I like this idea. It isn't the most common thing to shadow someone while they code, you can learn a lot from how people "flow".
The site can be a lot better. I think it has potential if curated properly. I'd watch.
+1
Show HN: Watch People Code
11–20 of 76 posts
Re: Show HN: Watch People Code
#12I wonder if there is an viable alternative to YouTube. I find the idea intersting and could see people gaining something from watching others code, but sadly live streams are yet another thing I cannot use without a proxy.
There seem to be legal problems with them in Germany or is it some European law and other countries are also blocked? Does anyone know what exactly the problem is? Just potential copyright infringements from audio in the background e.x.?
Re: Show HN: Watch People Code
#13I'm more concerned that twitch.tv is already good and has it's own culture developed for this. Unless some extra meta data type stuff is added like which language, which subjectd, which editors, which techniques etc are added in a very useful way.
> I'm more concerned that twitch.tv is already good and has it's own culture developed for this.
Twitch is ok, but it is against ToS to stream non-gamedev programming. These rules aren't enforced strictly though.
VOD support for twitch sucks. Personally, I prefer my videos not getting deleted after 14 days. So that's why I stream on youtube.
As for the other stuff, we have a few ideas(most of them vague). One of them: auto speeding up "boring" parts of videos(e.g. silent thinking) in recorded videos.
Re: Show HN: Watch People Code
#14I wonder if there is an viable alternative to YouTube. I find the idea intersting and could see people gaining something from watching others code, but sadly live streams are yet another thing I cannot use without a proxy. There seem to be legal problems with them in Germany or is it some European law and other countries are also blocked? Does anyone know what exactly the problem is? Just potential copyright infringe…
> There seem to be legal problems with them in Germany or is it some European law and other countries are also blocked?
It is a stupid law in Germany. :(
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/qLbjw...
"Because of the German law (RStV), you must have a broadcast licence from the media authorities when you make a live stream that can reach more than 500 people at the same time. Not getting one would result in a fine of up to 500 000€. However, even if you would have one, Google might need one as well (because they somewhat are the "television channel") and they don't have one (if you do stuff that is against German law in your live stream, Google would lose its licence because of you)."
Re: Show HN: Watch People Code
#15This may be a good place to ask this question -- I think I saw a website which had videos of how well-respected experts write projects from start to finish. So, if I were interested in learning how experts in golang write a web-service end-to-end (design, DB, write, test, deploy, debug), I could watch those videos and learn the right(ish) way to write a web-service in golang. I'm sure I'll learn a few other things too (like how they replaced a block of code in vim in 4 keystrokes where it would have taken me 12). Does anything like that exist? If not, then that sounds like a fantastic opportunity to me.
Re: Show HN: Watch People Code
#16I wonder if there is an viable alternative to YouTube. I find the idea intersting and could see people gaining something from watching others code, but sadly live streams are yet another thing I cannot use without a proxy. There seem to be legal problems with them in Germany or is it some European law and other countries are also blocked? Does anyone know what exactly the problem is? Just potential copyright infringe…
> There seem to be legal problems with them in Germany or is it some European law and other countries are also blocked? It is a stupid law in Germany. :( https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/qLbjw... "Because of the German law (RStV), you must have a broadcast licence from the media authorities when you make a live stream that can reach more than 500 people at the same time. Not getting one would re…
Thank you for the explanation!
Re: Show HN: Watch People Code
#17I don't understand how this adds more value than the other places on the web. A blog, tutorial video, stackoverflow post, book, etc will provide more knowledge in less time than watching someone real-time code and step through the software writing process. I understand the game channels on twitch provide entertainment, but don't see how this will catch on widely. Would love to hear others thoughts.
Other people in this comment thread made good point about value for viewers, so I'm not going to focus on streamers in my response.
> blog, tutorial video, stackoverflow post, book, etc
Well, how does one records a tutorial video? It is not that easy, there are a lot of details: language, library, length of video, format(i.e. what things to explain, in what order, etc, etc). Streaming is straightforward, you code as you normally would and explain stuff as you go. As for information density, I think it is possible to speed up "boring" parts(e.g. silent thinking) in recorded videos. We aren't 100% sure, but we're coding a prototype.
Re: Show HN: Watch People Code
#18This may be a good place to ask this question -- I think I saw a website which had videos of how well-respected experts write projects from start to finish. So, if I were interested in learning how experts in golang write a web-service end-to-end (design, DB, write, test, deploy, debug), I could watch those videos and learn the right(ish) way to write a web-service in golang. I'm sure I'll learn a few other things to…
PeepCode did this with its Play by Play series. They were acquired by PluralSight, and the series is still going on there [0].
[0]: http://www.pluralsight.com/search/?searchTerm=play%20by%20pl...
Re: Show HN: Watch People Code
#19Recently, I was amazed at how fast one of our devs were. When trying to see what made him so fast, it was a combination of being very good at reading code and understanding the underlying structure of the code, and also he was very fast with his editor. I could barely follow what he was doing as he was tracing his way through the code.
Watching him work as we were discussing an architecture made me more inspired to type faster, learn my tools better, and get better at reading code.
Re: Show HN: Watch People Code
#20I wonder if there is an viable alternative to YouTube. I find the idea intersting and could see people gaining something from watching others code, but sadly live streams are yet another thing I cannot use without a proxy. There seem to be legal problems with them in Germany or is it some European law and other countries are also blocked? Does anyone know what exactly the problem is? Just potential copyright infringe…
> There seem to be legal problems with them in Germany or is it some European law and other countries are also blocked? It is a stupid law in Germany. :( https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/qLbjw... "Because of the German law (RStV), you must have a broadcast licence from the media authorities when you make a live stream that can reach more than 500 people at the same time. Not getting one would re…
The question in that thread is a good one, and unfortunately not actually answered. What defines 'live stream'? Obviously basic sharing of non-commercial recordings cannot require a license.