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Emily Shea - "Perl Out Loud"

Emily Shea - "Perl Out Loud" on HackerTube: recommended by 3 Hacker News commenters across 3 separate months, 2019–2022.

The Perl and Raku Conference - Greenville, SC 2026

talk · evergreen

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Emily Shea, a Fastly engineer with repetitive strain injury, describes using voice dictation as her main way of programming. She covers homophones, custom vocabulary and building her own voice commands to write Perl.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN treats it as a phenomenal demonstration that voice-driven development is viable and as an eye-opener on accessibility-unfriendly coding habits.

people recommended it
3
separate months
3
strong recommendations
2
discussed on HN
2019–2022
“This video from the article is a phenomenal demonstration of dictation coding”
— rkagerer, Aug 2019, in “What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?”

What HN commenters said

7 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

tmtvlSep 2022Strongly recommends

Yeah, when I saw Emily Shea's talk* I became aware of the accessibility-unfriendly code I normally put out. I still find myself writing bad code, but at least now I'm aware what to be aware of. * ▶ this video

in “Short Thoughts on Computers and Programming” · View on HN

rkagererAug 2019Strongly recommends

Developed RSI 15 years ago, tried all kinds of contraptions. Here's what helped me: - Kinesis Advantage keyboard w/ footswitch [link] - Ambidextrous mousing (one on each side, to split the load). Favor your PageUp / PageDown buttons over the evil mousewheel. - Lifestyle changes (biggest bang for the buck). Try to get at least 20 minutes of aerobic exercise in each day, e.g. running. - Proper ergonomic positioning This video from the article is a phenomenal demonstration of dictation coding: ▶ this video Fun fact (or myth?): Your tongue is one of the few muscles in the body that can't get RSI. I played around prototyping a tongue-switch a while back using a flex sensor.

in “What Does a Coder Do If They Can't Type?” · View on HN

b2gillsJun 2021Recommends

You can if you put in the work to set it up. There are two (nearly identical) talks by Emily Shea - Perl Out Loud ▶ this video - Voice Driven Development: Who needs a keyboard anyway? [link]

in “Try APL” · View on HN

lunixbochsFeb 2020Cites it

▶ this video at 4:15 is when she plays the Perl Vista video (note the fiddling around video playing isn’t a fundamental issue with voice input, google slides with video embeds turned out to be pretty unreliable with keyboard input and I believe that was ironed out in her later talks)

in “On Voice Coding” · View on HN

ksajDec 2019Cites it

Here's a video of someone discussing programming PERL by voice. I think I found it on HN in a different post months ago. ▶ this video

in “Google Engineer Codes with Voice” · View on HN

tigerlilyAug 2019Cites it

Ha, I read the headline and thought it was "git by gesture". This is because I'd recently watched "Perl out loud", a talk this year by Emily Shea (2shea): ▶ this video

in “Open-Source Code for Hand Gesture Recognition – Sign Language Translation” · View on HN

Show 1 more comment
bmn__Feb 2020Joke

cap abstract cap factory join leb cap factory leb capital letter india cap enumerable join leb capital letter tango cap data join cap type join reb reb reb slap ▶ this video

in “Sherbet: An Ergonomic Gaming Keypad” · View on HN

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