Very cool idea, trying it out right now. I have one caveat though...I get that there's a distinction of "public" and "private", with the latter being reserved for free accounts. But I don't know what "public" actually means...I'm assuming that at minimum, it means that anyone who guesses a URL of my workspace can join in on the fun. But how do other users discover new workspaces? Is there an "Explore" endpoint similar to Github's, where people can just see what others are doing in public?
Your public workspaces are listed under your user profile (https://floobits.com/u/ggreer/ for example). So if someone knows your username, they can guess the URL and see your public workspaces.
We haven't written any discovery stuff yet, but it'll happen eventually. I was playing around a while back and wrote https://floobits.com/code_roulette, but it isn't linked to anywhere on the site.
Thanks, your comment helped me answer the question, "what does public mean?" I don't see that answered anywhere on the site. I found myself wondering, "Does that mean we can't choose who we collaborate with, chatroulette-style? Or are the sessions recorded for viewing somehow? (That would be cool!) Or is just the fact of the session published somewhere? (Insufficient differentiator to get people to pay.)"
(Also, a copy-writing suggestion: on https://floobits.com/plans, the words 'free plan' link to the signup page. I clicked on the link looking for a blurb about the free plan. Y'all should add such a blurb. Or link to the signup page from the words 'sign up' instead.)
Hey, this is pretty interesting. One feature request: Do you think you could add Mozilla Persona for authentication? I don't like yet another u/p, and that Github permissions screen left me a bit uneasy (although I didn't see anything untoward).
We are just using Github for auth right now. One day it would be nice to be able to suck in private repos. We could probably add support for Mozilla Persona without much trouble. The real problem is presenting a sane UI.
It might be a bug in django-social-auth. I've had a couple of people complain about it, but I can't reproduce it even if I create a new GitHub account. I've found bugs in DSA before, such as https://github.com/omab/django-social-auth/pull/697
I'll have to look into it more. Sorry about that. :(
Looks interesting, but I get the feeling using something like ScreenHero would work better. I've used ScreenHero for sort-of pair programming and it works extremely well + it's not limited to editors.
Screenhero is great for a lot of things but it's laggy if you just want to jump in, and start typing on the remote system. VNC, etc, all of them suffer from this.
But with a lightweight protocol like ssh with tmux/vim things feel much more responsive.
The responsiveness is the problem I assume they're trying to address with the individual editor plugins..
1. Both users are confined to looking at the same thing.
2. Only one user can input at a time.
3. One person may be stuck in an unfamiliar IDE.
4. Only 2? people can work on a thing.
We started to build Floobits after pair programming for 8 months or so because nothing else worked. Floobits also has a web based editor and basic support for terminal sharing. We also get to do really neat things because our protocol understands changes in source code; for instance, Floobits is self hosting and streams our changes to staging in hard real time. You can imagine other integration around source control, continuous deployment/integration too.
I think ScreenHero has its uses, but pair programming isn't its strongest.
Your post reminded me that alerts for uses when someone is working would be valuable. ggreer and I should also really broadcast our g+ hangouts (we use Floobits to write Floobits).
This is a fantastic idea and I'm really excited to start using this - I wanted to develop this kind of program for a while.
This is my use case:
I work with designers who are hesitant to use git and make changes really quick and test them on a live WP or similar site. Often times we have two or three people needing to edit a single css file and everyone has to open/close the file often to not overwrite the changes of others. Maybe there is a better workflow, but a collaborative editing tool like this will go a long way in streamlining this process.
You are completely right about the designer bit. Sadly enough, some of my colleagues are still very hooked up with SVN and are not really set on moving on to Git.
In cases like these, i think this could actually help.
That's easy; Just migrate your CSS to a Google Doc, then add some logic to your build process to download the doc via the Drive API and unformat the text. What could go wrong? :)
A surprisingly nice feature of using floobits has been in building our own website- we stream changes to staging in real time. Feedback is immediate and trivially sharable. We will add better integration later for running hooks based on file globing, etc. So, you could do things like automatically compile less or restart a service when a file is saved or changed, etc.
1. I renamed the default FLOOBITS_README.md to teach.py, but the path at the top of the page still showed the README filename. teach.py showed up in the left nav, so I don't really know what was going on there.
2. When I was loading one of the workspaces under https://floobits.com/u/ggreer, clicking on the files in the left nav took really long to load, about 8-10 seconds. I almost thought that all the files were blank at first and were there just to show the nested directory structure.
Apart from that, I think this is really cool! I'm definitely going to be using it over the next few days.
1. Shows how often I look at the path at the top. Bug filed. Probably will be fixed today.
2. Yeah... it turns out that one EC2 medium instance isn't the best thing to show HN with. I booted 4 servers to split out services, but I doubt we'll have everything moved until tonight.
Hopefully they will create a plugin for RubyMine. Not sure, but maybe if they create a plugin for IntelliJ, they'd cover the entire family of Jetbrains editors? (IntelliJ, Rubymine PyCharm, PhpStorm)?
Thank you. I really enjoyed the concept and was playing around with Floobits last month, but found it quite testing at times using the vim integration.
My colleague was using the ST integration, and found that sometimes he would be locked out of a file completely after I'd done some visual block changes. I'll give it another whirl some time and provide proper feedback if it still exists.
Looks great, going to try it out. Some feedback: it seems I was able to do a private session on the free plan, but the error message indicates I've used 1 out of 0 private sessions.
I think it's important to be able to trial the private session. As I am doing work for my company, I don't want anyone else looking at the work, but I want to try out the product on something real.
This needs to be communicated better. I signed up, created a session, but when I tried to make the session private I got the message about being over the limit and assumed that the attempt to make the session private failed and it remained public, so I deleted it and that was the end of the tryout for me.
Also, I was alarmed that my session started off as publically listed and viewable as it was created from a private codebase. Ideally it wouldn't ever be public unless explicitly set to be.
I didn't realize it would be as hard as it's been. Operational transformation is hard. Persistent network connections in editor plugins are hard. OT + network connections in editor plugins is comically hard.
This still had a bunch of issues when I tried it: The user I connected with saw many instances of my user because I was trying to connect with Sublime Text, and couldn't give permission to all of them. The system didn't sync well from ST to the browser, but it worked the other way around. At some point we began typing over each other entirely. Screenshot here: http://grab.by/oAgS
We are really struggling under the load right now. Also, i noticed that you are using Vim? We have echo loop detection in Sublime, but haven't ported over that logic yet.
I had this idea a while ago, Notch was having one of his programming live streams. I thought, man what if instead of us just watching this guy write code we could all be working on it at the same time.
I don't know how well it would work, but it would be cool to use a platform like this to try it. Maybe some open source app. It would be like an Amish barn raisin'
We do have a hidden code_roulette feature. We do a bad job of explaining privacy or potentially the lack thereof to our users. Once we get that figured out, we can add more social features.
As for the barn raising, its not too uncommon for ggreer or I to spot bugs in other peoples code on Floobits. There is probably an entirely different business somewhere in there.
Are you using Sublime Text 3 on linux? ST3 on linux ships with a broken SSL module. We work around it for our own plugin, but I don't think Package Control does.
ST2 and ST3 ship their own python for linux I believe. Unfortunately, it has been stripped of useful modules like ssl. We have attempted to add support (see https://github.com/Floobits/floobits-sublime/tree/master/lib) but this is something Sublime should do, not us.
I imagine its at least a couple of months off- probably longer. Signing up for an account with us is probably the best thing for now. We send out updates from time to time.
It seems like the core support is there, quite nice. It disables my ability to select text though (via mark-set and moving the cursor). Love that other people's selections are highlighted though!
Is there a github repo for the individual plugins so we can track issues/possibly enhancements?
Why does it have to be organized around a centralized server requiring user accounts? Why not make it peer to peer instead? Haven't we learned our lesson?
We'll have a behind the firewall installation option at some point. There are a few reasons:
1. The backend is non trivial and is getting more complex as we move forward. It sucks to make users run their own service. Running a full blown server out of a editor plugin also isn't feasible.
2. As a user, I don't want to have to deal with firewalls. As a founder, I don't want to have to deal with supporting users punching holes through their firewalls.
3. Peer to peer is very hard for this system; keep in mind, we get cascading failures with increasing latency as patches fail to get merged and instead cause conflicts. Conflicts make us drop patches, or try to do the equivalent of a rebase.
4. Accounts of some sort are required for access control.
5. Finally, we are trying to make a sustainable business.
Holy cow this is an awesome concept. Haven't tried it yet, but if it works it's completely transformative. Can be used as a teaching tool for anything - not just for pair programming.
Very, very cool! Thank you for charging money so you can build a real business and keep improving on it.
Please, please work with the JetBrains folks to integrate w/their suite of products? Please?!
137 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadWe haven't written any discovery stuff yet, but it'll happen eventually. I was playing around a while back and wrote https://floobits.com/code_roulette, but it isn't linked to anywhere on the site.
(Also, a copy-writing suggestion: on https://floobits.com/plans, the words 'free plan' link to the signup page. I clicked on the link looking for a blurb about the free plan. Y'all should add such a blurb. Or link to the signup page from the words 'sign up' instead.)
Could be good for remote education. In fact I would be willing to pay someone to teach me objective-c this way.
"Sorry, but an error made this operation impossible."
Is this feature not enabled here, or is the site slashdotted?
I'll have to look into it more. Sorry about that. :(
But with a lightweight protocol like ssh with tmux/vim things feel much more responsive.
The responsiveness is the problem I assume they're trying to address with the individual editor plugins..
I described a similar solution to remote pair programming about a year ago : https://gist.github.com/aantix/1999816
1. Both users are confined to looking at the same thing. 2. Only one user can input at a time. 3. One person may be stuck in an unfamiliar IDE. 4. Only 2? people can work on a thing.
We started to build Floobits after pair programming for 8 months or so because nothing else worked. Floobits also has a web based editor and basic support for terminal sharing. We also get to do really neat things because our protocol understands changes in source code; for instance, Floobits is self hosting and streams our changes to staging in hard real time. You can imagine other integration around source control, continuous deployment/integration too.
I think ScreenHero has its uses, but pair programming isn't its strongest.
David Socha from the University of Washington is looking for teams to video for his research into collaboration.
http://davidsocha.wordpress.com/collaboration-in-the-wild/
twitch.tv does a nice job of notifications, and in providing the opportunity to observe how other people play.
(Instead of game channels; programming languages, problem spaces, ratings of team members...)
This is my use case: I work with designers who are hesitant to use git and make changes really quick and test them on a live WP or similar site. Often times we have two or three people needing to edit a single css file and everyone has to open/close the file often to not overwrite the changes of others. Maybe there is a better workflow, but a collaborative editing tool like this will go a long way in streamlining this process.
In cases like these, i think this could actually help.
I prefer CLI to be honest. I will check out SmartGit, never really heard about it before. Thanks.
1. I renamed the default FLOOBITS_README.md to teach.py, but the path at the top of the page still showed the README filename. teach.py showed up in the left nav, so I don't really know what was going on there.
2. When I was loading one of the workspaces under https://floobits.com/u/ggreer, clicking on the files in the left nav took really long to load, about 8-10 seconds. I almost thought that all the files were blank at first and were there just to show the nested directory structure.
Apart from that, I think this is really cool! I'm definitely going to be using it over the next few days.
2. Yeah... it turns out that one EC2 medium instance isn't the best thing to show HN with. I booted 4 servers to split out services, but I doubt we'll have everything moved until tonight.
Thank you for your feedback and your patience.
My colleague was using the ST integration, and found that sometimes he would be locked out of a file completely after I'd done some visual block changes. I'll give it another whirl some time and provide proper feedback if it still exists.
I think it's important to be able to trial the private session. As I am doing work for my company, I don't want anyone else looking at the work, but I want to try out the product on something real.
Also, I was alarmed that my session started off as publically listed and viewable as it was created from a private codebase. Ideally it wouldn't ever be public unless explicitly set to be.
We will also change new workspaces to be private if at all possible given the user's limits.
I did try though and was very impressed.
I am not missing anything, am i ?
I didn't realize it would be as hard as it's been. Operational transformation is hard. Persistent network connections in editor plugins are hard. OT + network connections in editor plugins is comically hard.
Really want to see this working well!
I don't know how well it would work, but it would be cool to use a platform like this to try it. Maybe some open source app. It would be like an Amish barn raisin'
As for the barn raising, its not too uncommon for ggreer or I to spot bugs in other peoples code on Floobits. There is probably an entirely different business somewhere in there.
Sadly, we didn't use any anchors so you'll have to scroll to "How does Floobits work under the hood?" If you have further questions, let me know.
Package Control: Error downloading package. URL error unknown url type: https downloading http://github.com/Floobits/floobits-sublime/archive/0.17.5.z....
If you're curious how the work-around code works, see https://github.com/Floobits/floobits-sublime/blob/master/flo...
The shared objects that code tries to load are all in https://github.com/Floobits/floobits-sublime/tree/master/lib
Could it be that my system default python is 3 (not 2)?
See manual installation.
Finally giving it a go in emacs, I just get a Floobits buffer that continually spits out "floobits agent says: ... select(): No socket." non-stop.
Edit: Trying it again a second time seems to have worked. Temporary bug, or pebkac perhaps?
Is there a github repo for the individual plugins so we can track issues/possibly enhancements?
Currently I'm using sqwiggle + screenhero and it'd be killer if they could somehow have a baby together.
Screenhero allows me to share my emacs (or any window). Works like a charm.
1. The backend is non trivial and is getting more complex as we move forward. It sucks to make users run their own service. Running a full blown server out of a editor plugin also isn't feasible.
2. As a user, I don't want to have to deal with firewalls. As a founder, I don't want to have to deal with supporting users punching holes through their firewalls.
3. Peer to peer is very hard for this system; keep in mind, we get cascading failures with increasing latency as patches fail to get merged and instead cause conflicts. Conflicts make us drop patches, or try to do the equivalent of a rebase.
4. Accounts of some sort are required for access control.
5. Finally, we are trying to make a sustainable business.
We understand your concerns- we've also been burned by services that shut down: https://floobits.com/pledge/
Very, very cool! Thank you for charging money so you can build a real business and keep improving on it.
Please, please work with the JetBrains folks to integrate w/their suite of products? Please?!