Vocal Reactive Programming: Enabling RxJava

Abstract: Previous research has shown that the reactive paradigm is suitable for programming by voice, due to its frequent use of expressions used in common English. However, the software used in the previous research (Talon) does not support reactive programming. To our knowledge, no other programming-by-voice software has built-in support for RxJava. The main focus of this study is the development and testing of a vocal programming environment that recognizes RxJava operators and commands. This is done by writing custom scripts that form a RxJava-adapter for a software called Serenade. The purpose of the adapter is to determine to what degree customization can improve the programming-by-voice experience, in terms of reduced cognitive and vocal load. The testing process also reveals challenges related to programming-by-voice in reactive Java, as well as challenges related to creating custom voice commands for Serenade. The results indicate that Serenade is superior to Talon, requiring on average 45\% fewer words to produce the same code. When the default version of Serenade is compared to the custom version with custom voice commands, the improvement is 19\%. The study also concludes that there are many challenges facing speech recognition when used in a programming environment. The custom script feature in Serenade, while still having some limitations, is advanced and allows the user to create complex custom voice commands.