[lambda]

It's one thing to not be able to write code as fast as you can type. It's another to use a speech to text input method that's designed for long-form prose and try to use it to code. Can you imagine the frustration of trying to enter longCamelCaseVariableNames without a special macro to do so? I don't know the usual commands in Dragon, but I imagine it would be something like: "long delete space uppercase camel delete space uppercase case delete space upper case variable delete space uppercase names", possibly with a few false starts and undos in there as it interprets some of your words as commands rather than code.

To experience something like it, try using your phone keyboard, with word prediction on, to write code. It will be slow, and frustrating, and have a lot of false starts.

There's a big difference between "not the fastest way to enter text" and "so slow it's unusable", and the impression I get is that without extensive macros like this, most speech to text systems are so slow as to be unusable for writing code.

[egypturnash]

That's kinda the point of this article. He's got a bunch of macros and idiosyncratic commands.

At 11:30 in the video:

"Camel this is a test" -> thisIsATest "Studly this is a test" -> ThisIsATest "Jive this is a test" -> "this-is-a-test" "Dot word this is a test" -> "this.is.a.test" "Score this is a test" -> "this_is_a_test" "Mara" -> selects all text on screen "Chik" -> delete

He says he'll release his code in a few months.

[lambda]

Yes, that was my point. I watched the video, and picked the camel case example from it.

I was replying to someone who said that input speed is not the main bottleneck in coding, hence implying that it's not all that useful to do things to improve input speed. While I concede that input speed is not the primary bottleneck, my point is that without macros like this to speed it up, voice input would be way too slow to do anything useful.

[cbhl]

... the video is itself a few months old.

[SomeCallMeTim]

I frequently have times when I'm doing things like "writing articles on what's stopping me from coding" and the like. But for me, when I'm on, I'm ON, and in those periods, being able to put code together reliably and quickly is of utmost importance.

Even with the macros and shortcuts he shows, I still would be slower using a system like that. When I'm typing in a good editor, I can blast out code VERY quickly, and when I've typed it, I KNOW it's what I meant. When he says it, he has to stop and look to ensure the code matches what he said.

Yes, he can say a phrase like "camel someVariableName" quickly, and sometimes it Just Works, but when it doesn't, he has to back up and say it again. That kind of distraction can throw me off my train of thought, and the damage to my productivity would be profound.

That said, it still IS great for anyone with an RSI as an alternate way to enter code. I just don't buy the "it could be better even for people who don't need it" argument. Especially with his claim that I would need to abandon my modern editor with awesome language support for one of those relics that relies on CTAGS.

[pseudobry]

...Did you watch the video?