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"Voice Driven Development: Who needs a keyboard anyway?" by Emily Shea

46 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
5 HN users recommended this talk6 months2020–2023 score 7.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

It is the go-to recommendation whenever someone asks about voice coding or RSI-friendly programming setups.

Emily Shea explains how repetitive strain injury pushed her to program by voice using speech recognition (Talon), and gives a live coding demo. She argues voice-driven development can be pain-free, efficient and enjoyable.

“There's a great strangeloop talk[2] demonstrating talon and the actual state of voice coding” (HN, 2023)

3 strong recommendations · 3 recommendations · 3 citations · Talks

9 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@glenjamin Nov 2022 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Hey, GitHub – Waiting list signup
There was an excellent talk at Strange Loop a few years ago by Emily Shea about how she'd learnt to code vim using her voice to combat RSI. [this video] The demos are in Ruby, but I could imagine that languages with strong type-aware auto-completion could be easier to do.
Learning to code vim by voice to combat RSI.
@cube2222 Feb 2023 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Numen: Voice Control for Handsfree Computing
Read more
It's worth mentioning Talon[0] here, which is a system for offline voice control as well, with great python-based scripting (and also supports eye tracking, though I haven't used it myself). Using your computer or programming with it works like a charm, with some interesting and impressive projects based on it coming out as well, like Cursorless[1]. There's a great strangeloop talk[2] demonstrating talon and the actual state of voice coding, which is how I discovered it (hint: it's much better than you'd expect, and straightforward to learn at that). [0]: [link] [1]: [link] [2]: [this video] Disclaimer: not affiliated, just a happy occasional user
Demonstrates Talon and the real state of voice coding.
@cube2222 May 2021 Recommends
on HN thread Squeezebox Keyboard
Check out voice programming with Talon[0], I've recently been playing around with it (to be less reliant on my hands), and it actually takes little work to get started and fairly productive. The state of voice programming is much better than most people would imagine. Here's a nice talk on strangeloop by a person who switched to it permanently: [this video] [0]: [link]
Talk by a person who switched to voice programming permanently.
@58x14 Oct 2021 Recommends
on HN thread Spatial Keyboard Navigation
I think you'll find this presentation by Emily Shea on voice driven development to be intriguing. [this video] aside, novel HIDs are IMO a huge market gap that I'd really like to invest time in if anyone wants to chat.
Intriguing presentation on voice driven development.
@kbenson Jan 2022 Recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: Why is there no high quality method for voice control of a PC?
For anyone interested in this topic, you might be interested in this tech talk[1] from Emily Shea. In it she demos a tech stack similar to what's mentioned here, to fairly good effect. It does appear that required a lot of tweaking on her part and is optimized for the writing of code, and I'm not sure how well it functions for more general contexts. 1: [this video]
Demo of a voice coding tech stack, tweaked for writing code.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@lunixbochs Feb 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Typing, RSI, and what I do differently
My project, Talon, is free and cross platform. It might have some options that can help you: [link] Some blog posts: - [link] - [link] - [link] Some talks: - [link] - [this video] - [link]
Listed among talks about Talon voice control.
@b2gills Jun 2021 Cites it
on HN thread Try APL
You can if you put in the work to set it up. There are two (nearly identical) talks by Emily Shea - Perl Out Loud [link] - Voice Driven Development: Who needs a keyboard anyway? [this video]
Emily Shea's talk on voice driven development.
@m463 Nov 2023 Cites it
on HN thread I designed my own keyboard layout. Was it worth it?
> Soon we will be talking to our LLM's a lot People have been saying this for decades. I think of "dragon naturally speaking" and similar. It still doesn't seem mainstream. (maybe it is but not visible to me?) that said, I still remember this video: [this video]
Commenter remembers this voice coding video.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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