Programming has always been a second-class citizen on Twitch and has quite the fabled history. It started with people uniting under specific games when nothing other than gaming was allowed. A "Game Programming" category was eventually added as a special exception. Then Twitch launched Creative as the first non-gaming category. There was initial hype, Game Programming slowly died as a result and Programming was eventually made a sub-community of Creative (i.e. not visible in the directory). Then IRL launched, proceeding to lobotomize Creative and therefore what was left of Programming. When IRL got out of hand, Twitch broke it down in multiple categories and for a glorious 14ish days, there was a full-blown Programming category visible in the directory. It was too good to be true though and the recently launched and anemic Science & Technology (as part of the IRL break-up) needed to be saved from the embarrassment it was so they deleted Programming and told people to stream there instead. We are back to people thinking there is no programming content on Twitch.
Sad because it's a solid category with a lot of good content that no one can find. Never understood Twitch's stubbornness in not exploring it as decent vertical to develop.
Another resource worth checking out even if the formatting is a little jarring is https://github.com/bnb/awesome-developer-streams. There is a lot of overlap but it lists what people do on their channels.
I just got done with this morning's stream [1]. I've been streaming my open source work for a few months now and it's been fantastic. Having people come and help work on the code with me and contribute commits that I can review with them on the stream is amazing. Having dedicated, scheduled time to work on the projects has been great too. But really, getting to know and interact with the users of the software in real time is like nothing I've experienced before online. We even just released v0.5 of HomelabOS today, in no small part thanks to the help of my twitch viewers/channel[2]!
Just so you know, about a month ago I signed up to twitch looking for live coding. Couldn't find the appropriate category so I gave up. Is it really so difficult to add such a category?
That's so odd. I can't imagine coding with an audience. Half of the time I'm not even coding; at work I'm often writing up little tests in Jupyter to make sure things do what I think they do. (Granted, this is porting straight Python to Numba, which is subtly different and has a lot of limitations.)
Has anyone done this? Is it easier to focus or harder?
I have done it for about 1.5 years straight, 24+ hours a week. Currently on an extended break to recharge my batteries but I'm definitely going back. It's slightly addictive and you come to miss it. The best part is you eventually end up knowing the other programming streamers which builds a sense of community.
In my personal experience, the productivity hit is overstated. It's absolutely harder to focus because of chat and the discussions that come with it, yes, but at the same time you have a camera pointed at your face and your screen is shown to the world. Whatever you normally do to distract yourself and procrastinate... I can guarantee you don't.
You also build a resistance to interruptions over time, which is an amazing skill for a programmer to have. I didn't believe it to be possible, but it eventually became so easy to pause what I was doing, interact with chat for a few minutes and instantly resume where I left off after.
To go even further, it's a great way to put in consistent work and keep motivation up for large, long-term projects. I have built the entirety of the Serpent.AI Framework (https://github.com/SerpentAI/SerpentAI) while live on my Twitch channel and I'm not sure I would have ever shipped it otherwise. The interactive nature of live streaming can give you that nice push on days you don't quite feel like it.
Streaming programming is not for everyone but I still recommend to give it a try. The experience is hard to put into words. I've had a blast and got to know great people.
I’ve never streamed my coding, but I have enjoyed watching people on Twitch or Youtube do it. It’s different than typical programming tutorials I’ve seen on Youtube - I dislike those as I’d rather read a blog post because it’s easier to skim and go back and re-read things to make sure you understand them. Watching someone build a thing live is different though. It’s unedited, you can see how they work and how they approach a problem, how they handle troubleshooting, what their development environment looks like. I don’t watch them in order to learn how to do a thing (although I almost always learn something), but it’s more like watching over the shoulder of a developer as they build something.
I've been hanging out in the Science (Programming) community on Twitch almost every day for a couple of years and I can tell you that it's definitely influenced by the social aspects of streaming.
I've even streamed myself programming once in a while and I plan on doing that a lot more here in 2019. It's fun.
Streaming while programming is definitely slower, and sometimes unproductive. You repeat yourself a lot, since people come and go constantly, but the pros can sometimes make up for that; Sharing and receiving help/knowledge from your viewers is amazing. We all get stuck sometimes, and I've seen countless of times a viewer (myself included) have the answer or solution to the problem. Very polite!
The social part is definitely a big factor and you meet a huge audience of programmers of all levels worldwide.
Also I love to help, and StackOverflow can sometimes be boring and dry to look at. Watching and helping someone programming on stream is a lot more interactive.
I've been streaming on Twitch for about a year, before pausing it. It was a lot of fun as I'm a very talkative person, but in my opinion requires a lot of discipline. Sessions were sometimes subnormally unproductive because I was constantly distracted by the chat and getting pulled into complex conversations. Setting a timer for myself to ignore the chat for 20 minutes helped a bit though.
Pros:
- meeting new people, sharing ideas
- if you're lucky and have a lot of experienced people in the chat they can help you out and spot bugs, potential mistakes, etc.
Cons:
- can be highly distracting and productivity-lowering
There might be more, but those are the most prominent things I can think of right now.
I think it's not a new thing it's long been around and called Peer Programming.
The only difference though there are more peers and sometimes it can become a brainstorming, which is cool although it depends on the streamer because some of them engage with viewers very less.
But in general, I think it's more beneficial than watching tutorial to see how we can we approach a problem rather then solving it directly.
I can see myself making streams like "scikit-learn from scratch" live at regular intervals. Is twitch all the tooling you need? Is twitch.com "safe for work"?
You'd need streaming software (OBS Studio is generally recommended) as well as a good microphone and optionally camera. Of course you'll want to have a tab or two open to Twitch in order to monitor chat and your stream status.
> Is twitch.com "safe for work"?
I would err on the side of caution and say that Twitch is NSFW. Yes there's `Twitch Creative` and `IRL` and `Just Chatting`, but the site is very much centered around games. Every workplace is different though, so exercise your own judgement.
Also, it's https://twitch.tv, but it looks like they've got a redirect in place.
> I can see myself making streams like "scikit-learn from scratch" live at regular intervals.
If you want to actually build up a following, you will need to be very regular. Having a schedule is one of the most important things you can do to have any level of success.
This is pretty cool. Reminds me of the live webcam feeds that were popular for a while (and probably still are).
Only problem is it sporadically fails to refresh, resulting in a white "Oh Snap!" says-nothing-helpful browser error that forces me to reload the page manually.
[+] [-] nbrochu|6 years ago|reply
Programming has always been a second-class citizen on Twitch and has quite the fabled history. It started with people uniting under specific games when nothing other than gaming was allowed. A "Game Programming" category was eventually added as a special exception. Then Twitch launched Creative as the first non-gaming category. There was initial hype, Game Programming slowly died as a result and Programming was eventually made a sub-community of Creative (i.e. not visible in the directory). Then IRL launched, proceeding to lobotomize Creative and therefore what was left of Programming. When IRL got out of hand, Twitch broke it down in multiple categories and for a glorious 14ish days, there was a full-blown Programming category visible in the directory. It was too good to be true though and the recently launched and anemic Science & Technology (as part of the IRL break-up) needed to be saved from the embarrassment it was so they deleted Programming and told people to stream there instead. We are back to people thinking there is no programming content on Twitch.
Sad because it's a solid category with a lot of good content that no one can find. Never understood Twitch's stubbornness in not exploring it as decent vertical to develop.
Another resource worth checking out even if the formatting is a little jarring is https://github.com/bnb/awesome-developer-streams. There is a lot of overlap but it lists what people do on their channels.
[+] [-] NickBusey|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.twitch.tv/videos/429158038 [2] https://gitlab.com/NickBusey/HomelabOS/tags/v0.5
[+] [-] small_fish|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnIdiotOnTheNet|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runjake|6 years ago|reply
Please make programmers more discoverable!
[+] [-] NikkiA|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thesorrow|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MarkMc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] satokema_work|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theflork|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben509|6 years ago|reply
Has anyone done this? Is it easier to focus or harder?
[+] [-] nbrochu|6 years ago|reply
In my personal experience, the productivity hit is overstated. It's absolutely harder to focus because of chat and the discussions that come with it, yes, but at the same time you have a camera pointed at your face and your screen is shown to the world. Whatever you normally do to distract yourself and procrastinate... I can guarantee you don't.
You also build a resistance to interruptions over time, which is an amazing skill for a programmer to have. I didn't believe it to be possible, but it eventually became so easy to pause what I was doing, interact with chat for a few minutes and instantly resume where I left off after.
To go even further, it's a great way to put in consistent work and keep motivation up for large, long-term projects. I have built the entirety of the Serpent.AI Framework (https://github.com/SerpentAI/SerpentAI) while live on my Twitch channel and I'm not sure I would have ever shipped it otherwise. The interactive nature of live streaming can give you that nice push on days you don't quite feel like it.
Streaming programming is not for everyone but I still recommend to give it a try. The experience is hard to put into words. I've had a blast and got to know great people.
[+] [-] larrywright|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Liquidor|6 years ago|reply
I've even streamed myself programming once in a while and I plan on doing that a lot more here in 2019. It's fun.
Streaming while programming is definitely slower, and sometimes unproductive. You repeat yourself a lot, since people come and go constantly, but the pros can sometimes make up for that; Sharing and receiving help/knowledge from your viewers is amazing. We all get stuck sometimes, and I've seen countless of times a viewer (myself included) have the answer or solution to the problem. Very polite!
The social part is definitely a big factor and you meet a huge audience of programmers of all levels worldwide.
Also I love to help, and StackOverflow can sometimes be boring and dry to look at. Watching and helping someone programming on stream is a lot more interactive.
[+] [-] charlzz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctas|6 years ago|reply
Pros:
Cons: There might be more, but those are the most prominent things I can think of right now.[+] [-] mertnesvat|6 years ago|reply
The only difference though there are more peers and sometimes it can become a brainstorming, which is cool although it depends on the streamer because some of them engage with viewers very less.
But in general, I think it's more beneficial than watching tutorial to see how we can we approach a problem rather then solving it directly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming
[+] [-] thanatropism|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reificator|6 years ago|reply
You'd need streaming software (OBS Studio is generally recommended) as well as a good microphone and optionally camera. Of course you'll want to have a tab or two open to Twitch in order to monitor chat and your stream status.
> Is twitch.com "safe for work"?
I would err on the side of caution and say that Twitch is NSFW. Yes there's `Twitch Creative` and `IRL` and `Just Chatting`, but the site is very much centered around games. Every workplace is different though, so exercise your own judgement.
Also, it's https://twitch.tv, but it looks like they've got a redirect in place.
> I can see myself making streams like "scikit-learn from scratch" live at regular intervals.
If you want to actually build up a following, you will need to be very regular. Having a schedule is one of the most important things you can do to have any level of success.
[+] [-] ksaj|6 years ago|reply
Only problem is it sporadically fails to refresh, resulting in a white "Oh Snap!" says-nothing-helpful browser error that forces me to reload the page manually.
[+] [-] scripthub|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ta-run|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] marvion|6 years ago|reply
Topics like setting up deployment, servers, more complex server setups...
Or did someone tried to do streams on this topics?
I imagine this would be much cooler than defined tutorial videos..
[+] [-] keithnz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morenoh149|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hero76|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dejaime|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaequery|6 years ago|reply