalize standard but, whom I to judge. :-) If a user can't make use of the UI provided, it's not the users fault, that belong squarely on the UI developer.