Ask HN: Which software do you use for your presentations?

To address your question specifically: I am not actually presenting the software to a live audience. Not aiming to make it particularly glitzy either as I will be keeping it pretty minimal (should have decent slide transitions though). Will be interleaving with videos (recorded using loom) which demonstrates the software. I definitely do need slides to show bullet points. Will voice over the presentation (which will be recorded too).

These videos will be part of the documentation for the software. Specifically for those who prefer watching videos over reading the documentation itself.

Either ways, will consider any suggestion you might have for an alternate way of communicating to customers.

I've moved away from this style of presentation. Everything on a slide feels like dead content. People fall asleep when you whip out a slide deck.

These days if I want to show you code, I'll open up my IDE and show it to you, right there in my code window. I don't really understand why this is different from screenshotting the code and putting it in a slide, but it is. The audience feels differently about code in your IDE. They ask more questions about it, and you can explore other parts of the code than what is on screen. If I want to show what the code does, I'll open the app or website and show it in its "live" context. A demo is more interesting than a set of screenshots, even if the content itself is identical.

And as for diagrams and title slides and things, I like to draw them by hand on my ipad. Sometimes I do that live, and sometimes I prepare a bunch of drawings beforehand and flip through them. (But while I'm presenting I'll often add more lines while I explain something). I use GoodNotes for ipad for that. People get really engaged by hand drawn slides, and I always get good feedback on them. I think novelty is the only reason. Everyone is bored to death of Powerpoint and hand drawn stuff catches the eye.

If you want your presentations to look like everyone else's, then sure - use keynote or whatever. But if you want your presentations to be interesting and engaging, don't go where everyone else is going. Find another way to tell your story.

Microsoft Powerpoint

I usually run beamer for presentations but I've been looking for a markdown alternative for some time, since it would allow me to transform notes into presentations quickly. This package looks really promising. Thank you for sharing it.

If you are on macOS, I can recommend Deckset[0]. I've been using it for years and noticed that I can piece together a great-looking presentation in a rather short time.

Since I only write Markdown, I can focus on the content of my presentation. I don't need to make micro-decisions about the layout all the time.

It also allows you to easily add code highlighting with the features you require.

It does NOT support fancy transitions or motions, though.

[0]: https://www.deckset.com/