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The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

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Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#61

Post by [deleted] »

pg wrote: post #34
unalone wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 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…

Can 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.)

[deleted]

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#62

Post by izaidi »

pg wrote: post #37
dcurtis wrote: post #18

This 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?

I 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.

That's interesting. I'm the opposite way: I find I think less before writing and edit a lot more when I write on paper. Words on a screen look as flawlessly rendered as words in print, and to me that makes them seem more permanent; I feel like I have to really think hard before I can tell these perfect letters what to do. Stuff written in my own hand feels more tentative and more malleable.

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#63

Post by jyothi »

ttol wrote: post #3
pg wrote: post #2

I'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…

That 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..

That 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.

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#65

Post by jodrellblank »

pg wrote: post #2

I'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…

I 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?

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#66

Post by andyjenn »

blackguardx wrote: post #53
pg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being 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 wri…

I 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 sam…

I 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.

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#67

Post by nostrademons »

axod wrote: post #57
olefoo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because all the apps are moving online. I think that pendulum has almost reached the end of it's arc. There are a number of trends that are starting to pull in the opposite direction. From concerns about privacy and security to the proliferation of mobile computing, intermittent disconnection from the cloud has it's uses. Tools like Google Gears and the continued blurring of the line between desktop applications an…

"There are a number of trends that are starting to pull in the opposite direction. From concerns about privacy and security" Ironically I think it's the tech crowd/geeks (us) who are most resistant to webapps. We can see the privacy,security,reliability issues. The average users however, cannot. They're already embracing webapps.

That might actually be evidence that the pendulum has almost reached the end of its arc. The tech crowd first embraced the web just as average users were embracing the PC. Windows 95 was the first really usable version of Windows, and it was also the year of Netscape's IPO. Mainstream users adopt last decade's technology just as the early adopters are finding a new playground.

The big question is what's next. I'm guessing it'll be mobile - the geeks are embracing it just as the mainstream is finally becoming comfortable with last decade's technology. But it's a bit too early to tell.

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