#146: Vibe Coding

Welcome to blind guys chat, where Óran O'Neill

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Jan Bloom.

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And Mohammed Lashear.

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Talk about the a to z of life.

Well, hello ladies and gentlemen, and you are very welcome to episode 146 of Blind Guys Chat. Thank you very much for joining us. Now we are going to go straight in to our guest, all the way from the US of A. Although he is currently in hiding. Mr. Glenn Gordon is a former Mr. And Mrs. Universe, an avid uphill bodybuilder, formerly working with Vespero, the company that we all love for Jaws and many other products. Glenn has agreed to talk to us. Really? Even though he is in hiding off one of the moons orbiting Saturn. Mr. Gordon, how are you doing?

I'm, I'm, I'm doing fine. And I hope there's no voice recognition technology to pull me out of hiding.

You, you forgot. You forgot one of Glenn's, you know, most important deeds, at least to me.

Oh yeah.

Which is? Well, I mean he, he got me my job.

Oh, that's right. At Vespera we have you to blame, Glenn.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah.

Most people put more of a positive spin on it than that.

Yeah, tell us how that came about again.

So we were doing FS open line once every month and then it dropped back to once every six months near the end. And that was a program where people who use Freedom Scientific products could call in using Zoom or what was that, that short lived platform? Clubhouse.

Clubhouse.

Clubhouse, yeah. God. Everyone thought it was going to be the next big thing and then it was really.

Yeah, yeah, it was just gone. Yeah, it's fall apart.

But one of the people who called on multiple months in succession was Muhammad. And I had no idea who he was, but he was extremely well spoken and he succinctly talked about ideas that he would like to be in Jaws. And after the second or third time he called in, I said, might you be interested in working with Vispero if all got aligned properly? We had a conversation and it seemed worth pursuing and I put him in touch with those doing the hiring. Lots of people talked to him. He came for an interview, one thing led to the next.

And that was when, yeah, this started all in 2019. I had just lost my sight like a year earlier and I started using Jaws and calling in. And before that I was a ZoomText user and I really didn't talk to Freedom Scientific or AI Squared at all. But when I lost my sight, I started talking to the company more in 2019 and then my first day of work was actually in 2020, just before COVID I went over to the States.

Yeah, because that is funny because you actually went over to the. Yeah, to the states. Yep. To St. Peter.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So thank. Thank you, Glenn. And it's. Glenn is not responsible. It's me, Oren. So stop. Stop harrying our guest. Come on.

Judging from what, you know, happened with Freedom, that ultimately caused me to leave, I'm not sure whether you're thanking me or blaming me, but

that's true.

Well, I'm still. I'm still there. I'm still. So it's okay.

There are lots of really great people there who I miss interacting with on a daily basis.

Just for. For. Just for those listeners who are not too familiar with Glenn. I mean, Glenn, tell us what you. What you're. What you were doing in Vespero and how many. And also the podcast. And how many podcasts did you produce while you were there?

I was trying to keep my job most of the time. But no, I'm kidding you on that. Although it is in the back of everyone's mind. Right. It's the reasons none of us embezzle, for instance. So I was involved with Vispero when it was Henry Joyce back in the mid-1990s. So 1994, I joined Henry Joyce and then worked with Ted Henner, Eric Damery, and several other people on the very early days of Jaws, mostly the developer back then. There were some others who contributed early on, but I was writing the majority of the code for probably the first five or six years of Jaws. And then gradually we had a stronger and stronger development team, which meant that as time passed, it became more and more collaborative.

First, you started with the Jaws for dos, of course.

Yes, but that was before me. Oh, good. I worked a little on Jaws for dos, and in fact, it's probably in part how I proved my competence to Ted, because I was working for him part time. I made some small changes to jaws for DOS. I remember, for anyone who remembers using Lotus 1, 2, 3, if you were using a screen reader, the screen reader wouldn't track which cell in the spreadsheet was active, which was kind of a big limitation.

That sounds like a big one.

Somehow I was able to figure out how to make that work, and I think that was the major contribution I made to Jaws for dos.

But what are you then doing then now, Glenn?

For example, how do you fill your dos? I did a small accessibility project for a company and that. That actually worked well, trying to make their UI accessible. But that hasn't been released yet. And in our non compete we said neither one of us would talk about it until it came out. But that was, that was a fun little side project. It was by no means working full time. And in the last six or eight weeks I finally really sort of dived in full force on AI and exploring what large language models can do in terms of development. And I don't have anything 100% tangible to show for it in a demonstrable way to the world. But I've been working on a variety of different things, testing different techniques and finding just how far one can get. And I think the only way someone realizes how powerful these things are is by digging in and trying to do ambitious things. For those of you who are computer users who have used computers but may not have written programs, but have an interest in, you know, some special program, some special tool, there's this concept called vibe coding where you essentially tell Google Gemini or Claude code or any of a variety of other tools, oh, help me create, you know, a web pro, a program for the web that does xyz and where things are unclear, ask me questions. And I'm not, you know, I'm not unique in doing this. There are a lot of blind people who have tried this on top of all the sighted people who have and have had some amazing successes. That's the positive side for me. But the negative side at the same time is I used to love writing code. That was the thing that I was passionate about. And I think the role of people who formerly wrote code is rapidly changing, that you're becoming less someone who's writing code and more about telling the AI agent what you want, how you want it structured and reviewing it, which is a certain sense of success because you can work really fast. But at the same time it doesn't have the same elements of pleasure.

I think actually this is something that of course we in this podcast and many in the blind world have talked about AI as a visual interpreter and what it all can do for you in that regard. And there has been some progress, but not a whole lot over the last couple of months. But I think where it's revolutionizing the world is in agentic workflows, where it just does things for the user. I'm really interested to hear your perspective here. The one that you just laid out, because that's exactly what a lot of people are going to realize right now, and that's the quiet revolution that's happening, at least quiet for non coders, is that these things can do a lot. If you give them time to think and if you give them something that they can actually test, they can build remarkably complex pieces of software before digging in.

100%. I was sort of afraid, I was sort of intimidated by it. I didn't know that it really all comes down to talking to something. It does not require a skill set beyond talking and communicating, asking questions, asking the AI to challenge your ideas, and similarly you challenging ideas that the AI comes up with. It is largely a dialogue.

It is not losing your job, but it is a different way of doing your job.

I think for people who are getting out of school now, who are graduating, who thought that they had a trajectory, you know, three, four years ago, those people, when they graduated, would get hired in entry level jobs. The entry level jobs let people learn skills, learn from people who are more senior, make a whole variety of mistakes and gradually learn a craft. But now those entry level jobs are the things that AI is best at doing, which means that over time there are going to be fewer and fewer people who really understand what's going on behind the curtain.

In the early 80s and really up until the 90s, maybe the early 90s, you were programming very close to the computer hardware. So what you were building was basically giving the computer very basic instructions on what to do. Move this piece of data here, pull this piece of data up, subtract this, add this, right? And people made programs that way, which is incredible, by the way, because you have to think out all the steps that the computer has to take. That changed over time. More and more programming languages came out that allowed a developer to no longer think about how a computer did certain things, right? How you would get data when you needed to move data from one place to another. The programming language took care of that for you. And so now you were able to think in what we call as software developers, a higher level of abstraction. So that means you don't really have to think about the computer anymore. You just have to think about, okay, what do I actually want to do, right, in concepts. And this is the next evolution of that. So now you no longer even have to think about the programming language in which something is written. You just have to think about the output. You have to put yourself in the shoes of the user.

When I started programming for the first time in 84 and 85, high level languages like Pascal and C and so forth were already on the scene. So some of these things did develop slightly earlier. I will say one thing that I discovered that was very interesting and I think it might generalize to other people. So I had a need to understand is something aesthetically pleasant, something that I had created with the help of a large language model. And so I basically came up with a way which was not any miraculous thing on my part, but took a screenshot, asked the LLM to evaluate the screenshot from the standpoint of how does this look? Does the button with focus have, you know, the expected attributes and so forth? And it was able to do that and it was able to tab through and look through all the buttons on a particular screen as it either moved the mouse over a button or a tab with the keyboard and was able to make sure that the attributes looked as expected.

It's really interesting to see where you have been, you know, where you have been focusing, Glenn. I mean, it's pretty cool to see this stuff developing. I think it's historic in a way.

Right.

This kind of paradigm shift doesn't happen often.

I wanted to move ahead to our personal life. You experience it also had a lot with the new apps like the Orion and also what was the other one recently? Then there was a Naya Tyra. Yeah, but there was just another one. I I learned as well, but. But at least also that they do with not only taking a picture and then describing it like the meta can do as well and of course jaws with PictureSmart, but that you can also do it with live streaming. That is awesome.

You know, so I have not experienced that. Tell me what you're talking about.

Okay, now that is the app we. We discussed it recently here as well. That is the app on your iPhone in combination with the Metaglass that you can connect. That is Orion O O R I O N And that is then what is you can. You have the option to scan nearby. So then it will. Then you move your head and then. Yeah, what you're. Yeah, actually watching or viewing had the meta classes are then describing that. And that's really an amazing thing. Of course you need to work on the verbosity or that's what the app developers need to work on. And then you can also train things. For example, when you have lost your keys or whatever all the time, then you can take a small recording of that particular item and then you can say search keys, for example, and then it will look correct.

So that's quite good. Yeah. So the difference when you're using this Orion app rather than just using the meta glasses by themselves is it will just respond without constantly having to say hey, meta look exactly.

But it will also tell you exactly where the keys are. And it will beep more quickly as you come closer. So it's really live.

But is there also not the connection with seeing AI and the meta glasses is that also. I think they were also working on.

Yeah, they're working, but it's not there.

So I had heard they announced, you know, they were quick to announce it.

Yeah.

And then. And then crickets.

Yeah.

Unless I'm missing something. Has anyone heard that they have something out?

No, I haven't. But I think it's probably one of those things that presume still happens these days where something gets announced and then you decide on whether to develop it based on the interest from the public. Perhaps that's what's seeing we're trying to do is see, gauge the amount of interest in it because there's a lot of competition. There would be my eyes and the metal glasses and other apps like that.

The good thing about the meta glasses, of course is more and more is going to be added and there is a lot of interest in all of these apps. So I do believe that they are going to be developed at some point.

Can I ask, Glenn, have you. Do you own a pair of metaglasses, Glenn?

I do and I've not used them as much as I probably could.

I think that's a, that's a standard response from a lot of users is that they have them but they don't use them to. They don't use them as much as they probably should. So the follow up question to that is why do you think you don't use them so much?

I think truly because I was born blind, I've never had sight and so I tried to structure my life to not require looking at things that much.

Do you see a time, way in the future when something like metaglasses, or it could be an implant in your eye where it's purely AI driven, will replace a cane and will replace a guide dog and maybe if people have the glide or from glidance that they'll be able to throw all this away and walk unaided just, just by using, you know, AI to navigate.

And you think that I am prescient because.

Yes, Mr. Glenn, we are waiting for your answer.

I am not the guy who points at the mountain and says, go do it. I've always been the implementer and I've not been the most imaginative person. Mr. Moses, I don't have a clue. My guess is that a lot of that is going to become more possible. I do think that something like a cane or a dog that you're holding on to gives you tactile feedback. You know, like if you're about to step off of a cliff, you may not have the same kind of responsiveness to a voice that's slightly delayed, you know, coming back. If it could all be on device and there was no latency. Yeah, maybe. I thought you were going in a completely different direction.

Which direction did you think I was going?

I was thinking you were going south. No, I was thinking you were talking about, will there still be a need for screen readers? My answer to people who are talking about that now is, are sighted people going to turn off their monitors? And as long as sighted people have monitors, I think blind people will want screen readers. If we get to a world where, you know, monitors get turned off and everybody is talking, well, you know, maybe screen readers are passe, but I don't think we're there yet. There's so many people who are visual learners who really, you know, benefit from looking at something. And although blind people aren't in that group, I think there's a certain element of wanting. Wanting to look at information in a granular fashion, and at least thus far, for looking at things in a more granular form. To me, pressing a key and moving about quickly is faster than asking for each little bit of granular information.

I think that's correct up to a point where the interface is small enough, like if the data becomes big enough. But then, of course, visually it also becomes harder to actually look at it and pick out the details that you need. But if the data becomes big enough, then actually AI does become a lot more useful. Glenn, while you were not, of course, while what you said is, I think probably true, is that you're not prescient and don't know where all of this is going. You have, of course, been in the middle of another big paradigm shift, which was from DOS to Windows. And I mean, I'm not old enough to remember this, right, but blind people were scared back then because they were used to DOS and DOS was text based. And so it was a lot more accessible inherently than Windows was. And so I wonder how you and the company navigated that big paradigm shift away from DOS to Windows, because I think that's. It's, well, not exactly the same. Obviously it is parallel to what we are facing right now.

I think it was different in certain ways. I think in large part, people were afraid of Windows because for the first few years of Windows, there were no screen readers for it. And so it wasn't just, will I be able to work in this new environment, but there were no tools to allow you to. So, you know, it was more of an existential threat. Once Jaws came on the market, other similar products were available. Then it became something that I think in many ways was easier, which is convincing people that they could make the paradigm switch. You know, having lots of tutorials, having lots of one on ones, having lots of ways to help people gain confidence that they could make this switch once it was possible to make the switch. So I think making it possible to make the switch made it possible for people to feel more empowered.

Right. And obviously we don't have that problem now. People can go use AI tools already.

Yes. But if you're really new and I face this, you know, I feel kind of foolish. If you're new to it, you don't really know how to start and you. So you start doing these really Tinkertoy type things to get started, and they're not impressive. And at least for me, they weren't particularly motivating. Only when you try to do something ambitious and find that that ambitious thing, maybe it didn't work 100%, but it worked 60 or 70%. That, that to me made me more excited and wanting to dig in more. Does, does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I think it does. Right. But I think it's similarly right when you, for example, let's take that paradigm switch from Windows, from DOS to Windows, you know, being able to press one button on the Windows interface would not have been very exciting. But then being able to work with a Word document, which is a lot more ambitious, probably was a lot more exciting and empowering to people. So I think that same paradigm sort of holds. The more power you see you have, the more excitement I think you'll feel.

In those early days when we had dueling Windows where six or seven screen readers were all on stage at the CSUN conference, the tasks that we were asked to perform are laughable. Now open Microsoft Word and open this document that's on this floppy disk.

Yeah.

Do a spell check of this document, enter a couple of sentences and correct the second word. Right. I mean, these were basic, but people were still excited.

I'm very keen to know. Yeah, later or. Yeah, perhaps we going to explore your ambitious tools then? Or ambitious. Yeah, ways, Glenn. It would be nice.

We'll see. I'm about, I'm about to try writing an iOS app. So if that actually comes real, then.

And at some point you're actually going to have to, you know, relax, Glenn, and retire.

I don't Know how? No, that's a good thing. No, I don't know how. I'm still at the computer a goodly number hours of the day, and I'm still, you know, I'm still. I'm still challenged. I'm still interested in learning. I really was wondering how I would take, you know, not working on Jaws. And every now and then I sort of have this niggling thought, oh, I could just fix that right when I encounter a problem, but it's not daily. And I'm not saying, oh, I wish I could go back to Vespero tomorrow. So it might have been the right time. Even though it came in sort of an unexpected way.

I think one story in particular really struck me that you told me about when you met our former CEO for the first time. And maybe, Glenn, just to illustrate one

of the reasons I left, and there were several, including this particular one, which is that the new CEO, who had a very short tenure, came in and was like a bull in a china shop. She just started changing things. And finally, after about the first six weeks, I said, you know, I need to at least, you know, talk to her and say hi and let her know who I was, because I figured she wasn't going to be calling me. So we scheduled a call. She was happy to have a call. And the first thing she said was, I'm sorry, I don't have my camera on.

Oh, for goodness sake.

You know, so, yeah, I used to interview people on the radio Years ago, like 40 or 45 years ago. Years. You didn't need to do very much to make an author feel like you read their book. You just need to look at it. You need to look at the table of. You need to look at the table of contents. You need to know approximately what it's about, and then you can formulate questions. But she didn't even bother.

Well, then, will you come back to us when you have created your iOS app and talk about. And talk about it before you. Before you make your millions and don't want to talk to.

I assure you it will not make millions. And yes, if I actually do it, we'll see if I actually do it. That's one of the advantages of being retired. You get to sort of give in to whimsy.

Well, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. And, yeah, please don't be a stranger. We'd love you to come back on the show.

Yeah, sounds good. It's lots of fun.

Yo, Clodagh. Got the inbox. She's the Email queen Reading out your messages she's the go between tips, tricks, complaints, suggestions Blind guys chat answering your questions Yanmo Oren, they're bringing the facts Hit us with your wisdom or your wise crack attack BGC Email, what you got to say? Blind guys chat that at Gmail Send it our way hey, hey. BGC email, we're ready to reply. Claudette reads it out loud no message too sly so hit that keyboard, let your fingers tap we're waiting on your voice in this funky rap.

Oh, man.

Hello.

Just like I'm on the festival again, you know, like this afternoon. It was really good.

Yeah,

Sorry.

Yeah. And you can do. You can do our next one.

Yeah,

yeah.

We have one of our favorite emailers. I shouldn't play favorites, should I? You can cut that out. We've got an email. Yeah, he is kind of one of my favorites, but you could cut that out. Okay. Cut it out. Yes.

Go.

Okay.

Yes. Gordon Anthony sent in an email there. It was just after our last episode actually recorded, so he literally just missed the deadline there. But anyway, he says, dear Claudia and the Blind Guys. That could be a band name. That could be a band name.

Claude and the Blind Guys.

Maybe we'll have to do a band for Christmas or something. Gordon says I can't top Jan's Turkish barber experience as Mrs. Blind. Gordon cuts my hair.

No.

Usually by simply running her barber's razor all over my head. I can confirm, though, that she does often feel like breaking my neck.

Poor Madame.

Anyway, as for apps, I've tried a few of the ones you mentioned. Picky Bot. Now, tell me if I'm just pronouncing these wrong. PiccyBot

Piccy Bum!

Now, PiccyBot is correct. Yes, that's.

Yeah, it's because I thought it was piggybum the last time. Because, boss. Yeah, we won't go there. PiccyBot will describe videos to you. He says it's very good. But I often find that the trickiest part is when a video is posted on social media is finding the actual share button. If you do share a video with PiccyBot, though, you get a very good description of the content, which is great. Then he's got one called. Is it Orion or Urian? Oorion.

It's actually. It's actually French, so it's orion.

Oh, that's way better. Say it again. Okay, so Óran is very, very...

At least that's what I think. But, yeah, well, anyway, I already heard him start.

Yeah, Gordon has tried that a few times and he does love It. And I've used it when visiting my local gym. I know my way around, and I know.

Hold on a second.

I didn't know he was a gym bunny.

He goes to a gym.

Yeah, he's a gym bunny. Insane. Come on. What is this?

It's not insane. It's great. Yeah, see, I knew he was.

Stop. Stop it. Stop it, YouTube. It's all right, people, please, if you like, go to a gym. Stop. Stop stopping people from doing healthy things.

We're not stopping people.

It's just because. Just because you don't move, you know, doesn't mean that other people need to, too.

He's been spying on us. Anyway, Gordon says that he knows there are vending machines in some places, and the app even tells me the color of the carpet and walls. It's not perfect, though, as it doesn't always recognize when there's a person on the treadmill I'm moving towards, which could be. That could be such a funny scenario. If you get up on a treadmill behind somebody else. That would be so funny. Anyway, I did try it out when On a short walk with my grandson. I didn't know the blind Gordon had a. Had a baby grandson. Well, I don't know if he's a baby, but anyway, so that's exciting. Well, he does very best friends. Anyway, I. I told.

Tell us more.

Yeah, tell us more about your grandson. Anyway, I told her I was going for a walk and needed to know if the path ahead of me was clear. The app was brilliant, telling me about fences, hedges, and lamp posts, but consistently confirming that the actual path was clear. It even warned of a car parked on the pavement ahead of us. Brilliant.

Oh, wow.

Again, it's not perfect. Gordon says it told me that the pavement ahead curved to the right when I knew perfectly well that it curved to the left. I think that might be my fault. I always get my lefts and rights mixed up, so I was probably involved in causing that confusion. So it's not an app to rely on completely, but it does provide superb information on your surroundings. It's a bit of a battery killer, though. Your metaglasses won't last much more than half an hour.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

As for Aira, this just arrived on meta glasses in the UK a few days ago, and I can't actually remember when he sent this to me because I copied it into my notes app thing. But anyway, so. So it was. What? It's a couple of weeks ago. I've only made one call, but it worked perfectly. The agent and I tried testing. A few things importantly. Once your glasses are connected to the Aira Explorer app, you can't switch back to the phone's camera. The app automatically uses the glasses if they're connected and turned on. The agent advised against turning them off mid call as that breaks the connection. I also discovered that locking the phone mid call meant the agent lost the video feed but could still hear me. So a few minor things to be aware of but having hands free Ira is terrific. All the best, Gordon.

Great, well done.

Many thanks, Gordon.

Yeah, many thanks.

Yeah, he's brilliant, isn't he? That's, that's really helpful.

Yeah, he's really good for that kind of information.

Yeah.

Okay folks, that's it for the show. We hope you enjoyed our chat with Glenn Gordon. And don't forget the email address is Blind Guys chat and gmail dot com and we will see you in two weeks time.

Bye.

Okay, bye.