I already hate people who send voice messages in a world where dictation software exists. I hate whoever even thought of joking about this even more.
Dude you’re not thinking about it the right way. We can define a new multi byte character set to help define mood (both speaker and listener), intention, irony, sarcasm, sincerity, bodily functions, and so on. This is a solvable problem.
I have literally given up friendships from people that wouldn’t stop sending me voice messages.
I accept it from family, kids, the elderly and such. I just can’t believe people want me to turn off my music and slowly listen to your shitty voice when I can easily multitask.
The dictation software we have is pretty shitty though. It almost always needs proof-read, or re-dictated several times to get it right. At that point you may as well just send an audio clip.
Until the day that dictation software gets it 100% correct, it’s not going to be worth my time.
For now, the human on the other end will always have an easier time understand an audio clip than a machine, because human minds are more capable of using context and getting past regional accents.
I’ll read comments, but I would never listen to voice comments. Literally never. I’d spend an hour googling for context and solutions before I’d listen to a voice message in the code pages.
Voice is objectively the worst way to convey data via computer. It almost always wastes my time, is horrible to skim for relevant info, and for complex topics is an absolute nightmare.
Text is so, so much more efficient. I can’t imagine why anyone would want this. If it’s ever implemented, please don’t make it obvious. Nobody should be encouraged to inflict this on coworkers or future devs.
e: errant ’s’
Most of the times I get a voice message it could be written in two sentences, but they still decide to make it a two minute voice message. Just a lot of useless stuff added for free
The dictation software we have is pretty shitty though.
As someone who used dictation software when said software needed to be trained first and also trained its users how to speak more clearly, it always amazes me when I hear people say things like this.
The problem is human speech is lazy and inaccurate. Half of the time I have to listen to a voice clip there are two or three words in the clip that are barely intelligible. If I don’t catch it by the third pass I stop and just guess by context. It is the same thing the AWESOME dictation software we have today does, but saves me the time and effort and gives the sender a chance to fix their own mumbles.
Of course, I’m one of those people whose voicemail message used to be, “Don’t leave me a message unless your call went straight to voicemail. I will see your missed call and call you back.”
I hate it
but what about programmers with problems hearing? An alternative of webcam video with sign language, pantomime and subtitles is needed!
edit: OOH! Use AI to generate the sign language videos. Could be wild, considering how good AI is at drawing hands.
As a severe hearing impaired developer,
Use AI to generate the sign language videos
hurt me in my fucking soul.
Always found it strange anyway when services make a sign language video instead of subtitles
Nah that’s okay, it’s like providing a dub instead of a sub, in the way it feels.
But not an AI generated one, please! Not with those 7-fingered hands! It’ll be like a dub where someone’s gurgling while dubbing it!
Good point. I wonder if there was a way to like auto-transcribe these voice/video comments and automatically embed them in the source code so you have like a written-out comment that people could read.
Whisper AI? https://openai.com/research/whisper
Imagine spending HOURS listening your colleagues comments… I quit.
You know someone on the team (probably me) that is gonna pontificate TF out of the comment too and you’re gonna get a 10 min diatribe on a 5 line function lol
Right all we are missing now is videos in comments.
Let’s turn github into Instagram. Every snippet of code has to be attached to a picture or video…
You joke but with chatGPT it’s inevitable. Old school programmers will stick to source code but tools for non-programmers will collect plain text descriptions to create functionality.
Inevitably, images and all other media will become part of it.
Future developers will have to navigate those collections and wonder why a functionality doesn’t work when they remove some side-tracking Instagram stories. They will shrug, leave them in place and heap on further memes and comments until they complete their jira ticket.
So what I’m hearing is that computer code will eventually drift closer to DNA where “noncoding” sequences actually perform regulatory functions but in a way that’s super-arcane, and all you know is if you get rid of the noncoding bits the proteins change expression for some bizarre reason…
