For what it's worth, other major code editors Jetbrains and VS Code also offer real-time collaboration built in. For Jetbrains, it's a paid feature. For VS Code, it's free.

I love the VS Code implementation (haven't reviewed the other two). If I'm pairing with someone remotely, I don't have any issue having them download VS Code. We provide a config in our project repo for VS Code, so it's really quick for people to get set up enough to join the real-time collab session with me. `brew install visual-studio-code` and then `code .` in our repo, plus OAuth with Github to authenticate the collaboration feature.

I think it really is great. Makes pairing much easier, and really speeds up drugery like refactoring 500 cases where it doesn't quite make sense to do a codemod. It's not quite like the upgrade from Word97.exe to Google Docs since we have git, but it feels similarly amazing to "just" to be talking about some code, click the other user's icon to jump right to their cursor and help them get unstuck.

I personally bounce between VS Code, Xcode, and nvim+tmux, and I don't have a problem with keeping a "lowest common denominator" editor around for collaboration or pairing. I also keep a regular keyboard at my desk so I don't force people to type on my Glove80/Kinesis Advantage.