What are people's opinions about an application that could allow programming with random people online?

I think this is good for entertainment, as in , or for practicing programming. offers the protocol to let users login to apps like your idea using the GitHub credentials. Then the chat and its output (archives? products) could be identified using the GitHub ID. Who knows, this could be a missing feature in demand.

Who's to say that the idea won't be stolen? In any system that employs anonymity, assholes are likely to come out of the water. There's no lock on any intellectual idea if anonymity is used.  And there's not just stealing an idea, but also messing it up for everyone else. However I assume since this is a chat roulette kind of idea, these will not be serious projects, but rather fun hacks. In that case it's not too bad of an idea.

I have to agree with others that it seems similar to Gtihub, stackoverflow and others but having said that there are still scope for improvements. See how you can differentiate yourself from them. Doing exactly same as what others have already done will not help as they already have huge user-base. Difference can be in form of UX or making it exclusive for some particular group.

My concern is you are late to the game. There are many, many, alternatives for people to use already in one form or another. It would be easier for you to use one of the services setup and start a thread with  some issue or issues. If it takes off, you will find out how well it functions. If so, then if they would be willing to transfer it to a proprietary system. As Nishad indicated, you also would have a security problem because there are people who think it's more fun to make grief and hassels for others, much less just rip them off. Setting up a basic intrigue programming puzzel others could join in could be fun but on other platforms I've found the bullies still show up. Most of the languages have sections where people participate in a specific problem but they generally are short lived. But who knows, you might be on to something. Who would have thought a game of sligshooting birds would be the timewaster of the year?

If given the correct user experience this could definitely be a fun way to kill time. Making it somewhat lighthearted and "gamey" could go a long way. That being said, I'd be wary of duplicating the things that people hate about pair programming with none of the benefits. In reality, this could be a tool used heavily by Udacity/Coursera and other online programming courses to help students learn the basics in an interactive environment. Imagine interacting with a TA or other students to work through a programming challenge in real time, the benefits could be huge!

I doubt I'd have the patience and mental stamina to code live with random strangers on one of my projects. If I wanted collaboration I'd use Launchpad, GitHub, Bitbucket and the likes. Definitely nothing 'live'. I have my own randomly changing work pace, I take breaks, I use distractions to better focus myself on what I'm doing etc. Strangers around my code and in between my fingers would be just awkward.

Another option could be a "live/chat" version of stack overflow where you can collaborate on problems live and you could call it "Hack overflow"