This podcast episode covers the final Strange Loop conference, featuring keynote presentations by AnnMarie Thomas and interviews with attendees sharing their favorite moments. Pokey Rule discusses his project called Cursorless, a spoken language for code editing. Other topics include the connection between magic and teaching, sabbaticals for academics, developing Pass Bolt password manager, and voice coding with Talon Voice software.
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Quick takeaways
Strange Loop conference is a great learning and networking event.
Passbolt is a secure password manager for teams with additional security features.
Cursorless is a spoken programming language designed for efficient code editing.
Deep dives
Strange Loop Conference Experience
The speaker shares their first experience at the Strange Loop conference several years ago. They stayed at an Airbnb that turned out to be an abandoned building with questionable guests. Eventually, everything worked out, and the next day the conference was amazing.
The Magician Encounter
The speaker recalls an encounter with a magician at the conference who showed them card tricks. They ended up in a magic battle with another person, causing the tricks to become more sloppy as they ran out of impressive tricks to perform.
Coin Magic
The speaker discusses their interest in coin magic and placement within the world of magic. They admit that coin magic is considered inferior to card magic and humorously rank themselves higher than clowns.
Passbolt and its Security Features
The speaker introduces Passbolt, a password manager built for teams, with a focus on security, privacy, and collaboration. They highlight the unique security feature of requiring a secret key in addition to a username and password, preventing brute force attacks.
Cursorless: A Spoken Programming Language for Code Editing
Cursorless is a spoken programming language designed for editing code and text. Traditional coding primarily involves editing existing code rather than writing new code from scratch. Cursorless aims to optimize this editing process by allowing developers to issue spoken commands to manipulate and modify code more efficiently. By using specific commands like spike every funk, Air Past Bat, developers can perform actions such as inserting a new line before every function within a given range.
The Benefits and Challenges of Voice Coding with Cursorless
The development of Cursorless was driven by the need to address repetitive strain injury experienced by the creator. Voice coding with Cursorless provides an alternative to traditional keyboard-based coding, making it accessible to developers with physical limitations or those who simply prefer a different input method. While there is a learning curve in adopting Cursorless, it offers advantages such as faster coding speed and the ability to keep hands free, which can be useful in various scenarios like eating food or having messy hands. However, there are challenges in terms of speech precision and recognizing specific commands. Overall, Cursorless offers a unique approach to code editing by combining voice recognition technology, custom grammars, and a visual studio code extension.
This week we’re taking you to the hallway track of the final Strange Loop conference. First up is AnnMarie Thomas — an engineering, business, and education professor. AnnMarie gave one of the opening keynotes titled “Playing with Engineering.” We also caught up with many first-time and multi-time attendees who shared their favorite moments from Strange Loop over the years. You’ll hear from Richard Feldman, Colin Dean, and Taylor Troesh. Last up we talk with Pokey Rule. He gave a talk about his project called Cursorless which is a spoken language for structural code editing.
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Also, a huge thanks to Alex Miller (the organizer of Strange Loop) for being so kind to us and getting us there for the final Strange Loop. It was quite the experience.