
Alive Beta – Live Coding in Visual Studio - Permit
http://blog.comealive.io/Alive-Beta/
======
Mandatum
Damn this is cool! Does it work with external libraries and project functions?

This would be amazing, the amount of times I do this sort of testing in unit
test projects considerably hinders my development time. And for $89/yr that's
easily worth it!

 _excitement intensifies_

How do I buy it? I'd like to do a video review, but when I click on "Buy" it
links to "[https://comealive.io/#"](https://comealive.io/#")

...

D'oh! Looks like AdBlock breaks everything. Disable it on the page if you want
to buy!

~~~
Permit
Yup it should work fine with external libraries and project functions.
Basically: If your tests can run it, Alive can run it.

That's bizarre that AdBlock breaks it for you. Hopefully everything works now
(if not let me know and we can try to figure it out)

~~~
Mandatum
Here's my console, there's a few things blocked. Very odd, must be a few
false-positives:
[http://i.imgur.com/RAxDbpZ.png](http://i.imgur.com/RAxDbpZ.png)

There's a reference to: [https://comealive.io/fonts/glyphicons-halflings-
regular.woff](https://comealive.io/fonts/glyphicons-halflings-regular.woff)

Which doesn't exist (404).

Will give it a run when I get home.

------
aesthetics1
Are there some more in-depth demo videos? I'd love to see how/whether it is
able to interact with databases, for example. Can I see records directly in my
code?

Looks like a neat tool.

~~~
Permit
Unfortunately we've only got the one video for now. However if you sign up for
the newsletter
([https://comealive.io/#newsletter](https://comealive.io/#newsletter)) we'll
keep you updated as we make videos of Alive interacting with different
codebases.

~~~
ghuntley
One video? I found two!

\- [https://youtu.be/CMRH1i2PcrE](https://youtu.be/CMRH1i2PcrE)

\-
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=wIvrchnMW8k](https://youtube.com/watch?v=wIvrchnMW8k)

~~~
Permit
Yeah I suppose we should probably take the second one down as it's no longer a
good representation of the product. (We've overhauled the UI).

I think we'll leave it up until we've come up with a good replacement.

------
seivan
Looks amazing.

Looks like an improved version of Playgrounds for Xcode. The improved part is
that this seems to work for your regular code base, where Playground isn't (as
far as I know) bundled with your application.

Though I suspect the Xcode team is probably working on that :)

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Avalaxy
I'd really like to try this, but the price is wayyy too steep. Especially for
a beta. For that price I almost get ReSharper, which does a ton more. I would
probably pay $20~$30 for this.

~~~
r3bl
Exactly!

Charging that amount of money for the beta version is kind of silly to me.

------
spigoon
I wonder why they went with a "paid beta" vs. a traditional free beta.

~~~
Permit
This is by far the most common question we get asked, and this weekend I'm
going to write a full length blog post about that decision. What might shock
you even more is that we originally charged to _pre-order the alpha version_.

The short version:

\- We needed to quickly figure out if we were building a product that people
loved and thought was worth paying for.

\- We're trying to build a product a small number of people love instead of
one a large number of people like.[1] If someone loves a product, we've found
that they'll pay for it.

\- The support issues from growing too quickly would overwhelm us.

The long version involves us offering a traditional free paid beta for our
first product: [http://codeconnect.io](http://codeconnect.io) and the lessons
we learned from that experience.

[1]
[http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

~~~
CRidge
I can see your point, but I would never pay for a product like this without a
free demo version.

These Visual Studio extensions often have the side effect of taking up way too
much of the computers resources. Without having a fully functioning (time
limited?) version of the product on my machine, working with a large VS
solution, I will just move on and probably have forgotten about this by
tomorrow...

With a free version available, I would have tested it and if it works as well
as in the video, I'd most likely pay for it and recommend it to colleagues by
the end of the day.

------
ladzoppelin
Wow, the site is amazing. Love the keyboard in the background.

~~~
schrags08
[http://www.daskeyboard.com/](http://www.daskeyboard.com/)

------
jayonsoftware
As a C# developer I am tempted to buy, but this paid beta thing is kind of
scary

~~~
bbcbasic
I think they need to offer a 365 day 100% money back guarantee if not
satisfied for any reason.

Then the buyer takes less risk, the seller still knows they are a 'real buyer'
not a freebee seeker because pulling out the credit card is still a
commitment, even if you decide to get a refund later.

~~~
Mandatum
I'd probably just give a 60-day money-back guarantee seeing as 1.0 is set for
release around October. By then, if the features you're regularly using aren't
ironed out it'd make sense to refund.

------
fake-name

       Alive support C#. But we plan to include more! 
       If you've got a language suggestion please
    

"support"? Did you mean "supports"? And maybe get someone to copy-edit your
homepage.

~~~
Permit
Jeez, that's embarrassing. I'm fixing that now, thanks for the heads up!

------
sungeuns
Really cool ! Do you guys have any plan to expand other languages or IDEs ?

~~~
Permit
Definitely. Unfortunately each language/IDE takes a pretty long time to
support. I'm fairly sure we can (theoretically) grow to support most popular
languages outside of C/C++.

We take suggestions at:
[http://github.com/CodeConnect/AliveFeedback](http://github.com/CodeConnect/AliveFeedback)

~~~
odonnellryan
I think JetBrains would be a good target, no?

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munr
Is the license perpetual or does it need to be renewed each year? The way it's
worded on the purchase page sounds like the application will stop working
unless the license is renewed each year.

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deevus
Wow. I so want this! However the exchange rate blows it out to 120 AUD, and
I'm a poor student.

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human_afterall
I love the new look UI! Looks awesome as usual from you code connect guys.

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joeblau
This concept reminds me of [http://tmate.io](http://tmate.io) which I have
used many times to help people out. This would be a very helpful product for
remote teaching and paired programming.

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revanx_
I don't get it, what are the practicle advantages to using this? To me it just
looks like a pointless gimmick. If I write a line of code I know what it will
do since otherwise I wouldn't be able to write it in the first place.

~~~
adamnemecek
Have you ever debugged something? Have you ever read code that wasn't written
by you?

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zuck9
Would love VB.NET support.

