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I speak at conferences/developer meetups on a regular basis, and this is intriguing. I have two primary concerns: 1) When you’re doing a live presentation, ma

I speak at conferences/developer meetups on a regular basis, and this is intriguing. I have two primary concerns: 1) When you’re doing a live presentation, making the occasional mistake is not only expected, it helps prove that what you’re doing is really live. With a tool like this, everything might be TOO perfect. Might have to start incorporating intentional flubs into the script to make things authentic. 2) I haven’t tried this out yet, but I wonder what happens when something goes wrong. I’ve had too many live situations impacted by some unforeseen thing. Forgot to clean up the working directory last time I ran the demo, or who knows what. I’d want to have the ability to take over the controls if needed. And of course, the antidote to #2 is having very carefully planned repeatable steps with a “cleanup” at the beginning or end to prep for the next time around. All said, very cool, and I’ll be trying this soon. Edit: Downvotes, really?

epicide 9y ago
Unfortunately, there is always something that can (and likely will) go wrong. You will always need a "fail gracefully" option.
tyingq 9y ago
> I’d want to have the ability to take over the controls if needed. ^C and <esc> do interrupt the playback and print 'Aborted!' to stdout. >Might have to start incorporating intentional flubs into the script to make things authentic Unfortunately, flubs give a bit away by showing the temp file that's being run: $ datl /tmp/tmpzygMVj: line 4: datl: command not found I also tried inserting some ^H backspaces in the script. It almost looks like it will work (shows the backspace and correction), then spits out "/tmp/tmp2qhBos: line 4: $'datl\be': command not found"
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
There's nothing wrong with doing things perfectly; mention you're using a script to avoid the demo effect if need be. Tools like this will really help speed up your presentation, especially if you're not too fast a typer. Also for cleanup, wrap this command in its own shell script; for example: #!/bin/bash rm -rf temp || true doitlive session.sh
- benji-york 9y ago
  I don't think you need the "|| true" there.
decafb 9y ago
The problem is while presenting my IQ is 20 points lower. I suppose this holds for many people. There are too many presentations on youtube which spend minutes just fixing typos. I agree a few seem authentic but soon it just feels like a waste of time — and break in the flow of presentation.
- haswell 9y ago
  Yeah, I absolutly agree with you there. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is valuable. I’ve had plenty of moments where the brain->finger->keyboard connection just fails under the pressure of a live demo.
- cujic9 9y ago
  > The problem is while presenting my IQ is 20 points lower. I swear I've said these exact words.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  I'm not sure about the 20 points number, the effect feels much larger. Perhaps if you simultaneously apply a 20% penalty to hand-eye coordination, balance, facial expressions, typing skills, enunciation, penmanship, memory/recall, creativity, etc. you could accurately represent my skill as a human being while presenting.
  - kpil 9y ago
    It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a keyboard is guaranteed to spot spelling errors and trivial errors absolutely last of everyone watching.
- joshvm 9y ago
  I think a nice workaround for this is to use something like a Jupyter Notebook (which also has bash support). You have all the commands pre-entered and you can step through as necessary. If you need to add something because of an audience question you can just insert a new cell. It looks live and in my opinion better than faffing in a terminal. You also have the bonus of being able to provide the notebook to your audience after the talk (or they can follow along with you).

epicide 9y ago

Unfortunately, there is always something that can (and likely will) go wrong. You will always need a "fail gracefully" option.

tyingq 9y ago

> I’d want to have the ability to take over the controls if needed. ^C and <esc> do interrupt the playback and print 'Aborted!' to stdout. >Might have to start incorporating intentional flubs into the script to make things authentic Unfortunately, flubs give a bit away by showing the temp file that's being run: $ datl /tmp/tmpzygMVj: line 4: datl: command not found I also tried inserting some ^H backspaces in the script. It almost looks like it will work (shows the backspace and correction), then spits out "/tmp/tmp2qhBos: line 4: $'datl\be': command not found"

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

There's nothing wrong with doing things perfectly; mention you're using a script to avoid the demo effect if need be. Tools like this will really help speed up your presentation, especially if you're not too fast a typer. Also for cleanup, wrap this command in its own shell script; for example: #!/bin/bash rm -rf temp || true doitlive session.sh

benji-york 9y ago
I don't think you need the "|| true" there.

decafb 9y ago

The problem is while presenting my IQ is 20 points lower. I suppose this holds for many people. There are too many presentations on youtube which spend minutes just fixing typos. I agree a few seem authentic but soon it just feels like a waste of time — and break in the flow of presentation.

haswell 9y ago
Yeah, I absolutly agree with you there. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is valuable. I’ve had plenty of moments where the brain->finger->keyboard connection just fails under the pressure of a live demo.
cujic9 9y ago
> The problem is while presenting my IQ is 20 points lower. I swear I've said these exact words.
LeifCarrotson 9y ago
I'm not sure about the 20 points number, the effect feels much larger. Perhaps if you simultaneously apply a 20% penalty to hand-eye coordination, balance, facial expressions, typing skills, enunciation, penmanship, memory/recall, creativity, etc. you could accurately represent my skill as a human being while presenting.
- kpil 9y ago
  It's a truth universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a keyboard is guaranteed to spot spelling errors and trivial errors absolutely last of everyone watching.
joshvm 9y ago
I think a nice workaround for this is to use something like a Jupyter Notebook (which also has bash support). You have all the commands pre-entered and you can step through as necessary. If you need to add something because of an audience question you can just insert a new cell. It looks live and in my opinion better than faffing in a terminal. You also have the bonus of being able to provide the notebook to your audience after the talk (or they can follow along with you).