[tluyben2]

I walk insane lengths as it clears the mind and fosters creativity. I talk into my phone during that; either to colleagues or to a recorder and then type it in at home (no, speech to text does not work; if someone wants to work with me to get that working, that would be great but for now, it does not even work a bit; only gibberish comes out; it seems to have something to do with my way of talking which I am trying to fix but I type faster than I talk anyway). Because I walk so much (through the mountains here) and my brain works better while walking, I really work on programming on the go. I want to be able to program while walking and besides discussing code with a colleague while there is internet (which is not everywhere in the mountains) I cannot code while walking which annoys me. I get ideas and want to try them right away. Now I have to sit down, get out my pandora and try it. I want to try it while walking. I believe I will find a way of doing that eventually but everything I tried (from primitive AR to Scratch like programming languages) doesn't really work well. The thing is ; I can text chat fine while walking so why not coding... I know why but I try to somehow resolve it anyway.

The purposelessness here is the time between I want/need to write code or talk; that's most of the walk.

Edit: one of the findings is that you basically should not need any scrolling/dragging within small distances; like scrolling to a part of code and dragging your cursor to make changes for instance. This includes dragging/dropping the Scratch visual code; it doesn't work while walking.

[fitzwatermellow]

You have described my situation to a tee. It doesn't work in the city. It must be in nature, and I must be alone. Except rather than the nitty gritty implementation details, I limit my mental explorations during perambulations to the higher level abstractions of architectural matters. I even wrote a toy "mobile web dicta phone" that uses the media recording api because I wanted a single click, distraction free way to make "notes to self".

For any one in this situation, I think any "code while walking" solution should be voice activated, as it may be important to have eyes and hands free over the terrain. Straight voice-to-code would be cumbersome. Something like a voice-to-UML might be better. But I think what we really need is to first define a visual logic language itself that can be easily translated into high level code. Thanks for sharing, and keep exploring. There are definitely others who would be interested ;)

[tluyben2]

Note as well that I walk in nature whenever I walk and that means often bad or no internet: current voice to whatever solutions require internet and quite solid internet as far as I have seen...

[tluyben2]

Besides gaming for about 30min per day I spend most my free time on trying out little protypes which allow me to do this. Hopefully something will come out of it.

[cableshaft]

> I want to be able to program while walking...

That's why Google glasses got me excited, as it's a step towards that direction. I don't see this being too viable until I can control the computer with my thoughts, though, so we need the microchip in the brain (or something similar) still too.

But then I could work outside, walk while working, not be tethered to a desk or table all day. Can't wait for that time, hopefully it's not much more than a decade away.

[tluyben2]

I tried a one handed chord-grabbing keyboard; with some practice it is fast enough for normal (sloppy) text; for programming I can't say I liked it much. It would be quite good to have something like for heads up displays in combi with AR.

[Chris2048]

> I want to be able to program while walking...

Won't help the "bus factor"...

[cableshaft]

If by 'bus factor' you mean not noticing a city bus running me over, well I don't plan to do the walking on a city street, but in a park or forest preserve. There's a bunch near me. The chances of being hit by a bus would be borderline non-existent, and I'd expect the view to be fairly translucent by default anyway.

If by 'bus factor' you mean the business term of concentrating too much knowledge in one person and suddenly losing them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor), then that's something the company should already be taking into account anyway.

If by 'bus factor' you mean something regarding a computer system bus, like maybe it's too much info to carry and display portably maybe then you'll have to elaborate.

If by 'bus factor' you mean communication bandwidth or capability between me and these types of devices still being fairly non-existent, that's my reasoning for expecting there will be a microchip or something that allows me to direct any mouse/keyboard movements (or their equivalent) with my thoughts. Because having to gesture hololens style or dictating everything or navigating with a single button on the side of my glasses would suck, yes.

Might want to be a little more specific next time instead of throwing out a term without context.

[alphapapa]

LOL! Good grief, man, it was a joke! You just deconstructed it down to its subatomic components, leaving nothing but a pile of gray goo. You're like the LHC for jokes.

[cableshaft]

Well, my response was basically a joke too (of course he meant being hit by a bus), my brain just brought up other possibilities right away and I ran with it to show how something as simple as that phrase can be ambiguous.

Although I probably did come across as a pedant considering how straight I wrote it, so fair enough.

[bflesch]

That's very interesting. Please keep me in the loop when you make progress into that direction. Maybe something into the direction of augmented reality?

[tluyben2]

I tried AR with a homemade 'cardboard viewer' and after that a Homido with an Android phone and my pandora as keyboard but because the phone had only 1 camera and the glasses are way too heavy to walk with it was an absolute pain... Technology will improve there but it's definitely not there yet.

[yumaikas]

Sounds like learning VI or ed might be helpful for that, since they are designed to be mouse free. It may not be the exact thing you need, but they offer a lot from the keyboard.

[tluyben2]

Yes, vi(m) seems one of the few editors that would work for mobile (touch) devices. It was already my favorite and only editor before my quest...

[igivanov]

Almost exactly my experience, and with programming as well. I solved a bunch of problems while hiking in the mountains. Except that I don't miss coding because they are more architectural problems than pure coding.

[tluyben2]

That's what I usually have; I think up high level solutions or, in rare cases, low level solutions for hard problems and I blurt out them into a recording. That works fine. The problem is; I really want to keep walking and not go home and spend hours behind a computer entering and debugging these issues.