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**Jerod Santo:** Tell us about Cursorless, because I didn't get much further than your talk title. |
**Pokey Rule:** Yeah, no worries. So Cursorless is a spoken programming language for editing code in text. |
**Jerod Santo:** Okay. Why editing and not writing? |
**Pokey Rule:** Yeah, it's a good question. So because 90% of what you do when you are coding is editing. You copy and paste it off of a Stack Overflow, and then you edit it. Or like Copilot writes it and you edit it. Actual straightline coding is maybe five, ten percent. You find it somewhere else in your codebase, yo... |
**Jerod Santo:** I see. So why did you start voice-coding in the first place? |
**Pokey Rule:** So I had repetitive strain injury. So basically, I spent too much time hunched over a computer... And it was painful to use a keyboard. And so I tried all kinds of stuff. I hired a guy off TaskRabbit and I dictated him shortcuts, and that was pretty brutal... And then eventually started -- I found this ... |
**Jerod Santo:** So that's cool. So we talked to Josh -- was it Comeau a couple years back? He also did that -- he had RSI, and his was more like "Here's how I do it." I don't think he built anything on top, like you did with Cursorless, right? |
**Pokey Rule:** No. No, no, no. Yeah. |
**Jerod Santo:** But similar situation, I guess. |
**Pokey Rule:** Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And his blog post is a great resource for people starting. It's like one of the type things that pops up when you search for voice coding. |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah. But you've taken it a whole step further. You're like "I'm gonna create a language around this." |
**Pokey Rule:** That's right. Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Are you doing the pop sound, too? |
**Pokey Rule:** I do, but mine is \[55:09\] Yeah. So instead of \[55:12\] which is -- I can't make that sound. |
**Jerod Santo:** It's harder for you. |
**Pokey Rule:** \[55:15\] That's what I do. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It might not translate so well in this somewhat loud room, but... You're popping. |
**Pokey Rule:** Yeah. I hope you don't have a pop filter on this thing. \[laughter\] |
**Jerod Santo:** "I can't write an E, because they keep pop-filtering my E." |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Oh, my gosh... Get the pop filter away! |
**Jerod Santo:** What's a typical command look -- or sound like, I guess? |
**Pokey Rule:** Yeah, so an example is "Spike every func air past bat." |
**Jerod Santo:** "Spike every func air past bat"? |
**Pokey Rule:** Yeah. |
**Jerod Santo:** I feel like we need to get a loop of that, and some great master beats behind it... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Do it again. |
**Pokey Rule:** "Spike every func air past bat." |
**Jerod Santo:** Do you make it musical on purpose, or is it just a side effect? |
**Pokey Rule:** Yeah, the second time I did. Yeah. |
**Jerod Santo:** That was good. Let's loop that sucker. Put a beat behind it. This could be a new form of music. Okay, so what does that do? |
**Pokey Rule:** \[56:01\] Right. So what that does is it inserts a new line before every function, in a particular range of function defined by two particular endpoints, air and bat. So spike every func, air past bat. We're spiking, putting a new line before every function, in the range between the air function and the... |
**Jerod Santo:** So do you have basically a codeword per letter? |
**Pokey Rule:** Yup. |
**Jerod Santo:** So this is a lot like CB radio stuff, right? |
**Pokey Rule:** Yeah, exactly. Like the international, like, alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, that kind of thing? |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah, exactly. |
**Pokey Rule:** Yeah. So it's like that, except that's way to slow. That's like two syllables per letter. |
**Jerod Santo:** Because alpha is longer than air... |
**Pokey Rule:** I have no time for that, right? If I'm coding all day -- |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It's challenging too, I would say... I mean, Lima, Victor, Mike... Well, Mike's not bad. |
**Pokey Rule:** Mike's good. Mike I can -- yeah. |
**Jerod Santo:** So a single syllable... Have you ever thought of going zero-syllabic? |
**Pokey Rule:** I mean, so that's what the pops are. |
**Jerod Santo:** Yeah, exactly. Even faster. |
**Pokey Rule:** That's right. |
**Jerod Santo:** So what do you map a pop to then? Space? |
**Pokey Rule:** So pop doe two things. Pop wakes up Talon, which is the software that Cursorless is built on. So if it's sleeping and I'm talking to someone, I can pop and that will make it start listening. And then once it's listening, pop will repeat the most recent phrase that I issued. So if I said "spike every fun... |
**Jerod Santo:** Okay. That's super-useful, I'm sure. |
**Pokey Rule:** Yeah. And it's great, because you can make these kind of on-the-fly macros... Because a phrase can be like multiple commands in a row... So you can be like "Delete this", and then go to the next function, and then you just pop, and it just keeps doing it over and over again. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** So I guess since you had this injury, you don't have a lot of choice. |
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