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Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch

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Re: Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch

#31

Post by mdmnk »

i do this a lot at twitch.tv/mdmnk (less so recently due to losing a job and moving to a new state, then getting a new job and once again moving to a new state).

It was stressful at first... had to deal with trolls (and also about 80% sure hackers that were trying to get me to root my system live). After I got the hang of it all though it became a lot of fun.

I stream game development which is a hobby of mine (software engineer for the interwebs by day). Being that it is a hobby I am still learning. I've been able to make some internet friends, pick up techniques and learn more about C# thanks to twitch streaming. One day I would absolutely love to transition to full-time independent game development and do it all live on Twitch.

Another thing to note - although I have 14 years of professional experience, I used to get nervous coding in front of people, thanks to streaming on Twitch that went away -- I'm no longer afraid to fail or mistype. My overall confidence has improved. I strongly recommend live coding.

edit: I've also gotten MUCH better at talking through my code because to maintain an audience on twitch you have to talk and explain what you're doing almost the entire time.

Re: Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch

#32

Post by mdmnk »

avitzurel wrote: post #8
ioddly wrote: post #6

This is an interesting topic to me, as I'm giving a talk with some coding in two weeks and a major concern of mine has been making sure that what I'm doing is interesting and more importantly followable. Normal coding for me just is a flurry of vim activity. Questions for anyone who does this or views these sorts of streams: Do you find that people can follow what's happening in vim well enough? I've considered just…

Talk! Just talk your mouth off, seriously. It's the best tip I can give you to make it interactive. You gonna open a file and do something, say it, don't just do it. When you are thinking of a problem, ask for suggestions from the crowd/viewers... Also, ProTip. Vim is a problem if you navigate really quickly along splits (like you should), people lose focus and will just stop following. I switched to Atom for my last…

yeah this is completely true -- you have to talk and sometimes just drop coding completely in order to explain concepts etc. to your audience. I think this is a great skill that can be applied at your IRL job as well -- have gained a lot of confidence since i've started streaming.

Re: Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch

#33

Post by burger_moon »

avitzurel wrote: post #4

I started streaming a few months back and I absolutely love it. Some solid tips on here and OBS is a surprisingly good piece of software but it can be a resource hog at times. The hardest thing about it is to keep the schedule and be emotionally available when the stream comes on. I wrote about it here [1]. What I like the most is working through a project in stages on the stream. People can connect with the project…

How did people find you to start following your streams? I've wanted to start doing something like this for a while but not sure how discovery works and I feel like I'd be wasting my time. I'm interested in doing programming and some other things.

Re: Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch

#34

Post by mdmnk »

Kiro wrote: post #9

I want to do this but I'm afraid of two things: 1. Show how horrible my code is. 2. Accidentally leaking sensitive stuff.

1: your code will improve. don't be afraid of your bad code, other people are probably at your level or worse. You can use this as a learning experience. take the good advice given in chat and ignore the trolls.

2: dual boot / set up an account on your system that doesn't contain sensitive stuff.

Re: Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch

#36

Post by mdmnk »

burger_moon wrote: post #33
avitzurel wrote: post #4

I started streaming a few months back and I absolutely love it. Some solid tips on here and OBS is a surprisingly good piece of software but it can be a resource hog at times. The hardest thing about it is to keep the schedule and be emotionally available when the stream comes on. I wrote about it here [1]. What I like the most is working through a project in stages on the stream. People can connect with the project…

How did people find you to start following your streams? I've wanted to start doing something like this for a while but not sure how discovery works and I feel like I'd be wasting my time. I'm interested in doing programming and some other things.

use the communities. i stream game dev myself and have 31 followers after starting around 5 months ago. Not the fastest growth, but I've been very sporadic these last few months. i'm hoping to hit 50 followers in the next few months.

Also use twitter etc. to promote yourself.

Re: Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch

#37

Post by arcaster »

mdmnk wrote: post #31

i do this a lot at twitch.tv/mdmnk (less so recently due to losing a job and moving to a new state, then getting a new job and once again moving to a new state). It was stressful at first... had to deal with trolls (and also about 80% sure hackers that were trying to get me to root my system live). After I got the hang of it all though it became a lot of fun. I stream game development which is a hobby of mine (softwa…

I haven't tried but it seems like a good way to linearize my thought process at times and give myself some form of accountability to prevent getting distracted as often.

However, I'd be worried about accidentally revealing a system password or credentials by accident.

Re: Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch

#38

Post by memco »

minimaxir wrote: post #24
elif wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're trying to present to viewers, two monitors will make keeping them focused into a ridiculous chore. That is like telling a speaker to prepare two slide decks and switch between them during the talk.

Using a second monitor for live streaming is more useful for things useful to the streamer but which do not need to be shown on screen to readers (e.g. frantic Stack Overflow research when the code breaks, or analytics as the article mentions).

While it may not work for everyone, Casey Muratori (of the Handmade Hero referenced in the article) shows pretty much his whole desktop, including the times he is looking up documentation. Granted, he's not searching SO, but actual API documentation for Windows OpenGL or CPU instructions, he goes through his whole thought process including the time and effort it takes to understand and interpret documentation.

Then again, he also doesn't interact with chat at all while programming and only looks back at the end and answers questions afterward. So he breaks a few pieces of advice others might say are essential for a stream.

Re: Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch

#39

Post by lgas »

eropple wrote: post #19
lgas wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the implication with Hog is just that it's greedy and will consume as much resources as you give it.

It doesn't do that, though--OBS uses pretty well-understood levels of memory, compute, etc. that scale directly to what you're doing.

I didn't say otherwise, I was just commenting on my understanding of the connotation of the phrase.
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