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The case against conversational interfaces

(julian.digital)
279 points nnx | 2 comments | 01 Apr 25 02:14 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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pugio ◴[01 Apr 25 05:17 UTC] No.43543086[source]▶
> The second thing we need to figure out is how we can compress voice input to make it faster to transmit. What’s the voice equivalent of a thumbs-up or a keyboard shortcut? Can I prompt Claude faster with simple sounds and whistles?

This reminds me of the amazing 2013 video of Travis Rudd coding python by voice: https://youtu.be/8SkdfdXWYaI?si=AwBE_fk6Y88tLcos

The number of times in the last few years I've wanted that level of "verbal hotkeys"... The latencies of many coding llms are still a little bit too low to allow for my ideal level of flow (though admittedly I haven't tried one's hosted on services like groq), but I can clearly envision a time when I'm issuing tight commands to a coder model that's chatting with me and watching my program evolve on screen in real time.

On a somewhat related note to conversational interfaces, the other day I wanted to study some first aid stuff - used Gemini to read the whole textbook and generate Anki flash cards, then copied and pasted the flashcards directly into chat GPT voice mode and had it quiz me. That was probably the most miraculous experience of voice interface I've had in a long time - I could do chores while being constantly quizzed on what I wanted to learn, and anytime I had a question or comment I could just ask it to explain or expound on a term or tangent.

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1. WhyIsItAlwaysHN ◴[01 Apr 25 06:22 UTC] No.43543436[source]▶
I worked like that for a year in uni because of RSI and it's very easy to get voice strain if you use your voice for coding like that. Many short commands is very tiring for the voice.

It's also hard to dictate code without a lot of these commands because it's very dense in information.

I hope something else will be the solution. Maybe LLMs being smart enough to guess the code out of a very short description and then a set of corrections.

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2. mplanchard ◴[02 Apr 25 14:36 UTC] No.43557189[source]▶
Would be nice to be able to do something like write a function signature and then just say “fill out this function,” with it having the implicit needed context, as though it had been pairing with you all along and is just taking the wheel for a second. Or when you’ve finished writing a function, “test this function with some happy path inputs.” I feel like I’d appreciate that kind of use, which could integrate decently into the flow state I get into when programming. The current suite of tools for me often feels too clunky, with the need to explicitly manage context and queries: it takes me out of my flow state and feels slower than just doing it myself.