Why Some Developers Are Live-Streaming Their Coding Sessions 131
itwbennett writes Adam Wulf recently spent two weeks live-streaming himself writing every line of code for a new mobile app. He originally started to live-stream as 'a fun way to introduce the code to the community.' But he quickly learned that it helps him to think differently than when he was coding without the camera on. "Usually when I work, so much of my thought process is internal monologue," he said, "but with live streaming I try to narrate my thought process out loud. This has forced me to think through problems a little differently than I otherwise would, which has been really beneficial for me."
one person != some developers (Score:5, Informative)
nobody cares about what one guy does.
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Unless that one guy is going to detonate a bomb; or start shooting in a school; or similar.
Re:one person != some developers (Score:5, Informative)
He's not the only one. A programmer named Casey Muratori has been coding a game from scratch for months. He streams on Twitch and posts them on YouTube. I've watched some and it's really interesting to watch him go through his thought process. https://handmadehero.org/ [handmadehero.org] There are others on Twitch as well.
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He's not the only one.
I've been watching [youtube.com] Jonathan Blow develop a game programming language since late last year. Smart cookie. A mix of pragmatism about the supposed value of some cherished ideas mixed with a laser focus on what the game programmer really needs is leads to interesting design choices.
Re:one person != some developers (Score:5, Insightful)
If a narcissist falls in the forest, and noone's.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't he just pretend that the camera's on and get the same benefits to his thought process - or does his narcissism require an actual audience?
Back in the 70's, I used to play the "An American Family" game. I'd pretend I was one of the Louds and there was a camera in my kitchen capturing all my ennui as I opened and closed the cabinets looking for a snack. It was great fun.
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It only matter when a top notch expert does this as an education exercise for others who look up to his work or need to learn his methods to follow his footsteps.
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This is done a lot. Here two examples:
There are many more examples, but it is common.
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Fuck face.
Hmmm, you gave me a business idea. You know how they had "Friendface" on "The IT Crowd"?
Think about it, a social media site called "Fuckface".
Just think of it, you're at work and yell over to the next guy, "Hey look what I just saw on Fuckface!"
And I'll have "Fornicateface" for the Christian market .... shit! How can I get some VC capital here!
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...How can I get some VC capital here!
Put the bong down and take two steps back?
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And for the FCC crowd, Ding-a-lingface [wikia.com].
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No, he is not. And, no, he is not. And he is even using a strange editor for his programming. Furthermore, he is mumbling what he is doing. There is nothing to be learned from for normal people. However, for computer science you could see what he is writing and reverting and you know his thoughts so you have plenty of data to understand how such crude hacker comes up with ideas and how he codifies them. And how fast he forgets about things form last week when he tries to read his own code.
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It sounds boring. But then, I've been watching some videos of a guy playing Fallout 3 game, including most of the boring bits (sorting inventory and reselling). It's sort of mindless viewing and just when I'm so bored I'm ready to shut it off, he goes and does something stupid. Then my interest perks up. So now I watch it see what the guy is going to screw up again. As in parts of me thinking "it's on the table stupid, it's right there in your view, pick it up already! Aaarrrghg!"
So watching someone l
And this is different to.... (Score:1, Flamebait)
... making notes as you go along or whiteboarding , how exactly? Plus stopping and reflecting on what you've done or want to do (even including talking to yourself!) is a standard part of development.
But ooooo , someone did it over a video stream so that must mean its a new and exciting method of development that no one in the history of computing has ever considered before!
Not.
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We're sorry, but whiteboarding is torturous and stuff.
Re:And this is different to.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's different because it's like coding with ;
- a dozen smart-asses looking over your shoulder telling you you're doing it wrong.
- another dozen noobs asking dumb questions about the basics because they can't be bothered to RTFM.
Sounds like hell.
Re:And this is different to.... (Score:4, Funny)
No, it sounds like hell on the Internet. I'm sure you could get a patent for that.
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No, it sounds like hell on the Internet. I'm sure you could get a patent for that.
Prior art for "hell on the internet" goes back to at least Geocities and Hampster[sic] Dance. The best you can do now is patent your own particular variation of hell on the internet.
The internet generation (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, but do narcissistic pricks write mo better code?
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No they do not. To write code, you have to be able to question yourself: Is this any good? And you have to accept critique from other people. A narcissist thinks of him/her that he/she is the next best thing to god or at least the best programmer ever. If you cannot doubt yourself, your crap code gets not replaced if it is necessary, but only if it is no way around.
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if you ask them they'd say they do
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is that why you don't post your opinion on a public comments website?
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Reading the comments these days, it's apparently the same as 4chan. Usually /pol/.
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the difference is, you're mostly anonymous here
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That's funny, the earlier edition of the Slashdot guide to the Internet said that we were anonymous.
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Social networks don't turn people in to narcissistic pricks, it feeds on the fact that most people already are.
narcissism is to a great extent a consequence of our failed social education impregnated with sick individualism, from which social networks are part of so yes, they do. if not the root cause, still a great amplifier.
at least it has some utility, since they expose themselves in public: if you are looking for a decent coder you can safely filter out prima donnas like this and spare you some headache.
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Basically, the lasts generations feel like they are special and everyone should be watching them do eveything.
You're just bitter because the NSA didn't pay any attention to you when you were a kid.
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It gives every narcissistic prick a global megaphone.
Megaphones mean people hear you whether they want to or not (within the vicinity - specified as 'global'). This is more or less exactly 'like' giving him his own global cable channel, amongst who knows how many others? Millions? - no one is forced to watch it. With a megaphone the implication is that you hear it whether you want to or not, and he can't force anyone to watch his streams, so no. not a global megaphone. More of a global telephone number with a party line, except it can only receive calls, not
because Millenials are attentionwhores? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you grew up in an age of ubiquitous connectivity, infinite bandwidth, a webcam, and the belief that everyone was special, you'd stream your own sessions too.
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I think this is where things are headed. A Twitch streamer interacting with the chat room is like a step beyond Youtube with static comments, web/email forums, IRC/instant messaging. Twitch or something like it will probably expand beyond games, maybe not to general streams like Justin.tv, but to entertainment generally. Like the other day a gamer was pointing out how it could be cool if someone could stream a movie and the chat is doing their trolling thing through the movie.
I try to imagine what's beyond
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I think it's more a function of them having access to those tools and being about to act out on all those fantasies and wishes. I knew lots of people growing up that would have loved to have access to this stuff to do the same. Most of them don't, even now that the tools are available to them. I suspect that it has more to do with them having matured and getting a better view of the reality surrounding them.
Most of these kids streaming and whatever will eventually give up on it when they realize it's not ge
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No surprise here (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially when you are teaching programming in an online environment. I'm teaching a PHP+MySQL class right now, and I have my students discuss the layout of database tables, how they will write the PHP code to solve problems, etc. They aren't posting code - they are posting their thought process and planning. Their fellow students are commenting about pitfalls, bits that are over looked, edge cases, and different ways of tackling the same problem. I think they are learning more or learning better this way, versus a "read the chapter write the little program, repeat" method
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Unless you have employers asking you to add it to you AS degree curriculum.... at that point it is serving the needs of your community. Which is what us non-research colleges do.
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The old favorite Rubber Duck Debugging...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
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There's a big difference between a teaching environment where the teacher can learn something, and a presentation-based teaching environment. Without real time feedback, exposure to the ideas of others, and having to explain things to novices, it's just a vocalization of the thoughts you already had. Maybe you'll get some organizational benefit out of it, but really the teacher is not learning anything.
I skimmed through a few of his videos, and I didn't explicitly see where he was responding to a chat log
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Relevant parable:
According to wikipedia, Bose-Einstein statistics [wikipedia.org] was originally discovered by accident during a lecture Bose was giving.
Developer commits suicide (Score:2)
after learning that 'view counter' got stuck at 5 due to buggy refresh and for last 2 months NOBODY was watching his stream...
This channel (Score:2, Funny)
We need a developer channel where we can watch folks code 24-7. That way when CSPAN becomes too exciting, we can tone it down a little by switching to this new developer channel.
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Use yourself as audience. (Score:3)
I talk to myself when I code by myself.
Talking about what I'm about to do and the problems and potential consequences, out loud helps me process it and spot potential issues or better directions.
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Genious! (Score:2)
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Here's the trick that I use. When I'm particularly stumped, I start assembling an e-mail asking an area expert for help. The process of putting it down in writing really helps me spot weak hypotheses or poorly understood concepts in a way that thinking through the problem never seems to. Sometimes, seeing these weaknesses is enough to get me on the right track. Sometimes, it's the research I do to get my terminology correct that clues me into subtle behavior or the thing I'm working with. Either way, appro
2 thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
1. I watched a live coding session a month or so ago and lasted about 10 minutes (the first 5 I ignored because the streamer forgot to turn on audio) before I stopped. This is only useful for those who have enough time on their hands to watch someone code for hours at a time and can't find anything more interesting to watch. I just can't imagine sitting through this all the time.
2. For the developer who is streaming: You can get the same benefit (articulating your thoughts out loud) by using your cat, dog, infant or some inanimate object you can talk to (a Wilson volleyball, perhaps). You'll save tremendous amounts of bandwidth, storage space etc. and won't temp someone who should be making better use of their time to watch you so they can pretend they are doing something productive.
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As to watching live streaming. Why do you assume you can do just one at a time, watch or do? I stream to about 100 people nightly, and many of those people are actually working on their own project(s) with me on in the background as a support/comfort/buddy layer.
Because multitasking doesn't work. http://lifehacker.com/5922453/... [lifehacker.com]
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No, but if the researcher the article cites published his findings in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 09/2009; 106(37):15583-7. DOI:10.1073/pnas.0903620106 9.81 Impact Factor) it's very likely to have some merit. I did do my research before finding a good article summarizing the work.
300+ channels and nothing to watch (Score:2)
When I was a kid, we had a handful broadcast channels and I watched what was on because that was literally it. If I didn't like what was on, I found something else to do. Read a book, play with friends, play with toys, play a game, or go outside.
Then we got cable. More stuff to watch, woohoo. Plus those scrambled premium channels where you might catch a glimpse of a boob. But MTV and HBO were only unscrambled in the family room, and seeing the same video over and over again, or the same movie over and over
I could never live-stream my coding (Score:5, Funny)
The quantity of profanity spewed would run past most locality's obscenity standards.
Just wait... (Score:2)
"Usually when I work, so much of my thought process is internal monologue," he said, "but with live streaming I try to narrate my thought process out loud. This has forced me to think through problems a little differently than I otherwise would, which has been really beneficial for me."
Yeah, just wait until you're in an actual office with other developers who try to narrate their thought processes out loud. You'll be wanting to throw chairs through windows in no time.
Rubber Ducking (Score:4, Interesting)
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Amateurs! (Score:2)
Some? Who? (Score:1)
Most commercial developers (meaning those of us who do it for our jobs, meaning most of us I think) would never do this because of confidentiality and intellectual property rights.
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Executing on your ideas faster and more efficient then your competition is where the money is.
http://www.twitch.tv/whilke [twitch.tv] | http://www.livecoding.tv/whilk... [livecoding.tv] (dual stream, pick your favorite service) if you are curious.