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The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

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Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#33
Live coding is spectacularly good when teaching. I teach a graduate course in scientific computing and one of the most effective ways that my students learn how to attack a problem, how to debug a program, how to get started when there is a blank screen facing you, is to watch a skilled coder live-code.

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#34
post #3

I'm not trying to be snarky, because apparently people are watching, but I'm curious who the audience is? As a coder I have almost zero interest in watching other people code. I'll read through the end result, but watching somebody type it in? What's the point?

> ...watching somebody type it in?

Since when is the act of programming merely typing something in? The reason it's interesting is precisely because programming is a puzzle and watching another person solve a puzzle can be very edutaining.

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#35
post #27
post #14

To many people, there is a strange appeal in watching almost any monotonous activity being performed by others. I don't know why. My 3-year-old daughter likes to watch endless YouTube videos of surprise eggs being opened. Live coding is not too different in spirit.

Apparently that person made 5 million dollars last year: http://fusion.net/story/38924/the-highest-youtube-earner-of-...

That was fascinating--thanks for sharing. Really depressing as well when I consider I will never make that amount doing my day job :)

What I'm racking my brain on is three things:

1. How are these videos getting around and who is the primary audience watching them? Is it really children? Or is it the ASMR crowd who are just sitting there entranced and racking up the video ad view count?

2. What sort of video ads are generating the majority of revenue on these? Hitting a child demographic might produce some juicy CPMs.

3. How did they get started and get their first viewers? What sort of active promotion do they do?

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#37

A year or two ago, I watched notch stream coding for a weekend game competition, and it was fascinating. It was on the front page of HN for a while. I ended up watching it for a couple of hours while I did some low-cognition tasks. I think the appealing aspects for me were: * Seeing someone else's desktop and windowing habits * Watching for new keyboard shortcuts * Seeing workflows similar to mine in different IDEs a…

I really enjoyed watching Notch code (not all coders are so entertaining!) I wrote a blog post about it a few years ago: http://www.mrspeaker.net/2011/09/15/code-like-youre-notch/ It inspired me to get into game dev, which I'm still doing (for fun) now!

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#39
post #38

Went to check it out, all content is in flash. This is 2015, flash is no longer acceptable, especially on sites where the target audience is tech people. Hey at least they have TLS

Agreed, I'd really want to check this out, but the flash requirement prevents me..

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#40
Shameless plug, but definitely on topic... I recently got hooked into "watch me code" kind of thing. It triggered the same braincells that are activated when I am coding. Thinking what's next, shortcuts, etc... A sort of powerful "loud thinking". I decided to give it a try to sit on the other side of the desk, and this is my weekend project http://willcodefor.pizza

The pricetag has multiple reasons, gauging real interest and seeing if maybe, eventually... it would make sense economically to move to tutoring full time (thing that I would enjoy).

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