
CodeSandbox Live – Real-time code collaboration in the browser - bpierre
https://medium.com/@compuives/introducing-codesandbox-live-real-time-code-collaboration-in-the-browser-6d508cfc70c9
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timdorr
How long did this take to build?

I'm impressed that you can build and ship this with a small team and short
time, whereas the VS Code and Atom teams are still in beta with their live
coding features. I understand scope and scale are very different, but this is
a great accomplishment!

~~~
CompuIves
Thank you very much! It was definitely one of the most fun features to build.

I started working on this on March 15th, and the past few days was about
testing everything, preparing the release and squashing bugs. The advantage of
this type of functionality is that there are tons of high quality papers and
articles already written on the subject, especially this one helped me a lot:
[http://www.codecommit.com/blog/java/understanding-and-
applyi...](http://www.codecommit.com/blog/java/understanding-and-applying-
operational-transformation). There were a lot of sleepless nights involved
too.

I'm not sure about the VS Code and Atom teams, but I imagine that there are
more constraints and there is more functionality to implement since they work
with hundreds of potentially big files. I think those factors make it harder
to implement this functionality than in the case of CodeSandbox.

~~~
timdorr
Holy shit, you built this in 10 days?!?!

~~~
Lerc
Evidently not
[https://codesandbox.stream/changelog/](https://codesandbox.stream/changelog/)

Maybe March last year.

~~~
CompuIves
Ah, I always forget to keep that page up to date. I'm sorry for that. Since
CodeSandbox 2.5 we got some new things, like Parcel support, Typescript
configuration support and some other things. I'll make sure to keep that page
more up to date.

And if you really want to make sure, we're open source:
[https://github.com/CompuIves/codesandbox-
client](https://github.com/CompuIves/codesandbox-client).

------
CompuIves
Hey everyone! I'm the author of this post, I'll be here to answer any
questions.

~~~
Lerc
Ok a couple of things.

1) This is awesome.

2) /s/vanilla doesn't work on .stream but does on .io

3) in the live text "To share your sandbox for real time collaboration you
need to be a CodeSandbox Patron." you don't specify if all collaborators need
to be patrons or not. I assume not, but best to make that clear.

4) I retrofitted the default React template into my standard first project
when I teach JavaScript.
[https://codesandbox.stream/s/xvw9p3z0k4](https://codesandbox.stream/s/xvw9p3z0k4)
It works on every second reload. Also, can I turn off the react voodoo live
update thing? [edit: found the last bit in sandbox.config.json]

~~~
CompuIves
1) Thank you!

2) Ah that's really stupid of me, `.stream` was our staging server. I should
mention this somewhere, codesandbox.io should have the latest version with
live.

3) Good one! I'll update it.

4) That's a super nice sandbox, I love tutorials that use gameplay, makes it
much more fun to learn. I'd move it to the io domain, because our stream
database is horribly outdated. I'll add a redirect from stream soon to avoid
confusion.

~~~
CompuIves
I moved the sandbox to here:
[https://codesandbox.io/s/3rrq6yx9v1](https://codesandbox.io/s/3rrq6yx9v1).
I'm also curious, how did you find out about the sandbox.config.json? I feel
like it's pretty undocumented by now, we could definitely improve on that.

~~~
Lerc
That bit is actually quite clear and right where I should have looked for it.

[https://codesandbox.stream/docs/configuration#configuration-...](https://codesandbox.stream/docs/configuration#configuration-
files)

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somebee
Always impressed by your incredible pace of development! Congrats!

~~~
CompuIves
Thank you very much! I appreciate it.

