

Show HN: Codassium – A better way to conduct remote interviews - karterk
http://codassium.com/?hn

======
spoondan
I've used Codassium for about two dozen phone screens starting from when you
posted the prototype last year, and I think it's great. Here are a few
thoughts/issues I've had using the prototype and Lite version (I've not yet
tried the full version):

I can't select C/C++ from the language drop down.

About half of the time, I don't use the video chat functionality for one
reason or another. I'd love in those cases if I could simply close the video
conferencing panel to have the editor full screen.

Even if you don't allow me to disable video conferencing for the Codassium
session, I would recommend different messaging on the right hand side panel.
I've had a few candidates say that it isn't working because the right hand
side just says, "Loading..." when we don't use the video conferencing.

There's a typo on the Tour page: "Schedule an interview via Codassium is
easy," should be, " _Scheduling_ an interview an interview via Codassium is
easy."

I'm not a fan of the pricing plans. I'm unsure of the idea of limiting the
number of uses per month in general, but the current limits are very
unattractive. It's all basically oriented around each user only doing 3
interviews per month. I would prefer a limit on number of hours per day or
number of uses per day over the total number of phone screens. As it is,
everyone that I've turned on to Codassium would have to get a Custom Plan.

It'd be nice if the things I type versus the things they type were
differentiated in some way. Maybe just a subtly different background color?

~~~
karterk
Thanks a lot for the feedback about the bugs and the pricing plan. Do you have
an email address through which I can reach you (mine is in my profile).

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Igglyboo
I think you should switch the button labels to something else. I clicked the
'Try Now' button thinking that would let me try out the editor, it's much more
intuitive to have the actual test functionality behind the 'Try Now' button
than the 'Lite Version' button.

~~~
jabo
That's good feedback! Thanks.

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karterk
We posted a prototype of Codassium last year, and received plenty of positive
feedback. We went ahead and built a full product out of it, and we're eager to
share it with everyone on HN.

We still have a Lite version of the app which supports collaborative code
editing and video chat, while the full version has live code execution and a
shared Linux terminal too.

Would love to hear your feedback.

~~~
t0nyh0
Which languages do you support?

~~~
karterk
Quite a few. Code execution support for Java, Ruby, Python, C, C++, PHP,
Node/JS, C#.

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jc4p
This looks really cool. We're a remote shop and do almost every interview
remotely, so I dig the idea. We currently use Hangouts and anything from GDoc
to Stypi, depending on the person doing the interview.

I tried testing it out with a coworker to see how it goes but sadly our video
dropped twice in <30 seconds and when one person dropped the other could only
hear local feedback (every time I talked it echoed until I refreshed), maybe
in the future when this is more mature we'll try it out again.

I love the idea though! Being able to execute interview code would be
fantastic, currently most people type it into a webpage then open up their IDE
and copy/paste it to check it.

------
a628042
After looking at the front page I had no idea what this is - a website? A
program? And then the "try now" website told me to pay money and I lost
interest.

Anyway, I think I'd rather use a shared tmux session with regular vi, than a
"collaborative Linux shell" with a "collaborative vi", whatever that is. I
also prefer to let my window manager handle displaying code here, and video
conferencing there. Reinventing "notes" and "calendar" is also curious. Does
codassium really solve an actual problem?

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akanet
If you're looking for a more fully featured version of this product, check out
CoderPad ([https://coderpad.io](https://coderpad.io)). We've got live code
execution coverage across pretty much every programming language you'd be
interested in, and live REPLs for programming languages that support them
(Ruby, Python et al).

It's really exciting what we can do in the browser these days. I can't wait
for WebRTC to get better, too.

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arcameron
Interesting project, when I saw the headline I was like, "welp, someone
totally built what I built"

[https://echoplex.us](https://echoplex.us)

Though looking more closely, they're not quite the same project.

Here's a similar project by a colleague of mine:

[http://hiresync.io/](http://hiresync.io/)

------
chaoxu
Why not just have a remote desktop session and see everything someone does?
Someone might code best in eclipse. And interviewer might even allow the
interviewee use the internet to search. You get to see the entire workflow.

