Software geeks often want to display code in their presentations. However there are a few problems
What are some of the ways if getting around these issues?
- Displaying code can be a confusing amount of low level detail when you are really trying to make sure people remember a few key concepts and ideas. You risk your message getting lost as people change gears and attempt to analyse what they are reading.
- The format of the presentation slide does not make is easy to present anything substantial (over 5 statements?) in a coherent fashion. Visual layout, font sizes and a need for consistency make it hard to present much code in single slide
- In some presentation presenting 'canned' code looks fake and casts doubt on how genuine it is (e.g. when showing how to write code for a new framework)
Anyone else have suggestions?
- Don't use code at all. Refer the audience to examples they can examine later if required
- Split the code into very small pieces (1-5) lines that can be used on a single slide to explain a concept (e.g. how to connect to a specific remote data source). Refer the audience to the complete examples they can examine later if required
- Change the format of the presentation completely for the presentation of more substantial code. This can be done in one of two ways:
- Presenting the material in another program such as a text editor. The editor should be pre-loaded with the code before the presentation starts
- Changing the slide layout to help display code. e.g. remove all background, reduce the font size (carefully), use large margins so that the shorter lines look more natural, change font, change background and font colours to improve contrast
- Type the text direclty into a text editor for demonstration purposes. Not recommended unless you are a very good typist or 'dummy it' using a tool such as IO::Prompt