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How to do a presentation for your co-workers containing lots of code?

Asked 2009-01-17T23:46:23.477
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I'm supposed to do a presentation for my co-workers on a web framework I evaluated. These people are developers and hate long and boring PowerPoint stuff, so I got lots of little code snippets. I also put together a small sample application. My question is, how do I present the code so people can follow?

Some things I thought of:

  • Put the code on PowerPoint slides, looks pretty bad and unless it's an image I can't get syntax highlighting to work. Having my code in images is a pain and doesn't scale well to different resolutions.
  • I played around with the S5 XHTML presentation format and integrated a JavaScript syntax highlighter. It's a bit clunky but workable (I'll get some grief for ignoring the company's CI for presentations since I wouldn't use their templates. Don't even ask...)
  • I could put together a script (notes) and "live-code" in front of my audience. I don't like this so much because it keeps me so busy that it's hard for me to give a good explanation while I write. And there's also a high chance of me causing errors and make them wait.
  • A screencast? But then I wouldn't have to be there... Maybe narrate it?

So what would you do?

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If you want your audience to see a lot of code snippets, especially lengthy ones, you could print them out as handouts or provide them as notes in PDF or text files (people can follow along on their laptops).

Actual presentation slides should contain the smallest amount of text (including code) necessary to convey your ideas. If there's a lot to read from a distance, your audience will get tired after awhile and might have trouble following along. Let people read the full code sections on their own laptops or handouts, while calling attention to just the critical parts in your presentation slides or script.

answered 2009-01-18T00:01:59.480

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