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Watching People Code Is Becoming an (Even Bigger) Thing

Posted by timothy on from the playing-to-the-camera dept.

itwbennett writes: Faithful Slashdot readers may recall the story of Adam Wulf, who spent two weeks live-streaming himself writing a mobile app. The phenomenon has quickly become thing, by which we mean a business. Twitch.TV, Watch People Code (which is an offshoot of the subreddit by the same name), Ludum Dare, and, of course, YouTube, are bursting with live or archived streams of lots of people writing lots of code for lots of different things. And just this week, Y Combinator-backed startup Livecoding.TV launched. The site has signed up 40,000 users since its beta went live in February, but unlike the other sites in this space what it doesn't have (and doesn't have plans for) is advertising. As co-founder Jamie Green told ITworld: 'We have some different ideas around monetisation in the pipeline, but for now we are just focussed on building a community around live education.'

5 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Who watches this crap? by enigma32 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is even worse than a stream watching someone play a game. Who wastes their time with these things?

    If you want to improve your coding skill you're better off practicing and reviewing code written by those more experienced than you, not watching someone "in the act" of doing it.

    1. Re:Who watches this crap? by i.r.id10t · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Depends on how the streamer works. Just watching text appear in an editor with the sound of cheetos being munched? Not very helpful.

      But, if there is a running commentary about how they are thinking of solving a particular (sub?) problem, deciding what arguments a function needs, what it needs to return back to the calling location, etc. can certainly help with the "How do I solve a problem" type stuff.

       

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
    2. Re:Who watches this crap? by RabidReindeer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's nonsense. I do my coding in my head. You want to "watch me code", get an EEG or a CT scan.

      When I'm sitting at the keyboard, I'm not "coding", I'm typing. If I have coded correctly, then I'm typing fast. If I haven't, I either retire from the keyboard and revise my coding, sit and stare vacantly while I'm revising my coding, or cut-and-paste.

      Here's a clue, then. When I look my most "productive", I'm not. When I look the most busy then I'm not doing my most valuable work. In fact, like a lot of people, the really valuable work is done while I'm in the shower or in bed not-sleeping in the wee hours.

      And THAT, children, is why I get surly when you come and interrupt me while I'm "just sitting there". Because while it's irritating to be interrupted when I'm trying to get it all typed in, it's enraging to have someone push a cow in front of my train of thought.

  2. Translation by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >> We have some different ideas around monetisation in the pipeline, but for now we are just focussed on building a community around live education

    Translation: we are going to be ad-free to grab as many users as possible until we finalize the sale of the company to an appropriate advertiser. (That's pretty much how these start-ups work.)

  3. People who really have no life by Viol8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As the OP said - if you want to learn to code then review and practice. Watching is pointless.