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Comment by jore | Hacker News Reader

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

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 :-).

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

considering typing time isn't even close to the most time consuming part of programming, I don't think this will be relevant to programmers apart from the programmers who want to do it for fun

https://danluu.com/productivity-velocity/

Docstrings, writing documentation, talking to colleagues on Slack, asking questions on stackoverflow, writing mails, browsing, working in the terminal. We spend a lot of time writing. How much time could one save by e.g. doubling the speed?

Another aspect is of the working memory - will it free your brain's resources? Will allow writing at the speed of thought allow for new/more thoughts?

I think we should explore these waters, and steno is a solid choice.

I don't believe that is true.

While nobody can deny the fact that most of the time in programming indeed is not spent writing, how about this: you type slower than you can think.

So, when you get an idea, it's nice to be able to transfer the idea to the source code, so you can then move on the next idea or next part of the same one. You don't want to be held back by an inferior input method or a language with a lot of ceremonial about doing simple stuff. This happens in short bursts, even if the total time is quite short.

Sometime it happens so that one thinks faster than one can speak. This usually leads you to get mixed up in words.

A fast way to enter ideas is an important part of developing ergnomics.

The thing about code though is that it is succinct by design and a lot of thinking goes into writing 3 lines of code that will work coherently.

So with typing keywords fast and efficient auto-completion, I doubt Steno would somehow make you a faster developer.

Clarity and correctness rules over speed here.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Switching modes requires an extra chord. Movement in your editor now takes chords with a bunch of keys instead of 2. Steno is really flexible, but when you try to shoehorn it into situations where it's not good at the average chords per character typed.

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.)

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's just not worth learning steno if you mainly do programming. It will be complicated, require complicated chords, require you to constantly add new words and remember what you saved them as, simple chords (short cuts) like C^n turn into complicated ones. It's just not that optimized for programming.

> it's just not worth learning steno if you mainly do programming

I think this will be better answered by someone who has crossed that bridge than you simply jumping to that conclusion with no experience or data to back up your claim.

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