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The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

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Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#41
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

Tried to load the site on my phone, saw the flash error, thought "oh yah, this is definitely a platform for developers... not"

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#42
"Back in the day" as a hobbyist, after staring at the crt someone exclaimed "well do something!" I was quite amused. I recall a story where the idle bill gates had to tell (mom?) " i'm thinking". The best is Feynman recount of debugging a radio circuit where the awed owner tells someone "he fixes radios by thinking about them!"

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#43
I think the point is that if you just browse a code base to learn you lose much of the timing information. Even if you examine the commits you can't really predict how much time it took to make a certain change and most though process is probably lost. Also it's common to squash smaller commits before push so it makes one, but consistent commit.

I don't argue if there is any value in this, but there is certainly plus information following the thought process of a programmer. The parts that takes longer to write emphasize harder and more thought out modifications for example.

>Unlike Twitch, Livecoding automatically archives every stream, which means that it’s quickly accumulating an extensive video library — although, right now, it’s not terribly well organized.

Organize live sessions by commit somehow. I guess only open source developers stream anyway (I couldn't try the site, I don't have Flash) and if they could easily or even somewhat automatized could tag live sessions or parts of live sessions by commit hash it would be really nice. Imagine browsing a codebase in git, looking at some seemingly odd code and thinking "what was the thought process of the guy who wrote this?". Then you make a git blame, then enter the commit hash to search on livecoding, maybe the guy has the session up there and you can get more info.

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#44
"There's a good half-century of research around high expertise development but some of the most powerful and interesting has been greatly underestimated. The short version: modeling, modeling, modeling. If you want to develop high expertise, spend time, lots of time, observing those with high expertise. If you want to help others develop high, deep expertise, put them in a context where they have as much exposure as possible to expert examples. This could be either examples of the work experts have done or, depending on the domain, observing the experts as they do their work. The problem is, we let beginners (and intermediates) spend way too much time being around mostly other people who are also beginners. In the ideal, perfect, not practical world... everyone would be surrounded only by those who are not just a little better, but with very high expertise.

"The only catch — but this is a tough one for most of us — is that this works far better if the expert does not try to explain what they're doing as they're doing it. In most contexts, the learning is much more robust and accurate and deep if the learner just... watches. Without trying to consciously analyze or ask for justification for every little decision. There’s a time for analyzing the work of those with more expertise, but the counter-intuitive research shows quite strongly that this is more likely to reduce performance, of both the learner and—in many cases—the expert trying to explain how they do what they do!"

Source: http://www.cioinsight.com/it-management/expert-voices/kathy-...

It'd be supremely awesome if companies like LiveCoding could convince experts to live code from time to time. Would certainly pull in lots of visitors. Might even be able to charge for that. Or get experts to record themselves in the flow of work without a live audience, and make a library of such recordings available. Might be a great addition to some EdTech company's offerings.

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#45
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-...

>The highest YouTube earner of 2014 made nearly $5 million

>Related: A Swedish YouTube star made $7.4 million last year by playing video games

Now I'm not a mathematician, but something seems off here...

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#46
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>The highest YouTube earner of 2014 made nearly $5 million >Related: A Swedish YouTube star made $7.4 million last year by playing video games Now I'm not a mathematician, but something seems off here...

Presumably it just means that not all of that $7.4m came from Youtube itself, while all $5m of the previous number did.

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#47
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?

I think everyone is somewhere on the 'spectrum'. And each one of us has a unique way we learn best. Some people can listen to lectures in a university, go home and ace the assignment. Others can sit through 100 lectures and learn nothing, but then read an algorithm textbook chapter, ace the assignment. Some people can listen to thousands of lectures, podcasts, read hundreds of algorithm textbooks, but if they never actually program an implementation it just won't stick in their brain.

I think the appeal of watching people code is for people who learn best by example, with visual/audio/story-line cues as reference for learning. Humans love story telling and if a code-caster can weave their coding with their dialogue about how they are going about their tasks, the result can be some pretty powerful learning juice for the brain. YMMV!

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#48
post #24
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that has more to do with the novelty factor. Small children fall prey to those types of psychological tricks quite easily... I'd really think twice before letting a toddler on the internet.

I agree, but the thing is, I'm not sure adults are all that different.

I think that's true, certainly to a degree: Perhaps the subject matter is a bit more detailed (or unusual) but at a higher level it's not much different.

I can't tell you how many hours I've wasted in the evenings watching things on Youtube that are probably a waste of time but I find fascinating nevertheless. PilotsTubeHD is a fun channel for watching pilots doing their thing. I also can't stop watching bosnianbill's endless lock picking videos. Maybe there's something wrong with me. :)

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#49
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

There's no real alternative to flash at the moment for live video. Youtube only recently switched from flash for live video for chromo/safari and still uses flash on Firefox.

Re: The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code

#50

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 love having streams of coding open while working. It makes me type faster (I think). Sound is off though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y71lli8MS8s

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