6 ms·

Visual Studio Live Share Preview

163 points by nitinreddy88 9y ago

jitl 9y ago
See also Floobits, which has a similar product 5 years ago, which works great in Sublime and Intellij: https://floobits.com/ https://floobits.com/
- octref 9y ago
  Live Share is different than other collaboration tools in that it supports Language Features and Collaborative Debugging. By Language Features I mean all participants get auto completion, go to definition, error checking etc. Collaborative Debugging allows multiple people to step through code, inspect variables or look at call stacks. I don't know why the GitHub doc get linked, but this page probably gives more context: https://code.visualstudio.com/visual-studio-live-share https://code.visualstudio.com/visual-studio-live-share Disclaimer: I work at VS Code and have tried Live Share in private preview. Honest feeling is it still has some gaps, but if everything would work out of the box it can be pretty awesome.
tmandry 9y ago
Really cool to see this built into the editor. Getting over the hump of “well I could install this 3rd-party extension, create an account, and follow directions, or I could just walk over to my coworker’s desk for the 15th time” is probably a big barrier to adoption. With VS Code and Xi’s asynchronous-first architecture, maybe collaborative editing will become a standard for new editors in the future.
- lostintangent 9y ago
  This is really great feedback! I’m a PM on the Live Share team, and it’s definitely our goal for the getting started/collaboration experience to be simple enough that it could naturally become part of your workflow (as needed). If you’re interested in checking out the preview and letting us know how well we’re meeting that goal, I’d love to get your thoughts :)
kenning 9y ago
Visual studio code is pretty great, been using it with typescript and c# but it can do a whole lot of things. also the vim plugin works better than sublimes'. They're doing a pretty good job speeding ahead of other editors in terms of features and plugin support. Only thing is it's so slow. Just typing and navigating is pretty noticeably choppy. also it still has some memory leaks (although it used to be a lot worse)
- Topgamer7 9y ago
  I've been using vscode for dotnet core development for about a month now and I haven't had any of the issues you describe :S. I am running an alienware i7 laptop though...
  - philliphaydon 9y ago
    I run it on a 12" Macbook 1.3ghz, running Windows 10 in bootcamp, and it doesn't have any of the issues he described either.
    - dingo_bat 9y ago
      > 12" Macbook 1.3ghz > Windows 10 Sounds painful.
      - philliphaydon 9y ago
        > Sounds painful. With Windows 10 it's not, it's painful when running OSX, the animations make it laggy and stutter, while Windows 10 gives me about ~3 hours more battery life (cos there's no gfx switching like in the Macbook Pro)
        jchb 9y ago
        System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Reduce motion X, Reduce transparency X ? Not sure what you mean by "gfx switching", as far as I know all 12" Macbook have only a integrated graphics card, no discrete graphics card.
mandazi 9y ago
I bet this will be used for recruitment testing.
- _sdegutis 9y ago
  I think coderpad still makes sense here and it’s pretty common in my experience: it doesn’t require any local setup and is good for one-off problems. VSCode would be suitable for longer term work like live collaboration on a real project with lots of files.
  - devwinportable 9y ago
    have to agree on this... exposing local dev env to some outsider requires a lot of trust on some stranger
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Given the things I've seen used for that purpose, it would be huge improvement as an applicant, assuming it gives you basically VS/VSCode experience with sharing.
Mahn 9y ago
Somewhat tangential, but, is live coding with multiple people working on the same editor a thing? I feel like something like this would be incredibly distracting to get any actual work done, but I guess there must be legitimate use cases for this.
- ggregoire 9y ago
  Remote pair programming
  - dawnerd 9y ago
    Ugh. I have fond memories of pivotal guys being brought in and all they did was waste everyone’s time and money. They made sure everything they did was pair programmed for a freakin website.
    - ggregoire 9y ago
      Pair programming is a good way to learn from someone with more experience. It shouldn't be used to control what another guy is doing.
- chrisper 9y ago
  In the introduction video to VS Code Live Share, they showed the scenario of asking your coworker for help. Then together in the same editor you both fix the problem. I don't think it is meant that two or more people work at the same time in the same editor all the time.
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    Exactly. It's a pedagogical tool. Like having a conversation, but with executable code.
    - thecatspaw 9y ago
      but arent you having this discussing face to face anyway? Why not make it face to face to display?
bijoybest 9y ago
http://sportslivebd.com/2018/02/06/south-africa-vs-india-3rd-odi-today-match-prediction/ http://sportslivebd.com/2018/02/06/south-africa-vs-india-3rd...
xstartup 9y ago
I love pair programming with my wife. I wonder if there is any way to flash fading emojis.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  You could use the Windows 10 People bar (sign in to your Skype accounts, add each other to your taskbars, and you can send emoji that pop up from the taskbar).
antoineMoPa 9y ago
What I need would be an open source server with client packages for Vi and Emacs (maybe other editors too) so I can collaborate with my evil friends. Any Idea of such a server? (note: I know floobits exists, but it is not open source, as far as I know)
- Moter8 9y ago
  There's also gotty, which lets you share your shell access over https. I've used tmux together with it, to show a simple thing to a friend and it worked quite well. https://github.com/yudai/gotty https://github.com/yudai/gotty
  - jpeeler 9y ago
    Similarly, there's tmate which sets up a shared tmux session and proxies the SSH connection so it works through NAT without issue. If you don't trust the connection going through tmate.io you can set up your own server.
- devwinportable 9y ago
  how about tmux? screen? or do you need more than those?
  - antoineMoPa 9y ago
    We can't edit the same file in Emacs and Vim at the same time using these.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
polskibus 9y ago
Is that based on CRDTs / operational transform or is a different solution used?
- chillee 9y ago
  Operational transforms I believe.
alkonaut 9y ago
To me this seems like (I'll admit I only watched a video and haven't tried it) it tries to solve a very complex problem of allowing multiple live editors of the same file (?). Is that a solution in search of a problem? When you pair program with someone, or assist someone, for it to have any point at all isn't the idea that you always edit in ONE place, and that only one person edits at a time? How will personA know what personB is doing otherwise, if personB's cursor can be anywhere? Next, when personA and personB agree they have gotten somewhere and they launch their calculator app, web browser or whatever, how will both see what is going on? Is there support for also sharing a window/desktop? I mean, sharing my debugger state is cool, but what about the actual program window we are debugging? How can Jeff help me by introspecting variables in my program, if he can't see the program window? The simpler problem of "sharing a screen while coding" seems to me to be a solved problem: you share your screen and input, like any remote desktop solution has done for ages. I get that this is significantly lower bandwidth and more tailored to coding, but in return it seems to not solve many of the fundamental problems of collaborative development. I can see this tech being much more usable to e.g. develop cloud based IDE's, or remote debugging on servers, than "collaborative development"! Am I overly pessimistic or missing the point?
- lostintangent 9y ago
  PM on the Live Share team here. In many cases, yes, all collaborating participants would likely be working together in the same file. However, when speaking with folks as part of developing Live Share, we found that there were equally as many cases where developers wanted the ability to take certain actions independently (e.g. look up the definition of a function that’s in another file), without needing to disrupt the other parties, and without losing the ability to re-synchronize their focus once they were done. With that in mind, our goal for Live Share is to support “opportunistic collaboration” between developers, that supports a broad spectrum of needs/workflows/personal preferences/etc. in a way that potentially feels more natural for folks as they are helping/teaching each other (e.g. sometimes I want to tell you what I’m thinking, and sometimes I want to show you). Regarding your comment about being able to view the running app while debugging, we actually support the ability to “share local servers”, which allows this exact scenario for web apps/APIs/etc. https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/blob/master/docs/collab-vscode.md#sharing-a-local-server https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/blob/master/docs... It’s still early days for us, but it’s our goal that all meaningful editor/application context can be shared between participants, in order to effectively collaborate together (e.g. build output, terminal sessions).
z3t4 9y ago
It would be cool if you could start a session with someone using a different editor.
- eksu 9y ago
  I believe you can between Visual Studio for Windows and Visual Studio Code (Windows, Mac, Linux).
  - lostintangent 9y ago
    That’s correct. A developer in Visual Studio on Windows can share with a developer using VS Code on macOS/Windows, and vice versa. Enabling the ability to collaborate from the comfort of your favorite (and heavily customized) editor/IDE is one of the core goals behind Live Share.
keb_ 9y ago
I used Teletype with Atom this past weekend to help my cousin with his C++ homework, and it worked out pretty great. It was easy trying to communicate what to do instead of screen-sharing and specifying each line of code verbally. Looking forward to trying the VS Live Share, as I primarily work with VSCode anyway.
- lostintangent 9y ago
  We’d love to hear your feedback! Ping me and I’ll get you a Live Share preview invite.
chillee 9y ago
One of the other use cases for this technology that I haven't seen people bring up yet is remote editing. Whether you want to edit in a VM, or your company uses devservers, or you want to modify files on a remote server, the previous options were limited to terminal based editors. VS Live Share should have the technology to enable that for VSCode/VS. Check out this issue. https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/issues/74 https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/issues/74
- lostintangent 9y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this use case! We're (the Live Share team) very interested in exploring this moving forward, and so any feedback (using the tracking issue you mentioned), would be greatly appreciated.

163 points by nitinreddy88 9y ago

jitl 9y ago

See also Floobits, which has a similar product 5 years ago, which works great in Sublime and Intellij: https://floobits.com/ https://floobits.com/

octref 9y ago
Live Share is different than other collaboration tools in that it supports Language Features and Collaborative Debugging. By Language Features I mean all participants get auto completion, go to definition, error checking etc. Collaborative Debugging allows multiple people to step through code, inspect variables or look at call stacks. I don't know why the GitHub doc get linked, but this page probably gives more context: https://code.visualstudio.com/visual-studio-live-share https://code.visualstudio.com/visual-studio-live-share Disclaimer: I work at VS Code and have tried Live Share in private preview. Honest feeling is it still has some gaps, but if everything would work out of the box it can be pretty awesome.

tmandry 9y ago

Really cool to see this built into the editor. Getting over the hump of “well I could install this 3rd-party extension, create an account, and follow directions, or I could just walk over to my coworker’s desk for the 15th time” is probably a big barrier to adoption. With VS Code and Xi’s asynchronous-first architecture, maybe collaborative editing will become a standard for new editors in the future.

lostintangent 9y ago
This is really great feedback! I’m a PM on the Live Share team, and it’s definitely our goal for the getting started/collaboration experience to be simple enough that it could naturally become part of your workflow (as needed). If you’re interested in checking out the preview and letting us know how well we’re meeting that goal, I’d love to get your thoughts :)

kenning 9y ago

Visual studio code is pretty great, been using it with typescript and c# but it can do a whole lot of things. also the vim plugin works better than sublimes'. They're doing a pretty good job speeding ahead of other editors in terms of features and plugin support. Only thing is it's so slow. Just typing and navigating is pretty noticeably choppy. also it still has some memory leaks (although it used to be a lot worse)

Topgamer7 9y ago
I've been using vscode for dotnet core development for about a month now and I haven't had any of the issues you describe :S. I am running an alienware i7 laptop though...
- philliphaydon 9y ago
  I run it on a 12" Macbook 1.3ghz, running Windows 10 in bootcamp, and it doesn't have any of the issues he described either.
  - dingo_bat 9y ago
    > 12" Macbook 1.3ghz > Windows 10 Sounds painful.
    - philliphaydon 9y ago
      > Sounds painful. With Windows 10 it's not, it's painful when running OSX, the animations make it laggy and stutter, while Windows 10 gives me about ~3 hours more battery life (cos there's no gfx switching like in the Macbook Pro)
      - jchb 9y ago
        System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Reduce motion X, Reduce transparency X ? Not sure what you mean by "gfx switching", as far as I know all 12" Macbook have only a integrated graphics card, no discrete graphics card.

mandazi 9y ago

I bet this will be used for recruitment testing.

_sdegutis 9y ago
I think coderpad still makes sense here and it’s pretty common in my experience: it doesn’t require any local setup and is good for one-off problems. VSCode would be suitable for longer term work like live collaboration on a real project with lots of files.
- devwinportable 9y ago
  have to agree on this... exposing local dev env to some outsider requires a lot of trust on some stranger
dragonwriter 9y ago
Given the things I've seen used for that purpose, it would be huge improvement as an applicant, assuming it gives you basically VS/VSCode experience with sharing.

Mahn 9y ago

Somewhat tangential, but, is live coding with multiple people working on the same editor a thing? I feel like something like this would be incredibly distracting to get any actual work done, but I guess there must be legitimate use cases for this.

ggregoire 9y ago
Remote pair programming
- dawnerd 9y ago
  Ugh. I have fond memories of pivotal guys being brought in and all they did was waste everyone’s time and money. They made sure everything they did was pair programmed for a freakin website.
  - ggregoire 9y ago
    Pair programming is a good way to learn from someone with more experience. It shouldn't be used to control what another guy is doing.
chrisper 9y ago
In the introduction video to VS Code Live Share, they showed the scenario of asking your coworker for help. Then together in the same editor you both fix the problem. I don't think it is meant that two or more people work at the same time in the same editor all the time.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  Exactly. It's a pedagogical tool. Like having a conversation, but with executable code.
  - thecatspaw 9y ago
    but arent you having this discussing face to face anyway? Why not make it face to face to display?

bijoybest 9y ago

http://sportslivebd.com/2018/02/06/south-africa-vs-india-3rd-odi-today-match-prediction/ http://sportslivebd.com/2018/02/06/south-africa-vs-india-3rd...

xstartup 9y ago

I love pair programming with my wife. I wonder if there is any way to flash fading emojis.

WorldMaker 9y ago
You could use the Windows 10 People bar (sign in to your Skype accounts, add each other to your taskbars, and you can send emoji that pop up from the taskbar).

antoineMoPa 9y ago

What I need would be an open source server with client packages for Vi and Emacs (maybe other editors too) so I can collaborate with my evil friends. Any Idea of such a server? (note: I know floobits exists, but it is not open source, as far as I know)

Moter8 9y ago
There's also gotty, which lets you share your shell access over https. I've used tmux together with it, to show a simple thing to a friend and it worked quite well. https://github.com/yudai/gotty https://github.com/yudai/gotty
- jpeeler 9y ago
  Similarly, there's tmate which sets up a shared tmux session and proxies the SSH connection so it works through NAT without issue. If you don't trust the connection going through tmate.io you can set up your own server.
devwinportable 9y ago
how about tmux? screen? or do you need more than those?
- antoineMoPa 9y ago
  We can't edit the same file in Emacs and Vim at the same time using these.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

polskibus 9y ago

Is that based on CRDTs / operational transform or is a different solution used?

chillee 9y ago
Operational transforms I believe.

alkonaut 9y ago

To me this seems like (I'll admit I only watched a video and haven't tried it) it tries to solve a very complex problem of allowing multiple live editors of the same file (?). Is that a solution in search of a problem? When you pair program with someone, or assist someone, for it to have any point at all isn't the idea that you always edit in ONE place, and that only one person edits at a time? How will personA know what personB is doing otherwise, if personB's cursor can be anywhere? Next, when personA and personB agree they have gotten somewhere and they launch their calculator app, web browser or whatever, how will both see what is going on? Is there support for also sharing a window/desktop? I mean, sharing my debugger state is cool, but what about the actual program window we are debugging? How can Jeff help me by introspecting variables in my program, if he can't see the program window? The simpler problem of "sharing a screen while coding" seems to me to be a solved problem: you share your screen and input, like any remote desktop solution has done for ages. I get that this is significantly lower bandwidth and more tailored to coding, but in return it seems to not solve many of the fundamental problems of collaborative development. I can see this tech being much more usable to e.g. develop cloud based IDE's, or remote debugging on servers, than "collaborative development"! Am I overly pessimistic or missing the point?

lostintangent 9y ago
PM on the Live Share team here. In many cases, yes, all collaborating participants would likely be working together in the same file. However, when speaking with folks as part of developing Live Share, we found that there were equally as many cases where developers wanted the ability to take certain actions independently (e.g. look up the definition of a function that’s in another file), without needing to disrupt the other parties, and without losing the ability to re-synchronize their focus once they were done. With that in mind, our goal for Live Share is to support “opportunistic collaboration” between developers, that supports a broad spectrum of needs/workflows/personal preferences/etc. in a way that potentially feels more natural for folks as they are helping/teaching each other (e.g. sometimes I want to tell you what I’m thinking, and sometimes I want to show you). Regarding your comment about being able to view the running app while debugging, we actually support the ability to “share local servers”, which allows this exact scenario for web apps/APIs/etc. https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/blob/master/docs/collab-vscode.md#sharing-a-local-server https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/blob/master/docs... It’s still early days for us, but it’s our goal that all meaningful editor/application context can be shared between participants, in order to effectively collaborate together (e.g. build output, terminal sessions).

z3t4 9y ago

It would be cool if you could start a session with someone using a different editor.

eksu 9y ago
I believe you can between Visual Studio for Windows and Visual Studio Code (Windows, Mac, Linux).
- lostintangent 9y ago
  That’s correct. A developer in Visual Studio on Windows can share with a developer using VS Code on macOS/Windows, and vice versa. Enabling the ability to collaborate from the comfort of your favorite (and heavily customized) editor/IDE is one of the core goals behind Live Share.

keb_ 9y ago

I used Teletype with Atom this past weekend to help my cousin with his C++ homework, and it worked out pretty great. It was easy trying to communicate what to do instead of screen-sharing and specifying each line of code verbally. Looking forward to trying the VS Live Share, as I primarily work with VSCode anyway.

lostintangent 9y ago
We’d love to hear your feedback! Ping me and I’ll get you a Live Share preview invite.

chillee 9y ago

One of the other use cases for this technology that I haven't seen people bring up yet is remote editing. Whether you want to edit in a VM, or your company uses devservers, or you want to modify files on a remote server, the previous options were limited to terminal based editors. VS Live Share should have the technology to enable that for VSCode/VS. Check out this issue. https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/issues/74 https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/issues/74

lostintangent 9y ago
Thanks for mentioning this use case! We're (the Live Share team) very interested in exploring this moving forward, and so any feedback (using the tracking issue you mentioned), would be greatly appreciated.