Manual transcription is still a thing today. Stenographers being one of the more well-known examples.

Stenotype keyboards are way better from a RSI point of view, though. Unfortunately, no one has come up with the "theories" or systems that would allow use of them for specialized input like programming.

Plover is often used for this, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRFKZGWrmrM

http://www.openstenoproject.org/plover/

I've seen a few conference presentations about using steno for programming. It does seem to involve building your own library of commands, but people seem to have done it and use it daily.