Leveraging Language Tooling for Better Voice Coding: Implementing program awareness and structural editing for Talon

Background: Increasingly many programmers become unable to work due to developing pain from using computers too much over a long period of time. Thanks to recent developments, voice control has become a very viable option for people with a variety of conditions. At the same time, tools that easily enable analysis of programs in many different languages, such as Language Servers and TreeSitter, are becoming readily available. Aim: This thesis aims to investigate how modern software development tools can be integrated with general purpose voice control systems in order to increase the efficiency of programmers using voice control. Method: A functional prototype of an extension to Talon was developed and evaluated through a qualitative user study of 6 participants. Results: The results showed that participants had a very positive impression of the prototype. The prototype itself also shows that TreeSitter is an excellent tool for the kind of syntactic analysis used in this project. Conclusion: The techniques presented in this thesis can indeed improve the efficiency of programmers using voice controls