It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how beneficial it would be. There is a segment of the population who does learn better this way, but not everyone. I suspect that this would be more beneficial for extreme beginners than people who have experience.
Watch other people code
31–40 of 96 posts
Re: Watch other people code
#32I bet I have a better idea for you. Set up the same thing for watching people design. I don't design much, but I love and learn incredible amounts from watching people design. Could be any format -- web, print, architectural, etc. Design is inherently more visual, so watching others communicates more and is probably more fun and engaging. Also I suspect more people design than code so you probably get a bigger audien…
This is a brilliant suggestion. I've seen countless posts here on "how should I learn design?". When I think about learning to design, I want to learn the process of a good designer, not just theory or tricks. For example, I learnt a lot more design from this post and video than other stuff: http://paulstamatiou.com/startup-web-design-ux-crash-course http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYEQpwduyPU
The hipmunk character creation video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYEQpwduyPU ) was helpful and entertaining to watch (I picked up a few tips). Being entertaining and helpful is what any video aiming to teach has to work toward. And the video needs to be long enough to get the concepts across, and no more.
Re: Watch other people code
#33Am I the only who loathe the current trend of posting things before they are finished? I am all for the lean approach, but this isn't a minimum viable product (that would be a player and a tagging system to find the language I was interested in) it is a website.
It's frustrating that we can't use the product yet, but I'm sure that people's reaction here will go a long way in helping them gauge interest.
Though this is reasonable, I wonder if it's measuring the right thing. Since money isn't involved (as far as I know), people could be entering their email just out of curiosity. It's easy to provide an email for a notification of completion, after which, make a decision to continue with participation or move on entirely.
Re: Watch other people code
#34It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how beneficial it would be. There is a segment of the population who does learn better this way, but not everyone. I suspect that this would be more beneficial for extreme beginners than people who have experience.
It could be very useful if he could convince some great hackers to submit screencasts to his website.
For example imagine looking over Alan Kay's shoulder as he creates a program. I think I'd learn lots of new things if I watched something like that.
Re: Watch other people code
#35Well, there's already http://showMeDo.com which is really great. Covers lots of programming and related functions like using IDEs like Eclipse and editors like Vim. There's also tutorial episodes on design like suggested by a commenter before. No Photoshop or the rest of the Adobe CS suite however, all F/LOSS like GIMP and Inkscape. I'm actually practicing by learning from Eric Florenzo's playlist on Django here[1]. The only problem with ShowMeDo is that lots of the material is dated (and that's not necessarily a problem always!) and there isn't much new content. The site was busy 07-09 but unfortunately seems to have been forgotten.
I hope castingcode.tv doesn't fall to this problem, as this is a really great and useful way to learn lots of computer skills.
There's the commercial solution by PeepCode[2] with excellent quality pieces by the crew there. The material there is much more up to date and consistent in quality standards. It's not as huge an offering, but it's certainly a lot. I'd also definitely recommend them to anyone who enjoys this style of learning.
The last and probably most accessible solution out there right now are the Youtube playlists and video series in this format. The quality there is a little hit and run, with some series excellent and others so-so. The target audience is almost always for the beginner, but that shouldn't dissuade those more advanced from perusing a vim tut to brush up on new tricks.
[1] http://showmedo.com/videotutorials/video?name=3360000&fr...
Re: Watch other people code
#36I bet I have a better idea for you. Set up the same thing for watching people design. I don't design much, but I love and learn incredible amounts from watching people design. Could be any format -- web, print, architectural, etc. Design is inherently more visual, so watching others communicates more and is probably more fun and engaging. Also I suspect more people design than code so you probably get a bigger audien…
Glennz Tees is always awesome http://vimeo.com/channels/glennz
Re: Watch other people code
#37Am I the only who loathe the current trend of posting things before they are finished? I am all for the lean approach, but this isn't a minimum viable product (that would be a player and a tagging system to find the language I was interested in) it is a website.
It's frustrating that we can't use the product yet, but I'm sure that people's reaction here will go a long way in helping them gauge interest.
i think the purpose of these types of "launch pages" is to gauge interest... to see if there's really enough interest to spend the time and effort creating the working system. it's also a great way to create a list of potential beta users. when something is ready, the person running the site can hand out beta codes to people that have signed up, and get real feedback at that point
Re: Watch other people code
#38Haha, funny coincidence; because of this and also because I just wanted to try out, I recorded my working sessions of the last days and uploaded them to Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w8z9ryoulE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-4jpbcHHD0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12D6S25aY8o
I guess most of it is pretty boring but I cannot really tell Maybe also because the first two are without sound; the last one is with system audio mostly playing music (and thus blocked in Germany :)); another one will be uploaded soon will be with audio from my mic but I am not really saying that much.
I, for myself, really like watching other people coding.
Btw., I was working on https://github.com/albertz/ChromeWebApps. :)
Re: Watch other people code
#39It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how beneficial it would be. There is a segment of the population who does learn better this way, but not everyone. I suspect that this would be more beneficial for extreme beginners than people who have experience.
It could be very useful if he could convince some great hackers to submit screencasts to his website. For example imagine looking over Alan Kay's shoulder as he creates a program. I think I'd learn lots of new things if I watched something like that.
This is actually something PeepCode is doing with the "Play By Play" series.
Re: Watch other people code
#40You may want to build it like soundcloud so that viewers can add their own comments at certain points in the video.
I second this idea, however I think it would be better to rotate through the comments as they reach points in the video rather than have a cluster of icons on a timeline that you have to hover to read the comment.