7 ms·

How the Scripto App Became a Fixture of Late-Night Comedy News

184 points by riordan 9y ago

jccalhoun 9y ago
This is the site that shows some of what the program looks like: http://scripto.computer/ http://scripto.computer/
- jdtang13 9y ago
  Wow, this looks really nice, actually. Hard to believe the creator is simply an "amateur coder".
  - alanfalcon 9y ago
    The creator isn’t simply an amateur coder, it’s a team of real coders working on a program originally conceived by Colbert and an amateur coder.
    - jdtang13 9y ago
      Oh, I see, thanks for the clarification.
  - tkone 9y ago
    Hi! CTO here! Scripto, itself, is based on etherpad-lite, with a ton of other code added to support various other features necessary to support the shows and was written by some contract employees.
    - potch 9y ago
      I was wondering if it was based on etherpad- super cool!
      - tkone 9y ago
        The new version we are working on (and briefly mentioned) is based on choo[0] with the editor provided code-mirror[1] and ot-delta[2] from quill with some custom (and soon to be open sourced) glue code to make them work together. 1. https://github.com/choojs https://github.com/choojs 2. http://codemirror.net http://codemirror.net 3. https://quilljs.com https://quilljs.com
    - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
      When I was in news television in ~2005, we dabbled with replacing iNEWS with something Web-friendly and nice, but the Web landscape just wasn't there. It seems like a million years ago, in terms of the Web. Our frustrations were the same, since iNEWS and ENPS are just slightly different flavors of shit sandwich, and while a typical ENG rundown can plod along with one-active-writer-per-slug the editing locks were starting to really get in the way of some other things we wanted to do. Reading this was just like being back in those meetings. Nice to see someone have the exact same idea and execute well. If you wanted to take on Avid, I bet you could firm up some ENG-type integrations (wire integration would be a showstopper) and get some traction in newsrooms, all of whom are having their thin budgets bled by AP and Avid. MediaCentral is a hot pile of garbage, I hear, so Avid might be handing you the opportunity as we speak. Showrunner has a big challenge in front of it taking on the Final Draft religion, but man, if you guys crack that nut...
    - seawlf 9y ago
      scripto.computer's Git repo is exposed http://scripto.computer/.git/HEAD http://scripto.computer/.git/HEAD
      - Hentwonce46 9y ago
        Uh yup. You can traverse the complete repo of the website.
      - graystevens 9y ago
        Depending on what is in your git repo, please don’t be the next Uber - if you had any secrets in your repository (even historical), definitely roll all your API keys and check secrets/credentials etc.
        tkone 9y ago
        Thankfully that was just our marketing site! Our team has fixed it (and re-issued any api key that could have been potentially compromised). Our product isn't a monorepo (and has a much more rigorous release process than this site), so even if the main repo that does the build is ever exposed, the secrets aren't in there :)
  - ilaksh 9y ago
    Much of the core functionality was created by the Etherpad and Etherpad Lite team. The integration, rundown editor (originally), full-text search, and other features were created largely by myself (in addition to Mindy). The use of the term "amateur coder" here is slander. But I understand why Rob and them started describing it that way -- the system fell down a few times in high-profile situations of course they totally blame me rather than taking credit for project management issues, so they used the fact that I don't have a degree against me and found all of the bad code and system restarts and pointed at that (I also wrote a lot of _very good_ code and solved some very tough technical challenges). Really the last time I was lead that we had an issue with the server going down was a third-party component that had a bug, and it came down to me deploying it in a hurry because we didn't have a good release process and I was tired from my other job. So I believe there were project management issue which I should have been more assertive over. But if I had money then I would consider suing regarding the use of terms like "amateur coder". I started learning software engineering when I was 8 years old (32 years ago), taught myself object-oriented programming in middle school. I have studied software engineering curriculum for many years online and also developed my own philosophy and practices around software engineering focused on feedback loops of different types and levels. I am a very good software engineer, not an "amateur coder".
    - datalus 9y ago
      Ummm.. Rob Dubbin was mentioned as the amateur coder. Slow down there :)
      - spunker540 9y ago
        Are you sure that person is not Rob Dubbin??
        notatoad 9y ago
        In another comment he says he isn't.
      - ilaksh 9y ago
        I see the problem now. By describing him that way, it implies that he was involved in the coding. In the years I worked on the project, he wrote zero lines of code for it. I was confused because that implication led me to believe that they were talking about a coder on the project, such as myself.
  - ccheever 9y ago
    I was Rob Dubbin's teaching fellow for a computer science course he took in college. He was pretty sharp!
randall 9y ago
A lot of people don’t know this but there’s a one person startup called Rundown Creator that a lot of big companies use to plan shows.
- sjwright 9y ago
  A lot of people don’t know this but [insert literally any non-trivial fact here]. (Sorry for the sarcasm, but I couldn't help myself.)
  - dang 9y ago
    Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
jkeat 9y ago
I’m in the midst of writing a script with a few other people, and we’ve been using Writer Duet: https://writerduet.com https://writerduet.com
daveguy 9y ago
Nice. Collaborative version control for Script writing/show running. Can the "amateur coder" and Stephen Colbert make something like this for programming? That would be very nice/useful. A layer on git? Is GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket already it? Real-time and ease of use don't seem to be there. Are there editor plugins like this for paired / multi programming? Is it just that the problem of "programming" is a lot more complex / open ended than show script development / execution? It seems like they have a lot of similarities. Getting multiple people to agree on the same tool may be a big part of the battle, but surely there are some comparable programming tools out there.
- tkone 9y ago
  Have you checked out https://glitch.com https://glitch.com? It has multi-user features in it.
- omasque 9y ago
  Wouldn't there already be a hundred things like this?
- frandroid 9y ago
  Yes.
- skellera 9y ago
  https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live-share https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live-share VS and VS Code are going to support this. Should be neat when it comes out.
- purple-dragon 9y ago
  Check out: SubEthaEdit [1]. It's been around a long time, and it's a beautiful product. Caveats: it costs money (worth it IMO), and it's Mac only. [1] https://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/ https://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/
  - kzrdude 9y ago
    It was an innovation, but is it maintained?
MattGrommes 9y ago
Rob Dubbin was on the Track Changes podcast with Paul Ford a couple of months ago and it was a pretty great episode: https://trackchanges.postlight.com/rob-dubbin-goes-off-script-a32f921961fa https://trackchanges.postlight.com/rob-dubbin-goes-off-scrip...
usermac 9y ago
Wow. I use Etherpad every day. Really enjoy Colbert. Colbert is really innovative in his use of tech. He uses Adobe to make the cartoon Trump and gives regular updates to Adobe to improve the product(the name escapes me).

184 points by riordan 9y ago

jccalhoun 9y ago

This is the site that shows some of what the program looks like: http://scripto.computer/ http://scripto.computer/

jdtang13 9y ago
Wow, this looks really nice, actually. Hard to believe the creator is simply an "amateur coder".
- alanfalcon 9y ago
  The creator isn’t simply an amateur coder, it’s a team of real coders working on a program originally conceived by Colbert and an amateur coder.
  - jdtang13 9y ago
    Oh, I see, thanks for the clarification.
- tkone 9y ago
  Hi! CTO here! Scripto, itself, is based on etherpad-lite, with a ton of other code added to support various other features necessary to support the shows and was written by some contract employees.
  - potch 9y ago
    I was wondering if it was based on etherpad- super cool!
    - tkone 9y ago
      The new version we are working on (and briefly mentioned) is based on choo[0] with the editor provided code-mirror[1] and ot-delta[2] from quill with some custom (and soon to be open sourced) glue code to make them work together. 1. https://github.com/choojs https://github.com/choojs 2. http://codemirror.net http://codemirror.net 3. https://quilljs.com https://quilljs.com
  - jsmthrowaway 9y ago
    When I was in news television in ~2005, we dabbled with replacing iNEWS with something Web-friendly and nice, but the Web landscape just wasn't there. It seems like a million years ago, in terms of the Web. Our frustrations were the same, since iNEWS and ENPS are just slightly different flavors of shit sandwich, and while a typical ENG rundown can plod along with one-active-writer-per-slug the editing locks were starting to really get in the way of some other things we wanted to do. Reading this was just like being back in those meetings. Nice to see someone have the exact same idea and execute well. If you wanted to take on Avid, I bet you could firm up some ENG-type integrations (wire integration would be a showstopper) and get some traction in newsrooms, all of whom are having their thin budgets bled by AP and Avid. MediaCentral is a hot pile of garbage, I hear, so Avid might be handing you the opportunity as we speak. Showrunner has a big challenge in front of it taking on the Final Draft religion, but man, if you guys crack that nut...
  - seawlf 9y ago
    scripto.computer's Git repo is exposed http://scripto.computer/.git/HEAD http://scripto.computer/.git/HEAD
    - Hentwonce46 9y ago
      Uh yup. You can traverse the complete repo of the website.
    - graystevens 9y ago
      Depending on what is in your git repo, please don’t be the next Uber - if you had any secrets in your repository (even historical), definitely roll all your API keys and check secrets/credentials etc.
      - tkone 9y ago
        Thankfully that was just our marketing site! Our team has fixed it (and re-issued any api key that could have been potentially compromised). Our product isn't a monorepo (and has a much more rigorous release process than this site), so even if the main repo that does the build is ever exposed, the secrets aren't in there :)
- ilaksh 9y ago
  Much of the core functionality was created by the Etherpad and Etherpad Lite team. The integration, rundown editor (originally), full-text search, and other features were created largely by myself (in addition to Mindy). The use of the term "amateur coder" here is slander. But I understand why Rob and them started describing it that way -- the system fell down a few times in high-profile situations of course they totally blame me rather than taking credit for project management issues, so they used the fact that I don't have a degree against me and found all of the bad code and system restarts and pointed at that (I also wrote a lot of _very good_ code and solved some very tough technical challenges). Really the last time I was lead that we had an issue with the server going down was a third-party component that had a bug, and it came down to me deploying it in a hurry because we didn't have a good release process and I was tired from my other job. So I believe there were project management issue which I should have been more assertive over. But if I had money then I would consider suing regarding the use of terms like "amateur coder". I started learning software engineering when I was 8 years old (32 years ago), taught myself object-oriented programming in middle school. I have studied software engineering curriculum for many years online and also developed my own philosophy and practices around software engineering focused on feedback loops of different types and levels. I am a very good software engineer, not an "amateur coder".
  - datalus 9y ago
    Ummm.. Rob Dubbin was mentioned as the amateur coder. Slow down there :)
    - spunker540 9y ago
      Are you sure that person is not Rob Dubbin??
      - notatoad 9y ago
        In another comment he says he isn't.
    - ilaksh 9y ago
      I see the problem now. By describing him that way, it implies that he was involved in the coding. In the years I worked on the project, he wrote zero lines of code for it. I was confused because that implication led me to believe that they were talking about a coder on the project, such as myself.
- ccheever 9y ago
  I was Rob Dubbin's teaching fellow for a computer science course he took in college. He was pretty sharp!

randall 9y ago

A lot of people don’t know this but there’s a one person startup called Rundown Creator that a lot of big companies use to plan shows.

sjwright 9y ago
A lot of people don’t know this but [insert literally any non-trivial fact here]. (Sorry for the sarcasm, but I couldn't help myself.)
- dang 9y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

jkeat 9y ago

I’m in the midst of writing a script with a few other people, and we’ve been using Writer Duet: https://writerduet.com https://writerduet.com

daveguy 9y ago

Nice. Collaborative version control for Script writing/show running. Can the "amateur coder" and Stephen Colbert make something like this for programming? That would be very nice/useful. A layer on git? Is GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket already it? Real-time and ease of use don't seem to be there. Are there editor plugins like this for paired / multi programming? Is it just that the problem of "programming" is a lot more complex / open ended than show script development / execution? It seems like they have a lot of similarities. Getting multiple people to agree on the same tool may be a big part of the battle, but surely there are some comparable programming tools out there.

tkone 9y ago
Have you checked out https://glitch.com https://glitch.com? It has multi-user features in it.
omasque 9y ago
Wouldn't there already be a hundred things like this?
frandroid 9y ago
Yes.
skellera 9y ago
https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live-share https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/11/15/live-share VS and VS Code are going to support this. Should be neat when it comes out.
purple-dragon 9y ago
Check out: SubEthaEdit [1]. It's been around a long time, and it's a beautiful product. Caveats: it costs money (worth it IMO), and it's Mac only. [1] https://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/ https://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/
- kzrdude 9y ago
  It was an innovation, but is it maintained?

MattGrommes 9y ago

Rob Dubbin was on the Track Changes podcast with Paul Ford a couple of months ago and it was a pretty great episode: https://trackchanges.postlight.com/rob-dubbin-goes-off-script-a32f921961fa https://trackchanges.postlight.com/rob-dubbin-goes-off-scrip...

usermac 9y ago

Wow. I use Etherpad every day. Really enjoy Colbert. Colbert is really innovative in his use of tech. He uses Adobe to make the cartoon Trump and gives regular updates to Adobe to improve the product(the name escapes me).