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jore | 4 years ago

can stenography be used to write code? or is it only for text based on speech?

discuss

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_flux|4 years ago

It can. Here's an example of using Plover (now part of the openstenography project it seems):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=711T2simRyI

(I know this is not the only presentation in the existence but it's one that I found; there's one by the author of Plover within some longer presentation about it.)

Honestly, doesn't seem super fast to me :-).

jore|4 years ago

thanks, it also does not look fast to me and does not seem to improve the process the way it does for speech. Additionally I guess there is a steep learning curve so it is definitely not for everybody

zozbot234|4 years ago

Stenography is inherently language-dependent, and most existing steno "theories" (i.e. input systems) are tailored towards natural-language text; hence one would have to design a special "theory" for each programming language, and provide custom steno chords (or chord sequences) for each identifier within any given project. So it would involve a lot of work, but the benefit could also be significant since steno seems to be a lot less RSI-prone than traditional keyboard typing.

foobarbaz33|4 years ago

Usually the "busy work" of repeated idioms in code are best handled by snippets. Most IDEs, Emacs, and Vim have really advanced support for snippet expansion.

The actual custom typing in code is pretty small in comparison. A few var names that auto complete assists with anyway.

I'm sure there is some gains to be had with using steno on code. But I'd bet there's less a return on code than with English prose.

charcircuit|4 years ago

It's not practical due to coding requiring special symbols, camelCase, and you tend to not write code just going forward.

Steno is good for transcription or taking notes, but it's not great at other things.

comma_at|4 years ago

To balance the views, Mirabai, the person who started this project, does live transcription in vim and uses it for editing the notes as well. Ted, one of the lead developers, uses steno daily for programming. Emily, another user and plugin developer, has developed dictionaries to help with symbolic input and modifiers (e.g. ctrl+shift+x). There are plugins for changing case (camel, lower, snake etc.)

ArchieMaclean|4 years ago

CamelCase is built in to Plover! [1] symbols work too - they might have less intuitive memorisation, but you don't use that many anyway (unless you're in APL...but that doesn't work with normal keyboards either).

You can set up Vim-like navigation e.t.c. too (e.g. [2]), for moving about in code. I haven't tried it.

I think however that the benefits of coding with Plover aren't really great enough to justify the huge struggle it would be to get proficient with it.

[1] https://github.com/openstenoproject/plover/wiki/Dictionary-F...

[2] http://www.openstenoproject.org/stenodict/dictionaries/vim_d...

laumars|4 years ago

In addition to that, I’d wager few people have long bouts of thinking code faster than they can type it. The act of typing is usually the easiest part of the whole process.