[Roritharr]

Is this a me thing, or a millenial thing?

I hate using voice for anything. I hate getting voice messages, I hate creating them. I get cold sweats just thinking about having to direct 10 AI Agents via voice. Just give me a keyboard and a bunch of screens, thanks.

[forgotoldacc]

I'm a millennial. I refuse to use voice controls. Never used them in my life and hope I never have to. There's a block in my brain that just refuses to let me talk to a machine to give it orders.

Though I'll gladly call it various foul names when it's refusing to do what I expected it to do.

[SV_BubbleTime]

You guys all sound like you have more hands than I do. And nothing else in them.

[mcintyre1994]

The only AI feature I want added to WhatsApp is transcribing voice messages!

[jdjxjdjnsn]

I don't get why this isn't a feature for a long time yet

[stefanfisk]

I’m the same. I love that writing allows you to think while typing so that you can review and revise your thoughts before letting them out in the world.

And don’t get me started on video vs text for learning purely non-physical stuff like programming…

[fhd2]

I'm another millennial that doesn't like them. I type pretty fast, around 100 WPM, so outside environments where I can't type (e.g. while driving), I just never saw the appeal. Typing has a way of helping me shape my thoughts precisely that I couldn't replicate with first thinking about what I want to say, and then saying it precisely.

But I can appreciate that sitting down in front of a keyboard and going at it with low typing speed seems unnatural and frustrating for probably the majority of people. To me, in front of a keyboard is a fairly natural state. Somebody growing up 15 years before (got by without PCs in their early years) or after me (got by with a smartphone) probably doesn't find it as natural.

[viraptor]

It's practice... Consciously try using the voice input for a while and see how you feel after a few days. I ended up liking it for some things more than others. This is typed via voice with minor edits after. This relies on the new models though - the older systems just didn't work as well.

[esperent]

I've consciously tried doing this for the past month on Android when chatting to Claude... when I'm alone. Don't think I could ever feel comfortable doing it around people.

I think I'm marginally faster using speech to text than using a predictive text touch keyboard.

But it makes enough mistakes that it's only very slightly faster, and I have a very mild accent. I expect for anyone with a strong accent it's a non starter.

On a real keyboard where I can touch type, it's much slower to use voice. The tooling will have to improve massively before it's going to be better to work by speaking to a laptop.

[Wowfunhappy]

Voicemail universally sucks. However, when you're having a synchronous conversation with actual people, do you prefer to do everything via IM, or would you prefer a phone call?

[all2]

Email. Async comms make sense 99% of the time at my job. Unless there's deep work to be done, or pie-in-the-sky idea fabricating. Or rubber-ducky sessions. But I won't do those with AI.

[tuckerman]

I almost never prefer a phone call, I'd rather go all the way to video/in-person or stick with text. I also prefer to push anything important that isn't extremely small out of instant messaging and to email.

Brainstorming/whiteboarding, 1:1s or performance feedback, team socialization, working through something very difficult (e.g. pair debugging): in-person or video

Incidents, asking for quick help/pointers, small quick questions, social groups, intra-team updates: IM

Bigger design documents and their feedback, trickier questions or debugging that isn't urgent, sharing cool/interesting things, inter-team updates: Email

[dmd]

IM, 100%. Otherwise only the loud people ever speak, whether or not they have anything useful to say.

[ribelo]

> do you prefer to do everything via IM, or would you prefer a phone call?

It's hard for me to believe that there are psychopaths among us who prefer call on the phone, slack huddle or even organize meetings instead of just calmly writing messages on IM over coffee.

[codemac]

receiving audio = slow

sending audio = fast

[dcsan]

Yes this is known etiquette eg in China where voice memos are widely used on WeChat. Sending a voice memo is slightly rude for business as it says I the sender value my time to dash something off more even if it’s inconvenient for you the receiver who has to then stop and listen to it. Between friends is a bit different as voice has a level of personal warmth.

[jdmoreira]

I don't know. I'm 40 but I do like pair programming so…

[dionian]

I would agree but i use voice heavily with AI agents and here is why: no matter how fast i can type, i can speak much faster, and while i do other tasks.

[fnordpiglet]

One advantage is speaking is generally faster than typing. Imagine instead of talking to a bunch of AI you’re talking to a room full of coworkers about the architecture to develop.