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How One Developer Got the Internet To Watch People Code
blottsie writes: While Twitch TV is generally used for livestreaming gameplay, Alexander Putilin has other plans for the platform. Putilin and his girlfriend are using Twitch to build a community of software developers and students who broadcast complex floating point operations and algorithm design to the rest of the world. The community is responding and growing alongside its newfound popularity. WatchPeopleCode is now facilitating live hackathons (there was one this weekend), enabling programmers to meet and collaborate with people that they'd otherwise never be able to.
Produce shit code to impress strangers! Get a warm fuzzy social feeling from doing it!
Why not just have a fucking orgy. Literally. It's the only way hipsters have sex. In large fucking groups.
At least it works for gaming. Watching somebody code using a small font size, in a tiny window, down-sampled to 720p and then compressed to hell is about as much fun as... watching someone code. What ever happened to doing?
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This. Unless you're watching a hands-on demonstration which requires, well, hands to be on something and manipulating it (and, no, entering code isn't a manual skill - when my RSI was bad some days I coded by voice, and it was slower but perfectly possible), you're wasting your time.
What is more, first rule of code: good code takes ages to design and refine. If you're genuinely watching someone write good software, you'll be spending hardly any time watching them at an editor window. Those 24 hour hack-a-thons are fueled by the same testosterone that makes young men drive fast cars - they have an inflated sense of their own skill, and a false sense of urgency when it comes to needing to demonstrate it. Nothing very interesting comes from them.
While I'm still fairly young and stupid, give me someone wiser - and probably older - who teaches me to think slowly but correctly, please.
.... is solving problems yourself and creating a working piece of code at the end along with a sense of achievement and self satisfaction.
The fun of coding is NOT the physical typing in of the code text along with edits, deletions what whatnots. So quite why anyone would want to watch someone *else* do it frankly is beyond me. If you want to learn to code in language XYZ go buy a book or look at some example code online then most importantly try it yourself.