HACKER Q&A
📣 hu3

Anyone voice code? I had a stroke and can't use my left side


Perhaps the amazing HN community could help this fellow dev:

https://old.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/s46twv/anyone_voice...


  👤 daanzu Accepted Answer ✓
I have been coding entirely by voice for approximately 10 years now (by hand long before that). Most of that time I have been using the Dragonfly (https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/dragonfly) library to construct my own customized voice coding system. The library is highly flexible and open source, allowing you to easily customize everything to suit what you need to be productive. It is perhaps the power user analogue to Dragon Naturally Speaking. With it, you can certainly be highly productive coding by voice. In fact, I develop kaldi-active-grammar (https://github.com/daanzu/kaldi-active-grammar), a free and open source speech recognition backend usable by Dragonfly, itself entirely by voice. There's also a community of voice coders using Dragonfly and other tools that build on top of it, such as Caster (https://github.com/dictation-toolbox/Caster).

👤 gnicholas
There are one-handed keyboards available, like this one. [1] When typing, you hold the space bar as a modifier key to type the mirror image key from the opposite side of the keyboard (so a "D" is typed by holding space bar and pressing "K").

I have the left-handed version, which has a smaller footprint. I bought it years ago and was able to type about 3/4 of my normal speed, including code. The price appears to have skyrocketed — I paid around $100, and it's now $600. Hopefully your employer can cover this!

1: https://matias.store/collections/ergo/products/half-qwerty-5...


👤 cafard
https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/wrist.php is about RSI, not a stroke, but some of it may be relevant.

👤 jstx1
Voice Driven Development, Emily Shea - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKuRkGkf5HU

👤 mastah88
- Cerebrolysin - Cortexin - BPC157 (nasal spray) - Semax - Selank - Seleginine - Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (but has to be enough atmospheric pressure) - Xantohumol

Those will help you recover. I am not a doctor - always consult with a doctor, but those are researched to help in cases like yours.


👤 aschwant
There is a great Changelog episode on hands-free coding: https://changelog.com/podcast/423

👤 friendlydog
Not voice but a one handed solution:

Twiddler


👤 peterbecich
How about Talon? I've never used it, though. https://youtu.be/X6rsA0Svh2M https://talonvoice.com/

👤 helph67
Here's a collection of no code resources that may help. https://trello.com/b/A4OmiAWb/100-no-code-resources

👤 brokenmachine
Not an answer to the exact question you're asking, but have you considered the right-handed dvorak layout?

👤 peterhadlaw