Hi Juan,
Having just finished an Alexa skill, I can say that getting to the
end required many different sources of information.
For tech that is so new like this, the tutorials are often out of
date and you'll inevitably hit a version snag, a language snag, or an
accessibility snag, or some kind of snag.
I think I consulted 4 different "alexa python tutorials" before I got
my skill working. And a bottomless stack of stackexchange searches.
One great thing about Amazon is that there's a command-line version
of just about anything that can be done with their various web consoles.
So when you're reading through all the tutorials, and they're telling
you to click this and enter that, and the screen reader is confusing
the hell out of you with the web interface, keep the faith.
I had to call Aira with Teamtalk on four separate occasions to get
around various Amazon web console accessibility hiccups.
I found that if I was patient, and worked the accessibility
challenges methodically, I could find the pattern of how to repeat
the steps in the future. And then wrote them down. And then better
yet, figured out what the command line was for the task, and never
have to deal with the web interface again.
There's something very interesting about the coming smart
speaker/voice app world. It means we can build apps again, from
start to finish, without worrying about visual interfaces and presentation.
So, in short, my suggestions are to read multiple tutorials online,
experiment with the Amazon web clients vs. command-line, and use Aira
or similar when you get stuck.
And persevere. One tutorial I read was titled something like "Build
an Alexa skill in 30 minutes." I tracked my time to build a basic
Alexa fact skill and it took 80 hours. However, from what I've
learned, I feel the next one could be done in 5% of that.
Ben
At 05:05 PM 6/14/2019, you wrote:
HI All,
I wanted to know if anyone has ever created an amazon lex bot? I'm trying to figure out how I can get lex to speak a welcome message before anything is said or done. If you guys have any good lex resources please let me know.
Best,
Juan
