9 ms·

AtomPair – Pair-programming plugin for Atom, now with multi-tab syncing

117 points by chabbers 11y ago

lepunk 11y ago
very cool. did a search for a Sublime equivalent of this and found https://floobits.com/ https://floobits.com/
- rootlocus 11y ago
  Seems to work with IntelliJ IDEA as well. Great success!
- timboslice 11y ago
  Floobits dev is amazing. Highly recommended
- unhammer 11y ago
  floobits is really cool, although I've never really gotten into it myself because the projects I would use it on include some large (10MB+) XML files, where floobits seems to make things slow / sync slowly (at least it did when I last tried some months ago); also, it seems to either require adding all files in a dir and using ignore-files, or starting a fresh folder – I'd rather just say "share this and that file only"
greg_data 11y ago
Should've been called Diatomic!
- dopamean 11y ago
  looks too much like Datomic. Rich Hickey would sue!
duiker101 11y ago
I found this the other day and thought it was pretty cool, real world application unfortunately didn't go as well as my local experiment. The file we were trying to work on ended up being repeated multiple times in the same session and characters were missing randomly at the beginning of some lines. Very wierd. That said, I still think it's a really nice concept and will give it another try.
- userbinator 11y ago
  How was the latency?
  - duiker101 11y ago
    When we tried on an empty file it seemed fine, I wasn't in voice chat with my friend but I wouldn't say it was but, unfortunately once we got to real work it wasn't behaving properly so I can't tell.
    - chabbers 11y ago
      Ah that sucks - what was the problem? This is Jamie, the author. If you come across any further issues, feel free to raise a Github issue :)
- chabbers 11y ago
  Feel free to raise an issue and I'll take a look at it for sure - Jamie (the author). This could sometimes happen on earlier versions of the package, but has since been amended. But I would love to know more and see how best to rectify it.
  - duiker101 11y ago
    I will see if/how I can reproduce it. This happened less than a week ago and it was just to try help a friend with a little script so I didn't go very far with it but i'll see what I can do to help! I actually thought it was really nice and having it working would be amazing.
jamestanderson 11y ago
Really cool project. I tried this about a month ago and had some issues, but I'll have to give it a second look and see if those have been resolved.
- chabbers 11y ago
  Feel free to raise an issue and I'll take a look as soon as I can! - Jamie, the author.
  - jamestanderson 11y ago
    Thanks! duiker101 elsewhere in the thread posted the exact issue I was having! I'm not really sure how I'd go about helping to diagnose that.
    - bronson 11y ago
      Pair with Jamie on it?
      - chabbers 11y ago
        Good idea! That would probably be the best way
yjgyhj 11y ago
This is cool for Atom users! But it's also a sign of how text-based interfaces are extremely versatile in their simplicity. If Atom like many other great editors (vi, emacs, yi) was text-based at the core (although the examples have graphical frontons available) you get this without effort with tmux.
- awestroke 11y ago
  Not true. This supports each collaborator manipulating text in tandem, each with her or his own caret position. Also you can work in different files. That is simply not possible by throwing some tmux on it.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  Virtually our entire team has migrated to vim for this reason. We do a lot of pair programming and about 25% of the team is remote full time, so it is a big deal. Even the non-remote people tend to be remote about 20% of the time. It's strange that since I've switched to tmux and vim, I vastly prefer it to any other setup. I even ssh/tmux/vim pair when the person is sitting right next to me -- it's just so much more comfortable. What's even stranger is that I have returned to an almost all-terminal existence - vim (and emacs for org-mode :-) ), mutt, irssi (connected to slack...), cmus (for music). The only thing I use X for is my browser.
deanclatworthy 11y ago
Wow, this really is the holy grail for my small team. We have junior developers who would really gain a lot to see the senior's programming, but still able to work on other things at the same time. I wish JetBrains also had this!
- taternuts 11y ago
  Yeah me too, I was looking for a plugin the other day but came up empty
- lawnchair_larry 11y ago
  How does watching someone type help a junior? It seems incredibly awkward, and they could just view the finished result instead.
- squeaky-clean 11y ago
  As was posted somewhere else in the thread, Floobits is a collaboration plugin that supports the IntelliJ family of IDEs, as well as Sublime, emacs, and neovim. It works really well, even cross-editor. Though I've had a few issues when two users are editing lines too near each other (but the last time I used it was almost a year ago).
segmondy 11y ago
Most people hate pair programming. I opened up pairprogram in freenode IRC. When people had problems in other programming channels and I suggested to pair program to work it out, most refused. They just wanted the answer pastebin to them. I used http://tmate.io/ http://tmate.io/ running inside an LXC container running inside a VM.
- jackweirdy 11y ago
  I think your experience has been skewed by doing pair programming with someone on the internet, as opposed with a coworker or lab mate. Very different dynamic when you're pairing on something you'll personally work on again, as opposed to just fixing someone else's problems.
sirsuki 11y ago
I'm always fascinated how the editors we use tend to bloat. It seems like they get more and more features till they are a full blown IDE. I come from a Unix/Vim background and I thought "can Vim have a pair program… uh… wait! WAT?!" It does and it is call TMUX/GNU Screen. See in the Unix world programs do one thing and they do it well. You compose them or layer them to accomplish a bigger picture. So running Vim edits text while running TMUX/Screen lets you pair with multiple tabs and/or interact with the same Vim instance. So again I must ask "Why do text editors need to feature creep?"
- outworlder 11y ago
  In the case of Atom (as Emacs), it is fine because it's modular. So if you don't need said feature, just don't install it. It's incredibly convenient to just install an extension, as opposed to an external program, configure paths and the like.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
    vim is 2.7 MB. How big is Atom? Edit: Jesus guys, enough with the white knighting for Atom. I think you should use whatever editor you want, I'm just countering the point that it's not bloated because it's modular.
    - netghost 11y ago
      Frickin' enormous, but at the end of the day if someone is productive in vim, use vim. If they're productive with Atom, use Atom. You can spend your life proving that your editor is the truth, or you can get on with it and build something awesome.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
        I don't think anyone is against the idea that you should use what you're comfortable with. I'm just backing up the idea that Atom is bloated, and even with all of the modules removed it's still going to be huge.
robin_reala 11y ago
Neat project. I was going to ask why you’d use Pusher instead of a WebRTC data channel as this is 1-to-1 P2P, but then I saw that it’s a Pusher project so I suppose there’s my answer.
volkk 11y ago
i'm more of a vim/tmux guy myself, so if i ever really need to pair -- this is my goto -- http://tmate.io/ http://tmate.io/
INTPnerd 11y ago
Why are all these tools still focused on "pair" programming. Just make tools that allow collaborative programming for two or more people.
jnordwick 11y ago
Atom, with a single source file open and freshly started, already weighs in at 500 MB resident when adding all processes together . It still lacks mode sensitive toolbar support, button bars, and basics Emacs has. I wish I could find a good editor that didn't kill my machine. Computers have far more memory and computing now that 10 years ago, but everything seems to run so much slower because of the cavalier attitude towards performance nowadays.
thisandthat 11y ago
I use notepad++ (windows) on about 10 computers that I use at work to quickly edit python files, mostly sublime text and PyCharm (OOB auto-completion, refactoring, documentation feature, and easy git integration) for more extensive coding on my main computer, and use VIM on remote servers. I've tried EMacs several times in the past but I found the commands a little hard to remember and little bit harder to get around in the editor than on VIM. I use atom time to time to get that feeling of sublime text on my other work computers but I tend to steer towards notepad++ because it's very snappy and i can do things more quickly for simple tasks. I prefer Sublime in most situations but I tend to just use whatever fits the best for the system and tasks at hand. I think this pair programming feature will be very useful when I'm working remotely with my team members located in other states.
adamzubi700 11y ago
http://googler700.blogspot.com/ http://googler700.blogspot.com/
tristan_b 11y ago
This looks like a great idea, but this was unfortunately it was really buggy and I couldn't get it to work. Would be very happy to try it out again once the bugs get ironed out.
jkasky 11y ago
Was excited to try this out, played around with it for about 10 minutes but gave up because there are too many bugs (all that I encountered have been reported as issues already). I'll try again once those issues are fixed.
ackalker 11y ago
Erhm, no local network setup? Why is it that nowadays all the so-called cool stuff requires me to sign up with some online service?

117 points by chabbers 11y ago

lepunk 11y ago

very cool. did a search for a Sublime equivalent of this and found https://floobits.com/ https://floobits.com/

rootlocus 11y ago
Seems to work with IntelliJ IDEA as well. Great success!
timboslice 11y ago
Floobits dev is amazing. Highly recommended
unhammer 11y ago
floobits is really cool, although I've never really gotten into it myself because the projects I would use it on include some large (10MB+) XML files, where floobits seems to make things slow / sync slowly (at least it did when I last tried some months ago); also, it seems to either require adding all files in a dir and using ignore-files, or starting a fresh folder – I'd rather just say "share this and that file only"

greg_data 11y ago

Should've been called Diatomic!

dopamean 11y ago
looks too much like Datomic. Rich Hickey would sue!

duiker101 11y ago

I found this the other day and thought it was pretty cool, real world application unfortunately didn't go as well as my local experiment. The file we were trying to work on ended up being repeated multiple times in the same session and characters were missing randomly at the beginning of some lines. Very wierd. That said, I still think it's a really nice concept and will give it another try.

userbinator 11y ago
How was the latency?
- duiker101 11y ago
  When we tried on an empty file it seemed fine, I wasn't in voice chat with my friend but I wouldn't say it was but, unfortunately once we got to real work it wasn't behaving properly so I can't tell.
  - chabbers 11y ago
    Ah that sucks - what was the problem? This is Jamie, the author. If you come across any further issues, feel free to raise a Github issue :)
chabbers 11y ago
Feel free to raise an issue and I'll take a look at it for sure - Jamie (the author). This could sometimes happen on earlier versions of the package, but has since been amended. But I would love to know more and see how best to rectify it.
- duiker101 11y ago
  I will see if/how I can reproduce it. This happened less than a week ago and it was just to try help a friend with a little script so I didn't go very far with it but i'll see what I can do to help! I actually thought it was really nice and having it working would be amazing.

jamestanderson 11y ago

Really cool project. I tried this about a month ago and had some issues, but I'll have to give it a second look and see if those have been resolved.

chabbers 11y ago
Feel free to raise an issue and I'll take a look as soon as I can! - Jamie, the author.
- jamestanderson 11y ago
  Thanks! duiker101 elsewhere in the thread posted the exact issue I was having! I'm not really sure how I'd go about helping to diagnose that.
  - bronson 11y ago
    Pair with Jamie on it?
    - chabbers 11y ago
      Good idea! That would probably be the best way

yjgyhj 11y ago

This is cool for Atom users! But it's also a sign of how text-based interfaces are extremely versatile in their simplicity. If Atom like many other great editors (vi, emacs, yi) was text-based at the core (although the examples have graphical frontons available) you get this without effort with tmux.

awestroke 11y ago
Not true. This supports each collaborator manipulating text in tandem, each with her or his own caret position. Also you can work in different files. That is simply not possible by throwing some tmux on it.
mikekchar 11y ago
Virtually our entire team has migrated to vim for this reason. We do a lot of pair programming and about 25% of the team is remote full time, so it is a big deal. Even the non-remote people tend to be remote about 20% of the time. It's strange that since I've switched to tmux and vim, I vastly prefer it to any other setup. I even ssh/tmux/vim pair when the person is sitting right next to me -- it's just so much more comfortable. What's even stranger is that I have returned to an almost all-terminal existence - vim (and emacs for org-mode :-) ), mutt, irssi (connected to slack...), cmus (for music). The only thing I use X for is my browser.

deanclatworthy 11y ago

Wow, this really is the holy grail for my small team. We have junior developers who would really gain a lot to see the senior's programming, but still able to work on other things at the same time. I wish JetBrains also had this!

taternuts 11y ago
Yeah me too, I was looking for a plugin the other day but came up empty
lawnchair_larry 11y ago
How does watching someone type help a junior? It seems incredibly awkward, and they could just view the finished result instead.
squeaky-clean 11y ago
As was posted somewhere else in the thread, Floobits is a collaboration plugin that supports the IntelliJ family of IDEs, as well as Sublime, emacs, and neovim. It works really well, even cross-editor. Though I've had a few issues when two users are editing lines too near each other (but the last time I used it was almost a year ago).

segmondy 11y ago

Most people hate pair programming. I opened up pairprogram in freenode IRC. When people had problems in other programming channels and I suggested to pair program to work it out, most refused. They just wanted the answer pastebin to them. I used http://tmate.io/ http://tmate.io/ running inside an LXC container running inside a VM.

jackweirdy 11y ago
I think your experience has been skewed by doing pair programming with someone on the internet, as opposed with a coworker or lab mate. Very different dynamic when you're pairing on something you'll personally work on again, as opposed to just fixing someone else's problems.

sirsuki 11y ago

I'm always fascinated how the editors we use tend to bloat. It seems like they get more and more features till they are a full blown IDE. I come from a Unix/Vim background and I thought "can Vim have a pair program… uh… wait! WAT?!" It does and it is call TMUX/GNU Screen. See in the Unix world programs do one thing and they do it well. You compose them or layer them to accomplish a bigger picture. So running Vim edits text while running TMUX/Screen lets you pair with multiple tabs and/or interact with the same Vim instance. So again I must ask "Why do text editors need to feature creep?"

outworlder 11y ago
In the case of Atom (as Emacs), it is fine because it's modular. So if you don't need said feature, just don't install it. It's incredibly convenient to just install an extension, as opposed to an external program, configure paths and the like.
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
  vim is 2.7 MB. How big is Atom? Edit: Jesus guys, enough with the white knighting for Atom. I think you should use whatever editor you want, I'm just countering the point that it's not bloated because it's modular.
  - netghost 11y ago
    Frickin' enormous, but at the end of the day if someone is productive in vim, use vim. If they're productive with Atom, use Atom. You can spend your life proving that your editor is the truth, or you can get on with it and build something awesome.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
      I don't think anyone is against the idea that you should use what you're comfortable with. I'm just backing up the idea that Atom is bloated, and even with all of the modules removed it's still going to be huge.

robin_reala 11y ago

Neat project. I was going to ask why you’d use Pusher instead of a WebRTC data channel as this is 1-to-1 P2P, but then I saw that it’s a Pusher project so I suppose there’s my answer.

volkk 11y ago

i'm more of a vim/tmux guy myself, so if i ever really need to pair -- this is my goto -- http://tmate.io/ http://tmate.io/

INTPnerd 11y ago

Why are all these tools still focused on "pair" programming. Just make tools that allow collaborative programming for two or more people.

jnordwick 11y ago

Atom, with a single source file open and freshly started, already weighs in at 500 MB resident when adding all processes together . It still lacks mode sensitive toolbar support, button bars, and basics Emacs has. I wish I could find a good editor that didn't kill my machine. Computers have far more memory and computing now that 10 years ago, but everything seems to run so much slower because of the cavalier attitude towards performance nowadays.

thisandthat 11y ago

I use notepad++ (windows) on about 10 computers that I use at work to quickly edit python files, mostly sublime text and PyCharm (OOB auto-completion, refactoring, documentation feature, and easy git integration) for more extensive coding on my main computer, and use VIM on remote servers. I've tried EMacs several times in the past but I found the commands a little hard to remember and little bit harder to get around in the editor than on VIM. I use atom time to time to get that feeling of sublime text on my other work computers but I tend to steer towards notepad++ because it's very snappy and i can do things more quickly for simple tasks. I prefer Sublime in most situations but I tend to just use whatever fits the best for the system and tasks at hand. I think this pair programming feature will be very useful when I'm working remotely with my team members located in other states.

adamzubi700 11y ago

http://googler700.blogspot.com/ http://googler700.blogspot.com/

tristan_b 11y ago

This looks like a great idea, but this was unfortunately it was really buggy and I couldn't get it to work. Would be very happy to try it out again once the bugs get ironed out.

jkasky 11y ago

Was excited to try this out, played around with it for about 10 minutes but gave up because there are too many bugs (all that I encountered have been reported as issues already). I'll try again once those issues are fixed.

ackalker 11y ago

Erhm, no local network setup? Why is it that nowadays all the so-called cool stuff requires me to sign up with some online service?