VEDICS Speech Assistant

[Eric S. Johansson]

On 5/23/2010 6:02 PM, Phillip Whiteside wrote:
>
>
> As has been pointed out on this thread, there are young programmers
> coming on-line. This next bit of news may come of a shock to some of
> you, but they do not actually care about a disability - it is such a
> 'non-event' to them - They focus on the person, if that person is a
> happy person they see happy. I that person is some what frustrated but
> articulate and realises that an able bodied can never fully understand
> how it is to be so then progress can be made. If their first contact is
> for a major doom and gloom assesment of how they will fail like everyone
> else has done, it is hardly going to keep them around for long?

When I started, I learned two very important lessons in the first five years.

1) don't fuck up
2) don't be afraid to fail

If I hadn't internalized those axioms, I wouldn't have learned as much, done as 
much, acquired the respect of people I've worked with over the years.

Screwing up, in the beginning of your career, is usually nonfatal unless it is 
some career limiting move like sleeping with your bosses partner. But it's also 
a requirement for learning new stuff. If you work with someone 20 or even 30 
years your senior, you will undoubtedly hear tales about "what I did that" 
you'll learn about what went wrong and how to not do it again. If you get a 
different result, and you have a very cool conversation analyzing what's going 
on. In any case, you learn.

When you get tired of getting hit for screwing up, you start being more cautious 
and learn more about why you do things and when. Then you get to start paying 
attention to the second axiom for a variety of reasons. The change happens 
because you've learned a lot more about the practical world and how to take 
chances so they are seen as successful failures instead of screwing up. At that 
point, you move up in your career.

The important thing is that you've also learned how to learn from people with 
more experience. How to make better judgments in terms of what projects should 
be tackled and went to pay attention to that little tickle in the back of your 
skull that says "there's something here".

> If these younger programmers (and us older ones) only hear of inward
> bickering they will just shrug their shoulders say "well, I did have a
> look into it" and walk away.

but the existence of the bickering says there's something wrong. Not that people 
can get together but there's a fundamental disagreement on the 
usability/suitability/approach. Which, is not a bad description of tthe 
conversation we've been having.

> Maybe it is time some of the minority heard some shocking news. No one
> does accessibility with the hope of being the next Bill Gates. I would
> wager a bet that the majority of younger programmers that are interested
> in the subject is for personal reasons. They may well not wish to even
> say why they are interested (let's be honest, it's still not a 'cool'
> thing for teenagers to be doing amongst their peers).

yes. I agree with this wholeheartedly.

>
> I do not do coding of things like the kernel, easy-speak, etc. etc. My
> interests are in trying to herd cats, that is get the Web browser side
> agreed on a standard. My own views on these matters can be found here
> http://forum.phillw.net/viewforum.php?f=14 I do keep the ubuntu forum up
> to date with what ever news I get.

thank you.I took a look and, I'm really sorry to be critical but you only dealt 
with the easy stuff. We need to come up with some form of standard for working 
with speech recognition that is testable. I cannot say the number of times I've 
tried to use JavaScript enabled editors etc. text region and had a 
misrecognition throw me into some random page on the site and my content is God 
knows where. That shouldn't happen. Ever.
>
> I also agree that the Google Summer of Codes are a wonderful thing to be
> able to put up a project that is sufficiently challenging but be
> reasonably achieved, some of these young projects would flourish if
> there were mentors who would help them.

I was listening when the other person suggested. Might not be a bad idea but I 
believe the ideas are sufficiently radical in contrast to the usual 
accessibility thoughts that they may have a hard time getting traction without 
someone demonstrating a prototype first.

>
> So, learn from history, yes, - but these 'kids' think out of the box,
> They will sure surprise you.

I've known lots of people to think out-of-the-box. It's not as rare a talent as 
you might think. My reputation among business associates is that I accurately 
identify technology trends about 2 to 5 years ahead of time.  I have peers in 
their 50s who are far more creative and open to new aspects of doing things than 
"hotshot" developers in their 20s typically are.  you see, arrogance comes from 
experience. in the beginning, you don't know how little you know, you can feed 
your ego on a small amount of success to become quite arrogant. If you've been 
beaten up and acquired lots of scar tissue, you can be arrogant because you have 
a reasonable amount of experience telling you what you know, what you don't 
know, and you know you don't know a lot. :-)