Filed under “Ain’t It Cool?”.
The NRC has released an open-source application, called VoiceCode, that allows software developers to code with their voices instead of their hands. Sure there are plenty of consumer applications in existence, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, that allows people to use their computers and enter text by speech. VoiceCode, on the other hand, is aimed at developers’ needs and the actual process of coding. Take a gander at a video demonstration of how VoiceCode works.
Years of hockey, video games, golf and now programming have begun taking a toll on my wrists. It’s not constant – perhaps it strikes a couple times per month – but it’s definitely noticable and uncomfortable. Someday, I envision that an app like VoiceCode will become a welcome relief to me. Although I’m somewhat concerned about voice-enabled applications. Not due to reasons such as the software’s accuracy converting human voice into correct instructions, because I have seen how accurate it can be. My apprehension revolves around the environments in which we work, and by “environments” I’m refering to the offices in which our day jobs exist. Programming in the business world isn’t a solitary endeavour. People are everywhere – perhaps within range of your microphone.
Imagine that you’re a part of a team developing an app that will bury Photoshop and claim the title as the number one choice for raster graphics software. You’re tasked with writing some image format converters. Another member on your team sits directly behind you, working on some GUI code. You’re speaking your code and so is the other member of your team. You’re deep in the middle of a function that will convert your app’s native file format to BMP. As you’re in a block that’s responsible for writing out the file header, the following is entered into your editor:
if (bFillBucket == true) |
Ack, keep your code in your own modules….so shut up! Your sweet-ass converting code block is also prone to having things like “who do you think will win tonight?”, “beer for lunch today?”, “as if every meeting room is booked”, and “dude, you should’ve seen this chick I met last night” appear in it. Pass the mic, and get a quality headset, I suppose 😉
2 Responses to "speak 'n' code"
Can I say what i want for the program without learning programming?
Not at the moment. It essentially allows prgrammers to say what they’re thinking when they’re coding and have it entered into their text editors without any typing. For example, when creating a new class that inherits from a parent class, a programmer might be thinking: “I want to define class called Car that’s a subclass of the Vehicle parent class”.
While using VoiceCode, the programmer could say “define class Car, subclass of Vehicle”, and the following code (in the case of C++) would be generated:
It’s very much a programmer’s productivity tool.