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The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad
- pg 18y agoI've been wanting to play back the writing of an essay for years. Since Etherpad saves every keystroke, I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back. "Startups in 13 Sentences" was the first essay I wrote on Etherpad. Now I'm going to write all of them on it. Playback is just one little feature of Etherpad, but think of the implications of this alone. Among other things it will make cheating impossible in classes where students write papers, because now you can finally "show your work" in writing the way you do in math.
- ttol 18y agoThat feature is neat and gives insight into the way people write. Would be just as interesting to see a playback of versioned source code files in SVN / CVS..
- pg 18y agoYou can do that in Etherpad now. It grew out of a code editor the Appjets wrote for their own use.
- jyothi 18y agoThat would be an amazing training tool. I have learnt the most by observing great engineers code, than reading tons of material. It just strikes at you the way they fork functions, how they name variables, logic, the way they would cut out/undo unnecessary statements and combine them to optimize code. It just reflects the way good programmers think when they code.
- ponchopepe 18y ago> think of the implications of this alone There are already non-webapp mouselog/keylog and replay applications. And besides, think of the implications of letting students be on the internet while they are writing essays.
- alecst 18y agoCan you provide links to some of these? I'd prefer a non-webapp version, since I have an intermittent internet connection.
- gleb 18y ago/usr/bin/script script -t 2> script.demo.time script.demo xemacs -nw # M-x tetris # ; play tetris now # C-x C-c ; exit emacs exit # watch tetris being played: scriptreplay script.demo.time script.demo script can create a "screencast" of any terminal session. This works pretty well, but probably is not the right solution for the education market pg is talking about :-)
- pg 18y agoIt's different when it's built into a generic, web-based editor. Imagine the difference between a) telling students to install a keylogger, write an essay with it turned on, then submit the essay plus the logs, and then the teacher figuring out how to replay the logs, versus b) telling students to write their essay at etherpad.com, they submit the url, teacher clicks on "replay." As for the matter of students being online, that's going to have to get solved anyway, because all the apps are moving online.
- wheels 18y agoOne thing that I'd find problematic with that is the inability to unplug to write. There are a lot of tasks (and as I recall you said the same in one of your essays) that I find I concentrate better with the internet unjacked. ...and even then I use WriteRoom, full screen green on black, no formatting options: http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom
- pg 18y agoIt seems to work when disconnected, at least for a while. I'd guess that if working offline isn't already supported, it will be eventually.
- Radix 18y agoI really liked this sentence I caught. "Launching lets you observe the collision between your presuppositions and the needs of actual users." I know, every word should tell, but I wish it had made it.
- davi 18y agoI noticed that sentence too, but my brain saw: "Launching lets you observe the collusion between your presuppositions and the needs of actual users." I went back, and you are right, it is collision. Collusion is more fun though. :)
- unalone 18y agoThis is an incredible thing to watch! Can you do this with any piece of writing on Etherpad? What a great way of bringing attention to a start-up: make something that's inherently fascinating due to features. This is unlike anything online I've seen before because the functionality just doesn't exist anywhere else. So it's a great thing to watch and it also tells you about the service. I like that you keep constantly going back to eliminate unnecessary language. Something tells me that's the first and most obvious trait of watching good writers write: at the governor's school, when the writers would write on paper instead of on the computer, you could read a draft and see that emerging pattern of phrase after phrase, each building on the last. It's interesting seeing it happen on the computer.
- pg 18y agoCan you do this with any piece of writing on Etherpad? Anything you write with it now you will be able to play back like this soon. Etherpad is already saving all the keystrokes. They just haven't released the player yet. (This is a one-off prototype.)
- jyothi 18y agoThat is going to be a killer. However, it should be somewhere hidden and available only if people really want to be able to replay. Else it is going to be an over kill on their servers.
- markessien 18y agoNot if everything is delivered in one blow and then played back with JS.
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- jodrellblank 18y agoI convinced the founders to add a way to play them back You often talk about releasing early, building something people want, etc. Since you carry a lot of influence, and (I guess) invest in Etherpad, and they've adjusted it to your personal request - do you worry that this effect might give you a distorted view of how well Etherpad specifically, and YC startups generally, are building what people want?
- swombat 18y agoConvincing someone of something you believe in and abusing your influence are two very different things. I don't think pg implied that he bullied them into implementing this, only that he talked them into it. And I can't imagine that YC would last long if pg got into the habit of bullying its start-ups into implementing his personal requests.
- wmeredith 18y agoI think it would last an even shorter amount of time if he never talked anyone in the YC program into anything.
- pg 18y agoI don't think they spent more than one man-day or so on this so far. Plus I'm pretty sure playback is something they would have built anyway.
- angstrom 18y agoValid point, but I think it's worth looking at the potential benefits. The thing I always hate about writing is that I'm constantly saving copies off to the side. At the very least I would think snapshots would be invaluable, but once you have playback, you basically already have snapshots with high granularity. While solutions like DropBox or Sharepoint allow versioning and collaboration it's at a higher level. Maybe I've been spoiled by VMWare, but I love having branches of specific versions to fall back on and test things out. Why should writing be any different?
- thorax 18y ago
- prakash 18y agoThis is absolutely brilliant!! If this were only available when you guys were writing code for Viaweb, and when you were writing On Lisp -- what a wonderful thing it would be to learn from. It would show the thought process behind what went into writing what you wrote!
- Xichekolas 18y agoMight I suggest, from the watcher's perspective, it'd be handy if the final feature sets the vertical scrollbar such that the currently playing change is on the screen? It might be kind of jerky during the editing stage, but it's better than scrolling around trying to find out where the action is. ;) What I learned from this is that I write very differently from the way you do. My first draft is almost straight stream of consciousness, and then I go back and reread and edit several times. You seem to make several attempts at each sentence before finding one you like, and then edit the whole thing. Of course, I may just not realize how I actually write, since I don't have a playback of anything of length to watch. What I'd really be interested in watching is some famous programmers working on code with this kind of playback. Not sure if it'd actually be enlightening, but it would be fun to experiment with.
- noahlt 18y ago> It might be kind of jerky during the editing stage, but it's better than scrolling around trying to find out where the action is. ;) With a bit of Javascript I'm sure you could make it scroll smoothly.
- alyssumclimbs 18y agoThis 'feature' seems ripe for a MS Word add-on, if it catches on. I doubt everyone will abandon their word processing software and user Etherpad.
- jimbokun 18y ago"I doubt everyone will abandon their word processing software and user Etherpad." They will probably give up Word for something, eventually. Especially among the current generation, writing is something done online; a blog, an email, a tweet, writing on someone's wall. At some point, it stops making sense to have a word processor distinct from the web. Right now, Word has more features that people like than online writing tools, but that will change over time. Online writing tools are a more natural fit for collaboration and integration with words' final destinations. Microsoft could make the online tool that replaces Word, but it is probably too dangerous to their current revenue stream. I don't think they can get the same revenue for an online version of Word, and it would be difficult for them to rationalize trying a new business model that may never regain the revenue they get now. (And yes, I'm basically just making the Innovator's Dilemma argument for word processors.)
- jodrellblank 18y agoMicrosoft could make the online tool that replaces Word Something like Windows Live Writer 2009? http://jalaj.net/2009/01/22/enter-windows-live-writer-2009/ http://jalaj.net/2009/01/22/enter-windows-live-writer-2009/
- jimbokun 18y ago"On running the installer ..." If it has an installer, it doesn't count as an online tool, as far as I'm concerned.
- gcheong 18y agoWhen can we have a playback of HN posts showing a time-lapse version of comments and up/down votes?
- derwiki 18y agoGoing off of the "show your work" idea, is it possible to analyze the writing style to prove that it was -you- who wrote it? Or is there too much variation? There was a bad episode of Numb3rs where they used someone's "typing profile" to identify someone, so it just got me thinking :)
- lann 18y agoIt's been done before, like the (now defunct?) BioPassword: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/tech/news/article_1295216.php/BioPassword_Using_keystroke_rhythm_to_authenticate_you http://www.monstersandcritics.com/tech/news/article_1295216.... If high-resolution timestamps for each keystroke aren't too much of a burden it seems like this would be straightforward to implement, given an algorithm like BioPassword's.
- derwiki 18y agoIt looks like BioPassword works best on short, often repeated phrases like login names and passwords. I'm not sure how it would work for larger, unpracticed blocks of text. Etherpad would also need to store information about the timing of when each key is pressed, and based on the demo it doesn't look like they're doing that.
- TimothyFitz 18y agoIndeed, I've written all of my posts on a combination of Darkroom and Etherpad. Etherpad lets me involve a couple editors who can make copy edits and suggestions while I'm still the draft.
- quizbiz 18y agoAn incredible website. Finally I have found the motivation I need to write my IB Extended Essay (days before it is due). How do you get the play back link though?
- pg 18y agoFor now they just hacked together something custom for me. However, Etherpad saves every keystroke, so once they enable this for everyone, you'll be able to replay stuff you wrote with it.
- quizbiz 18y agoIncredible. I was talking about my teacher about how a transition away from paper to tech is great and all but we have lost the sense of keeping drafts. Drafts have a very high value. I don't know how you are connected with the folks @ Etherpad but if there is anyway I can help, let me know.
- jmatt 18y agoI was also trying to figure out how to roll my own replay on Etherpad. I look forward to seeing it live for all users. This will be a great tool for the classroom. Whether it's tracking collaboration on papers or "showing work".
- ashishk 18y agocool! I did IB in Tallahassee, Florida. That was 5 years ago, but good luck!
- quizbiz 18y agoThanks. Right now IB = stress. That is all.
- jwb119 18y agoGreat site. Interesting biz related side topic: Have sites like this trended too far towards the policy of "no account required"? This is a service I actually want to sign up for and I wasn't able to find a sign up link after looking around for 30 seconds or so. Surely there would be some benefit to EtherPad to have me sign up for an actual account and collect data on me.. which in this case I am happy to have them do since they are providing a solid service..
- aaroniba 18y agoWe're thinking of charging for having accounts.
- kleevr 18y agoThis might be a silly question, but could anyone recommend a solid resource on case studies of fairly recent startups? ...wait a second, a stupid detector is going off in my head, let me check something real quick... (googles "founders at work")... well that's the one -- curiously I hadn't read it's synopsis before... I would still be interested in further reading suggestions though if other books come to mind.?
- jfarmer 18y agoWhat does the [xfs] annotation mean? I like seeing how other people write. :) Edit: Nevermind. I see they're the references at the bottom! Why xfs and xtc?
- pg 18y agoI try to use strings of chars that don't naturally occur in English so I can find them by searching.
- andreyf 18y agoWould be interesting to see the same for code, with a high-level AST representation, and with different coders shown in different colors.
- ivankirigin 18y agoThis is so hot. I'm really blown away. It's also really interesting to watch a good writer go about editing. This is certainly a way to teach writing, besides the obvious method of practice.
- petercooper 18y agoMaybe, but only if you had a larger sample than one person. You'll find that there are at least several common ways to write - most quite unlike each other. That would probably be the biggest lesson.. that there is little you can learn from watching this process except "just do it your way". I found it quite surprising to watch. I thought it was a genetic algorithm writing an article somehow at first with all the constant deleting and rewriting. Once I realized what was really going on I was struck by what an odd writing style it was (to my experience). I'm firmly in the "get it all out then come back and tighten it up" clan. There are, I suspect, at least several groups though.. I'm intrigued what they all are (perhaps the "just write and don't ever edit" group, the "refine as you go" group, the "headings then fill the gaps" group...)
- gstar 18y agoI thought it was a genetic algorithm writing an article somehow You have great intuition, because it actually was!
- there 18y agoi'd love to see how a piece of legislation gets written with something like this.
- dcurtis 18y agoThis is interesting to watch. I notice you type something, you delete it, and then type something different quite a bit. When you write on paper, how do you deal with this constant deletion?
- bockris 18y agoI do this too. I basically am a non-functioning writer unless I am on a computer. I guess I'm lucky I was born when I was. Side note. Neal Stephenson wrote the Baroque Cycle out long hand. This post (http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2009/01/the-entire-terr.html http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2009/01/the-entire-terr.html) was from last month ago but I also remember 3 other pictures from several years ago. http://www.nealstephenson.com/photos.htm http://www.nealstephenson.com/photos.htm I was completely dumbfounded when I first saw that stack of paper because I can barely manage to write a one line note to my wife without scratching something out. To undertake something as large as the Baroque cycle trilogy is really beyond my comprehension. I don't know if he wrote Cryptonomicon this way also but my first edition is full of typos. Something I imagine could happen if you turn over several hundred hand written pages with edits to a typist.
- swombat 18y agoWriting on paper has one advantage: because you can't revise things, you're forced to finish the first draft before you start on the second. So, what you produce may not be as good as it will get later, but at least it's complete. The major disadvantage of writing on paper is of course when you have no idea what you're going to write ahead of time, because then your first draft is going to be very, very low quality.
- pg 18y agoI think more before writing when it's on paper. The medium has more friction. But I haven't written anything for publication on paper since 1991, when I finished writing On Lisp on a stack of legal pads.
- izaidi 18y ago
- YuriNiyazov 18y agohow long did that take in real time?
- pg 18y agoIt's so hard to guess. I remember it taking about 3 days, but not working all day. I know there were 5400 half-second intervals when I typed at least one keystroke (that's what the numbers at the top mean).
- briancooley 18y agoIt would be really interesting to see timestamps, particularly in longer works. Two reasons: 1) You could see when the Eureka! moments occur. 2) To easily get a real measure of how long it really takes to write. I have a real problem with 2), both with underestimating how long it will take to do things I think will be easy to write, and overestimating things I think will be hard. Of course, there's a lot more to writing than typing, but it could provide important information that is tedious to track at a high level and impossible to track at the level of granularity that this app could.
- kulkarnic 18y ago5400 half-seconds is 45 minutes. So, assuming you take 2 min to think for every 1 min of typing, that's still working on the essay just 45 minutes everyday (for 3 days). I think (from comment above: "not working all day") you took much longer than the figure above? Perhaps a lot more thought goes into an essay than I imagine?
- rokhayakebe 18y agoEtherpad technology marks the Beginning of the End of comment spamming, although that is not what it is intended for.
- jorgem 18y agoI'm not so sure. I think I could fake it.
- cschneid 18y agoBayesian analysis on not just the content, but the way the content was written. It'd be fakable, but not easy.
- anatoly 18y agoWouldn't that penalize people who write comments in their editor, then copy-paste into the comment box?
- rokhayakebe 18y agoWow. Who does that? I do not mean this in a sarcastic manner, but this is the first time I hear of it.
- anatoly 18y agoMany people. There's even a moderately popular firefox plugin to automate the process (the name escapes me) - it invokes your editor for you, then when you save and exit it copies the temp file into the textarea.
- mynameishere 18y agoEh. Welcome to the past. The copious version changes to Beethoven's 9th have always been available, for instance. Pen and paper and scratch-marks...
- CaptainR 18y agoThis is really amazing. It's interesting to watch you experiment with many PG-esque phrasings before settling on the final one, especially in the introduction.
- eisenkr 18y agoA few years ago I stumbled on a wonderful art project where people used a similar technique to record world class poets as they wrote for 15 minutes. The site is still live at http://quickmuse.com/ http://quickmuse.com/ if you want to see a poet laureate or two write poems. Robert Pinsky's poems are particularly fascinating to watch because he never makes a single edit or mistake.
- aak 18y agoWhat exactly about this makes it the most surprising thing you've seen in two months?
- pg 18y agoBeing able to watch how I write. It's like seeing a photograph of oneself for the first time. I had no idea how often I restarted sentences, for example. There's other stuff I want to see that should be even more interesting. When it's replaying, I want to be able to see characters that make it into the final version in one color, and others in another. Then I'll be able to tell when I'm writing well and when I'm writing badly.
- blackguardx 18y agoI tend to frequently restart sentences as well. I have found that pushing myself to quickly get an extremely rough draft down makes me more efficient. This rough draft helps me focus my thoughts in the beginning on what I want to say. I can come back later and change how I say it. If I don't do this--and I frequently don't--I find my output grinds to a halt with my brain both creating and editing sentences at the same time. What are your thoughts on this?
- andyjenn 18y agoI do something similar; get a first draft out quickly so I'm not inhibited by grammar, sentence structure, logical flow etc.. then perform a second parse to tighten everything up. Interestingly, I sometimes find I almost completely reverse the passage I've written! It's as if my brain performs some sort of initial stackdump to convey my thoughts.
- sayrer 18y agoGood for Etherpad. Features that enable narcissism often do very well. :) However, I have to admit that I think such playback would make me a better writer.
- nitam 18y agoI really like this evolutionary-way of writing. Small little improvements and changes until it sounds better and fits better to the rest of the paragraph/text/code. I found out that if i am disciplined enough when writing code this way the result is much much better. When i was working in corporate world there was always some distraction (boss, time constraints , ...) to break this flow resulting in not so good code.
- jasonkester 18y agoThanks for that. I built this same thing into Twiddla (to replay meetings), but never released it because I didn't like the interface. I had always assumed that nobody would get it unless I built a silly little mp3/cd player timeline with sliders and buttons. This changed my mind. Simple works just fine. Gimme a couple days and I'll polish it up and throw it live. Thanks again!
- jasonkester 18y agoFollowup: Done and launched. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=496331 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=496331
- TobiasCassell 18y agoSpectacular! Reminds me of of Le Mystere Picasso eh, PG?
- wenbert 18y agoThis is amazing. I can't wait to have syntax highlighting for code. I am imagining this as a "live"/"real-time" paste2.org This would make collaboration much faster.
- martian 18y agoA similar project for sending email has existed for a few years, created by the MIT media lab. Check it out at http://www.fuzzmail.org/ http://www.fuzzmail.org/
- gojomo 18y agoI'd been kicking around the idea of doing something like this in Javascript for a while. My working title was 'TimeWriter', but I never got beyond some notes on delta formats and UI, and discussions with friends. There's lots more potential in the graphical dimension: sliders, text color/weight that varies with age/volatility; timelines of activity (gross keystrokes or net adds/deletes) that go by either keystroke-time or clock-time. Also an interesting thing to think about: how to build an efficient text index that can find any word or phrase that was ever present, even momentarily (or as the prefix of another word mid-typing) -- and plot its positions and lifespans. Of course with smallish works just replaying every tick and grepping every frame could work. However, my initial inspiration for the TimeWriter idea was hosting an indefinitely lengthy personal journal. Each day, you could edit with abandon, knowing that instant search could find any fragmentary thought (and surrounding context) you'd ever jotted. The freedom of a clean sheet of paper, whenever necessary, with the confidence of perpetual perfect recall, when desired.
- eru 18y agoI would pay for a black board with history.
- dnaquin 18y agoCute use of a Lisp comment as a temporary placeholder towards the end.
- ananthrk 18y agoAs others have mentioned - a great experience to watch PG writing essays. However, I was put off by the speed. Is this because PG was typing so fast or is it the player? Is it possible to control the speed (other than the Prev/Next link at the top)?
- jodrellblank 18y agoYou make so many spelling mistakes (compared to making none, not compared to me), would a good autocorrect save you enough effort to be worth it?
- simplegeek 18y agoThis is very cool stuff. I wish it had existed before. One small wish/request: can we have a slider that we can use to control the speed? I'm guessing that would be very helpful.
- vidar 18y agoIt might be helpful to get some visuals on time lapses, e.g. breaks and perhaps multi-day sessions.
- dulbelajardul 18y agoI have been dreaming of all this stuff, unfortunately i don't have skill for this. Thank you God someone made this happen
- dfranke 18y agoI might implement an emacs minor mode that does this.
- bentoner 18y agoPlease do! I would use it.
- shimon 18y agoYou're probably thinking of an emacs mode that does this on its own, but it would also be excellent to have an emacs minor mode that integrates with Etherpad. Ideally, you just do M-x etherpad-buffer and emacs tells you a URL that you can then send around and let other people watch / co-edit whatever you're editing in emacs. To make this work, Etherpad would need to provide an API, though not necessarily a well-documented one. A supported API might make sense for Etherpad, though. Imagine being able to load a Wordpress plugin that enables playback of your blog posts. Or something that lets you co-author blog posts on etherpad. Oh, and greasemonkey scripts that let you co-edit any elements in a web form. OK... let's not get ahead of ourselves...
- omouse 18y agoHe actually does mean a minor mode. Imagine using it while writing code, not just essays.
- yters 18y agoEven without an API he could probably hack something with lynx and term-mode.
- kulkarnic 18y agoNot so sure; if I'm not mistaken Lynx javascript support is rudimentary (if not non-existent). Doing Comet on that would be somewhat challenging, I guess. An API to etherpad would realy help, IMO.
- michener 18y agoIf you are going to do that, you should know about dribble files: http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/cgi-bin/info2www?(elisp)Recording+Input http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/cgi-bin/info2www?(elisp)Recording+I...
- utnick 18y agoi thought about doing something like this in javascript for the comment or feedback boxes on websites, so you could see what people really think This web site sucks and you are a moron\b\b\b\b\\b\b\b\b\b\\b\b...\b\b\b\b\b\\bb\bGood day sir, I can't seem to find how to cancel my account. Thank you and I hope you are having a pleasant evening.
- boredguy8 18y agoThere's huge potential here, especially if there's some sort of even imperfect high-level 'glomming'. How often have you written a clever turn of phrase, an insightful paragraph, or a poignant witticism, gone back and removed it to fix flow, and then re-wrote it, not getting the phrasing quite right? The ability to fix those types of changes, or to revert back to a paragraph "somewhere in the middle" would be huge.
- biohacker42 18y agoThis is great, I would love the same for Emacs and coding, I'd love to see how great hackers code.
- niels_olson 18y agoI'm in love. This is like seeing conversations in GMail for the first time. Of course you should be able to do this. I want this function everywhere.
- youngnh 18y agoI'd like to see this applied as an embeddable feature in hacker news. see who writes comments, which comments get commented on and what people really have to say before they hit that 'add comment' button
- sofal 18y agoI'm self-critical enough as it is just realizing that someone else is going to read the finished product, let alone everything I wrote before exposing it. I would have a hard time letting my thoughts flow. In addition, for school papers I would type in sarcastic or snarky sentences just for fun about what I really think of the subject matter or whatever book I was forced to write an essay for at the time. Sometimes I'd go so far that I would save a different copy of the paper just so that I could go back and laugh at it years later. It looks like a great way to gain insight into how you or someone else writes, but I think it should always be opt-in.
- keefe 18y agoit would be awesome to be able to specify a rate of change as changes/second or something
- julianz 18y agoInteresting - this is exactly how journal recovery used to work on VMS. I remember watching my mother edit documents in the MASS-11 (http://www.stanq.com/blog/?p=11 http://www.stanq.com/blog/?p=11) word processor on a VT-100 terminal. If her session fell off she'd ring an operator and he'd play her session back on the screen; it looked exactly like this!