All Geekness Great and Small

Lot’s of people have been writing about Bespin, including Whurley, and I’ve got to say, I’m not sharing the general enthusiasm for the release.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea of a code editor which is inherently connected to the web is a great idea, but let’s not get over-excited about what was presented and what has been promised.

First, what was actually released last week? It was a text editor with syntax highlighting for 3 languages. It provides line numbering. It dos not allow you to paste from your clipboard, as I discovered to my dismay. It does not allow you to create new files. It does not allow you rename files… in fact it basically allows you to do nothing but alter the contents of 3 files that are pre-generated for you. I’ve been using code editors that blow this functionality out of the water for years.

I watched the demo video and was stunned that a reasonable amount of time was spent extolling the virtues of the scroll-bars. Now don’t get me wrong; these guys have done some neat coding to work with the <canvas> element and to get this working, but the net achievement was to implement scroll-bars… hardly an innovation. While this may be no mean feat, I’m not going to switch to a new editor because it has… tada!… scroll-bars.

I think the release of Bespin in its current form was a mistake. The demo showed no innovation in terms of functionality or usability. In fact, right now, it’s a retrograde step. It provides no means for coders to extend it, by adding their own commands or syntax highlighting files or other such modifications.

Now, let me comment on the future of coding in the cloud. There already exist a wide variety of frameworks that allow multiple coders from disparate locations to work on the same code base. I’m not saying they’re perfect, but the idea of remote collaboration is not a new one. For coding in the cloud to really be effective, it needs to bring something radically different. It also needs to bring something that couldn’t be achieved with an Eclipse plugin or the suitable modification to your IDE of choice. The big promise of code computing is that it could allow peer programming with remote peers. Imagine a code editor with built-in webcam support so that you and a peer can work on the same piece of code (updated real-time on both screens), while being able to talk ‘face to face’. Now that I could get excited about!

Let me finish by saying that I don’t wish to denigrate the efforts of these guys; I think the goal is commendable and could bring exciting things to the act of coding. However, what I saw this Friday was technology for it’s own sake… and poorly presented at that. I want to see Mozilla provide us with a demo that does something new and invites users to actually try it out for real and start to add their own tweaks and flair. You never know, they might come up with the next great feature!

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