[stavros]

I prerecord all my live demos, and wouldn't have it any other way:

https://gitlab.com/stavros/itsalive

I can even pause the replay mid-demo, take over, and resume again later. People are always impressed at how flawless my live demos are, and with some judicious audience participation, the illusion is perfect.

[Syntonicles]

I love this idea. I remember giving a live demonstration of a configuration management tool (SaltStack circa 2012) and some unknown networking conflict between my Virtual Machines and the local wifi subnet caused my commands to timeout. I was too junior to resolve it live and was left with boring slides explaining what ought to be happening.

Luckily it was a small group of devs and not a large venue. Still embarrassing...

[stavros]

That's literally 100% of all live demos. Something always happens.

[godelski]

  > I prerecord all my live demos

That just sounds like a demo with more lying.

  > People are always impressed at how flawless my live demos are

Because they think it is live!

  > the i̶l̶l̶u̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ deception is perfect.

FTFY

Seriously... just call it a demo or pre-recorded. As soon as you call it "live" you've crossed into the territory of fraud.

[stavros]

Your comment only makes sense if you think that the purpose of the demo is that the presenter gets street cred for doing something hard. If, like me, you think that the purpose of the demo is to show or teach the audience something, then it doesn't matter whether it's live or not, all that matters is that it's done well.

It's like expecting reality shows to be a 100% unfiltered feed of real life. Their purpose is to entertain, not to document.

[navigate8310]

> purpose of the demo is to teach

Then that's documentation with extra steps.

[stavros]

Yep.

[godelski]

  > Your comment only makes sense if you think that the purpose of the demo

Don't contort my words to justify your lying.

The purpose of a demo is to demonstrate things.

The purpose of a live demo is to demonstrate how things will work in the user's actual experience.

You can have pre-recorded demos and there's nothing wrong with that. The only issue is calling a pre-recorded demo "live". That's when you cross the line into deception.

Or as I said before

  >>> Seriously... just call it a demo or pre-recorded. As soon as you call it "live" you've crossed into the territory of fraud.

You don't have to make believe I don't understand what a demonstration is to get there.

  > Their purpose is to entertain, not to document.
 

And now I believe it is YOU who do not understand what a demo is. A demonstration is not entertainment nor documentation, although it can incorporate these elements. A demo is an illustrative example. Do we need to go to Merriam Webster here?

[stavros]

Oh if we're going to be pedantic, I can be pedantic. A "demo" is showing something, and "live" is showing it while both the demonstrator and the audience is in a room together. Therefore, this is a live demo, QED.

[godelski]

We aren't being pedantic here.

  > "live" is showing it while both the demonstrator and the audience is in a room together.

Right, because watching a video of me doing a magic trick is the same thing as me performing it for you. You're incredulous

[ohitsdom]

I'm not 100% sure, but I think this tool just types the commands. So it avoids typos and you can just focus on what you're saying as you type nonsense. Sounds like it actually does run your pre-written commands. From the readme:

> What's more, It's a Live is actually running the commands you're typing, so you have full interoperability with other programs.

[godelski]

  > I'm not 100% sure

What is the ambiguity here?

If it is live, it is being done in real time.

If it is pre-recorded it was done previously.

If you call a pre-recorded demo "live" then it is fraud.

What more is there to get?

[evnp]

It seems like you're misunderstanding what parent meant by "prerecorded" - not a screen recording, just pre-writing of commands to be executed during the demo. Would you consider it "deception" to hit up arrow a few times in a terminal during your demo to execute a command from shell history? This is effectively the same. Take a look at the linked repo, it's very clever.

[godelski]

The original link for itsalive says it works by making it not live and the op says just as much.

This is very different from practicing a script and you actually doing all the actions in real time. You're allowed to rehearse for your live performance but unless you're doing it live then it's not live.

People also hate lip syncing because it's a deception of being live.

[stavros]

And yet, ~all singers lipsync, because the point isn't to show off what the artist can do vocally every single night, but to entertain the audience, which lip syncing achieves.

[jstanley]

The inputs are pre-recorded but the outputs aren't.

What more is there to get?

[godelski]

  > but the outputs aren't.

I'm still under the impression that they are?

[stavros]

They aren't.

[true_religion]

The linked software only seems to type the 'correct' preknown letter anytime you press any key on your keyboard.

So the actual 'demo' part is actually live. The only thing that's fake is the typing, which could be replaced honestly with copy & paste without changing anything except how exciting it is to see the speaker pretend to type at 100wpm.

[godelski]

So it's lip syncing. That's not live. People aren't that fond of lip syncing. At least when they find out that it's happening. They get upset because they've been deceived

[true_religion]

I’d say it’s more like reading off a teleprompter. You didn’t come up with the speech on the fly, and you didn’t memorize it, but you are filmed as if both things might be true.

[godelski]

I disagree.

With a teleprompter (or queue cards or notes) you are still speaking the words.

But with this system you are not. So it is more like a slideshow where your voice is pre-recorded per slide and you are pretending to speak.

I would still call a teleprompter a live setting. I wouldn't be surprised if Zuck had one. People can still stumble and maneuver and adapt in real time. Just like in a play. Rehearsal does not make the act not live. But if we want to get more fine grained there is a difference between a live demo and an on-the-spot demonstration. Think of it this way, people don't knock politicians for using teleprompters because they are lip syncing the words. They knock them for being overly rehearsed and not off the cusp. The complaint is actually beyond the teleprompter, the teleprompter is just a visual indication of this. But then imagine how people would respond if a politician went up on stage and pretend to actually speak but the words coming out were pre-recorded.

Or maybe we can meet more in the middle with something like autotune? I still don't think it is there because you'll still need to say the right words for autotune to work but even still people generally don't like that and feel like it is deceptive. So I might be being strict here, but we need to at least recognize that all these concerns arise from some form of deception. Where the expectation of what's happening doesn't meet reality.

No one will be upset if they never find out, but the real question is how they respond when they do. Does the person you're demoing to feel cheated, even a little, if you used a tool like this? I'd wager they would because they thought you were doing all the actions there in front of them.

[true_religion]

After reading your perspective, I'm now inclined to agree. Not much more to say, but I didn't want you to think the words were wasted.