Peer-programming is one way that good software is developed. To do peer-programming, requires at least two people to focus on a problem and build the solution together. This can be done with a single computer and two chairs or vim + screen. Recently, I found a new program that provides the functionality of collaboration without the setup time of multi-user screen sessions. The program is called gobby. Gobby has both a server and client. This is ideal, since the information is kept on systems the users trust. Passwords can be required to access specific document and connections are made using TLS.

Here is an example:



The above screenshot shows a small Perl script with the syntax highlighting. Also, gobby allows each user to choose a background color that makes identifying the author of each line easy. Gobby even lets the user replace tabs with spaces. It even has the ability for users to chat with everyone working on the document. I think the best feature of gobby, is that multiple users can even edit the document at the same time!!!

On Ubuntu, gobby can be installed by using the following command:

sudo apt-get install gobby

Try out gobby and let me know what you think.

Regards,
Jabra