Windows Vista Speech Recognition Tested - Perl Scripting
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as the classic, unintentionally hilarious example of early voice recognition failing, and of how dictation used to feel.
What it is
A 2007 video of someone trying to write Perl scripts using Windows Vista speech recognition, with comically bad results. The footage shows the recognizer repeatedly mangling commands.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2018 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Cites lunixbochs · 2018-07 · on “Speaking in code: hands-free programming”
You're seeing text input demos because conventional english dictation systems have been horrible at fast and precise technical text input. This is a classic example: [this video] I believe it's far easier to solve navigation than text input. I will gladly record for you (or anyone here who has an idea) a synthetic (pre-planned) demo video of some more complex task. Want to come up with a specific workflow for to test? Like maybe "find <some project> on github, fork, clone it to my machine, perform <some specific refactor> / code editing task, commit, push" all without my hands, and I upload the first take. The underlying systems are far more powerful than the article covered, e.g. in Talon you ca
Cites zoltar · 2019-03 · on “Google’s new voice recognition system works instantly and offline (Pixel only)”
While not a demo of Dragon's NaturallySpeaking, I think of this video when someone mentions 90/00's-level consumer dictation software. For me, the video absolutely captured what it felt like to use those products. [this video]
Cites MauranKilom · 2022-11 · on “Hey, GitHub – Waiting list signup”
Related: [this video] It does look like we've made some progress in the 15 years since. I do wonder how this would work in an office setting though - so much noise, so much distraction, and so much crosstalk between programmers...