On Saturday, 21 March 2015 at 14:07:28 UTC, FG wrote:
On 2015-03-21 at 06:30, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
On Sat, Mar 21, 2015 at 04:17:00AM +0000, Joakim via
Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
What I was going to say too, neither CLI or GUI will win,
speech
recognition will replace them both, by providing the best of
both.
Rather than writing a script to scrape several shopping
websites for
the price of a Galaxy S6, I'll simply tell the intelligent
agent on my
computer "Find me the best deal on a S6" and it will go find
it.
I dunno, I find that I can express myself far more precisely
and
concisely on the keyboard than I can verbally. Maybe for
everyday tasks
like shopping for the best deals voice recognition is Good
Enough(tm),
but for more complex tasks, I have yet to find something more
expressive
than the keyboard.
"Find me the best deal on a S6" is only a little more complex
than "make me a cup of coffee." Fine for doing predefined tasks
but questionable as an ubiquitous input method. It's hard
enough for mathematicians to dictate a theorem without using
any symbolic notation. There is too much ambiguity and room for
interpretation in speech to make it a reliable and easy input
method for all tasks. Even in your example:
You say: "Find me the best deal on a S6."
I hear: "Fine me the best teal on A.S. six."
Computer: "Are you looking for steel?"
Now imagine the extra trouble if you mix languages. Also, how
do you include meta-text control sequences in a message? By
raising your voice or tilting your head when you say the magic
words? Cf.:
"There was this famous quote QUOTE to be or not to be END QUOTE
on page six END PARAGRAPH..."
Very awkward, if talking to oneself wasn't awkward already.
Therefore I just cannot imagine voice being used anywhere where
exact representation is required, especially in programming:
"Define M1 as a function that takes in two arguments. The state
of the machine labelled ES and an integer number in range
between two and six inclusive labelled X. The result of M1 is a
boolean. M1 shall return true if and only if the ES member
labelled squat THATS SQUAT WITH A T AT THE END is equal to zero
modulo B. OH SHIT IT WAS NOT B BUT X. SCRATCH EVERYTHING."
I don't expect programming will remain so low level in the
future. We are at the infancy of our skills, when comparing with
engineerings with a fee centuries of progress.
For me the future lyes in something like Wolfram/Mathematic with
natural voice processing.
