Screenhero is my hero! (Brilliant tagline, I know) What makes Screenhero great is that it makes remote pair-programming dead simple and is more than simple screensharing like in Skype or Google Hangouts. I’ve tried it out recently and will explain why.
First, some housecleaning: It’s been around 3 weeks since I’ve blogged?! Yikes! That’s primarily due to intense code training at FirehoseProject. Hope you forgive me. 🙂
Alright, with that outta the way…
I’m currently working with a team of fellow FirehoseProject classmates to build a chess app. Pair-programming is great for this because it let’s us collaborate effectively, learn from one another, and improve code quality. The problem was that we’re in different states so we needed a way to do this remotely. Btw, pair-programming is when 2 programmers write code together at 1 computer with one of them typing the code (or driving, if you will) and the other programmer watching and making suggestions (like a copilot).
Cue Screenhero. When I pair-programmed remotely for the first time with it, I was great because not only did it allow me and my classmate to share our screens with each other; but it gave each of us our own cursors to directly manipulate each other’s computer and type code. It takes some getting used to seeing somebody else “driving” or controlling your computer; but it makes pair-programming much easier. It gets my thumbs-up.
At the time of this post, it’s invitation-only while the Screenhero folks integrate into the Slack company. If you’d like try it out and you use a Mac or Windows machine, let me know so I can get you an invitation.