Initial result: coding by voice 30% faster than by keyboard

[Jason Veldicott]

[Reposting here in case it's lost within earlier thread]

In case of interest to anyone, I compared the speed of writing code by voice and keyboard.  Both were used to create a copy of a selected benchmark module from the Dragonfly command modules repository:

Command-module for moving and controlling **windows**

http://dragonfly-modules.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/command-modules/documentation/mod-_winctrl.html

This module was chosen because it's reasonably long and covers different patterns of Python code. (Config code which appears at the top of the page was excluded.)

Keyboard:        45 mins

Voice (Dragonfly):  30 mins

Coding by voice was found to be 30% faster than typing*.  Even allowing for error, with the margin that voice is ahead, it could be said with certainty that speed is at least comparable, if not considerably better. *what I would consider to be a fast pace relative to typical coding speeds. 

However, some limitations: 

* This measures copying of code, not copying and editing.

* Having practiced on the benchmark module beforehand, DNS would have been slightly optimised for it in terms of recognition accuracy.

* Voice words were pre-scripted and recited rather than constructed on the fly (as familiarity is lacking as yet with the voice 'language'), and it is assumed then that in practice this construction could occur as quickly as if read from a script.

* No feature was used that would allow quick identification by voice of existing identifiers in the code (as I believe exists in VoiceCode) which might otherwise save a lot of spoken words and improve speed.

The number of words used to dictate the module as a matter of interest, which affects elapsed time and relates to efficiency of the voice description of the code, was 3934 (elsewhere 3973, so it's possible a line was left out during the timing run).  This seems quite high, but it might compare well with other voice coding systems (and considering no spoken identifiers feature as mentioned above).

Perhaps of interest would be running the same benchmark but with VoiceCode to see how it compares with Dragonfly - if there's a version somewhere that supports dictation of Python code.  Or other Dragonfly grammars that may have been cobbled together for coding.

Jason