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Is there a way to verify this is actually Paul Graham writing, not someone else who reenacted it based on the published essay?
I guess I'd answer the question with a cui bono question. Why would someone of Paul Graham's standing need to fake this? What would be his incentive to do so? He has nothing to gain from faking it. And I can't think of anyone else who stands to gain, either. Occam's Razor explanation is that he just thought it would be cool to show.
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Real time, as in a 1:1 ratio between the time it took him to write it and the time it takes for you to see it played back. Not as in live, where you see it as he's typing it.
No, that's not true. The keystrokes are played back at a constant rate with no breaks.
http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0301.html
And the great demo: http://www.realjabber.org/real_time_text_demo.html
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Everyone revises their work, many times over. But yes the great authors do as well. I think this tool is cool for that reason. “I have rewritten–often several times–every word I have ever written. My pencils outlast their erasers.” -- Vladimir Nabokov But are you really trying to compare a bullet-point style blog post (not really an essay) to Shakespeare, Hugo, or Dickens?
> Everyone revises their work, many times over. But yes the great authors do as well. You state that as if it's some universal truth but it's certainly not. We know that Asimov only ever wrote a first draft and a final draft and Heinlein wouldn't even create a first draft most of the time. Neither of them is a Nabokov or Hemingway but they certainly fall into the category of "everyone."
'I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakspeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he had blotted a thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this but for their ignorance who chose that circumstance to commend their friend by wherein he most faulted; and to justify mine own candour, for I loved the man, and do honour his memory on this side idolatry as much as any.'
Good to know I'm not alone. The more I read HN the more I find people, who are successful in their field and have the same behaviors as me. It's relaxing :-)
This functionality seems like it would be right at home in Google Docs.
This functionality was in etherpad, which was also YC-funded and also demoed their software with a playback of a pg essay. While etherpad lives on as an open source project the original company/team was acquired by google and this resulted in google docs getting real time cursor movement and edits shortly thereafter (google docs originally updated via polling and often had collisions). I think it's a shame that googl…
> Etherpad deserved all the attention that google wave was receiving at the time
I find your post confusing because I thought that Google Wave did have playback and contributor text highlighting.
I suspect that the reason Docs never gained these features was that Wave was supposed to replace it, but AFAICT Wave never saw the kind of user adoption it needed (probably due to its sluggish performance) and was killed off.
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Not really. Vi is all I need. I could probably think of things I'd like but don't realize I need. E.g. controlling an editor directly with my brain, so I didn't need to type. Hard to say about the narrower question of whether there is anything I'd want that's possible with existing technology.
Thank you Paul. I'm missing an ability to collapse / uncollapse parts of written text (meaningfully), so you could see only the plan, or summaries of each chapter, or paragraphs, etc. It would require a very good interface to be useful, but imagine the implications for consuming / learning when knowledge is presented in this way. honestly been wanting to build this for myself forever
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I guess I'd answer the question with a cui bono question. Why would someone of Paul Graham's standing need to fake this? What would be his incentive to do so? He has nothing to gain from faking it. And I can't think of anyone else who stands to gain, either. Occam's Razor explanation is that he just thought it would be cool to show.
Without the link from his own site we can't tell who even claims to have done the typing. Someone who isn't PG may have all sorts of reasons to fake it. Gentle suggestion - if you think the answer to someone's comment is obvious then it's a good sign there's a miscommunication and you should consider other interpretations.
To the contrary, I didn't think the answer to his comment was obvious. I don't claim to have the correct answer. And if that's the tone my comment conveyed, i.e., a dismissive one, then I probably conveyed myself improperly. That was not my intent.
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Thank you Paul. I'm missing an ability to collapse / uncollapse parts of written text (meaningfully), so you could see only the plan, or summaries of each chapter, or paragraphs, etc. It would require a very good interface to be useful, but imagine the implications for consuming / learning when knowledge is presented in this way. honestly been wanting to build this for myself forever
Have you tried using Workflowy? More of a list app, but could allow for very structured writing as well...