The Perl Conference was in Pittsburgh this year, and one of the talks, and by far a favorite, was given by Emily Shae, a software engineer at Fastly.

She had been developing repetitive stress injury, which is "is what black lung is to miners", as Neil Stephenson wrote, and nothing really worked, until ...

I'll let her tell it.

(All you anti-Perl gripers, her workplace is Perl, the conference is Perl and the examples for the audience are Perl, but there is not much Perl in the toolchain and it can be easily be changed into your language of choice. That isn't the point. Troll better.)

I already use Google Assistant for many things, so I'm primed, but the Dragon Dictation and Talon Voice are right there on the machine (ATM Mac-only, but with Linux and Windows on the feature roadmap), there shouldn't be the lag that I get between "turn off the lights" and darkness.

The ergonomic benefits are cool, but for me, the idea that we might get further away from the Keyboard, Monitor, Mouse standard for developer workstations is exciting. Yeah, for open office plans, it'd start to get very bad, but open office plans are already bad.

So, if you are beginning to feel the pain, or simply want to try something new, give this a try.