Live-coding
Live-coding is still in its infancy but definitely gaining popularity with more and more talented streamers cropping up dail...
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Live stream coding is hard. What time I've spent live streaming has been building a music visualizer, as what you said about needing animation for the viewers is key.
The only coding streamer I've ever been able to watch consistently was a game dev. His stream was especially neat as he built his stream UI to be a game. Viewers were ships and every so often a game with those ships would happen; sometimes with chat input sometimes machine controlled.
Overall, coding streams is very hard to watch as the viewer has to invest time to build up the mental model of what the streaming is building. Games make that a little easier as it's a bit clearer what the immediate outcome of the code change is.
Yeah it is very hard, it's even harder when you're trying to learn something, trying your damned best not to look like an idiot 🤣
Yeah, it's got to be interactive and visual in some way or another. Something I tried to do was create spaceships for subs and they would gain XP which multipled if they were currently watching the stream, I should have spent a little more time on this!
You can kind of see it in this, on the left: (And also me spilling my tea 😂)
I just did my first stream yesterday! Would love any opinions youtu.be/q4Cp-dqTXDE! I am going to try the consistency thing, every Friday! It was a ton of fun even though I only had 1 viewer 😄
Awesome mate, keep at it!
@eric Dunno if that's only me but the sound on your video is extremely low?
edit: nevermind, it was me, my headset just broke... switched it and the sound is just fine.
That's great to know! It was probably me ☺️
Hope it is a useful video for you! I'd like to get your thoughts on how I can improve!
I streamed webdev to an audience for 0 for a few months. Turns out you cant just hit "Go Live" and expect passers by to give a shit unless you give them something to look at. I didn't even have a cam, that's how visually uninteresting my stream was.
This year, January 2nd in fact, my new years resolution was to do some game dev and crack out at least a couple game jams this year. I thought it'd be interesting to let people see what it's like for someone to be learning Unity on the fly.
Turns out I was wrong there too. My stream for my first game jam resulted in a Max of 2 concurrent viewers for 5 solid minutes and that's as good as it got.
BUT here's the thing that I found out: when I sling code just for me, I tend to piss around a lot with other stuff. Be it youtube or Netflix, chatting with friends, etc. When I was on stream? Even with 0 viewership, I treated it as if I had an audience of several. And so therefore I got the same feeling as pair programming: someone's watching over your shoulders. For me, this helped me keep focus.
So i continued doing it. I'd pop up with my "Watch me Fail at Unity" streams a couple times a week, and I got me a nice high powered webcam.
That last piece, turns out, was super important. Once I got webcam, I started pulling in consistent viewership. Still low numbers, 1-3, but the interaction I received made a huge difference in my attitude.
One day, while I was fixing a particularly hairy problem with syncing a countdown timer over a networked connection, I received my first raid which popped my viewership over 15 if im remembering right.
Man, the endorphins. I immediately felt addicted to the feeling I got from that.
But retention wasn't amazing. Turns out nobody is super into watching a dude read documentation lol
Recently Ive been in a rut volley of switching out libraries and technology and even engines now and it's just been hours upon hours of RTFM'ing and incremental experimentation so I've pumped the breaks on streaming overall.
But it was a fun experience while it latest. I'll probably do it again once I feel moderately proficient in it.
Ahhhhh I forgot to mention this.
this is so true, you hit the nail on the head. This was one of my biggest motivations for streaming, I knew that I would be getting shit done. Rather than: playing games, watching youtube videos, scrolling twitter, etc.
Hey 👋
First post i read here and i am quite satified i must say 👍
I have been into live streaming code for some time, but eventually stopped as my viewer count and motivation stopped (also, some day my wifi contract was cancelled), but i would actually start again.
That viewers like things on screen to move is a great tip, and probably true, i cought myself watching and enjoying videos with moving content alot more recently.
I think i also focussed on big projects too much - many "umm"s, "ohh.."s and long breaks before anything happened in the stream were like acid to the view count.
This post actually gave me motivation to give streaming a try again, but this time - prepared, more interactive and shorter. _^
Hey 😊
Thank you, I'm glad I was your first 😁
I'm happy it's given you some motivation to get back to it!
It was useful to read your story. Indeed, I am interested in live coding, and I am searching for an opportunity to jump in. Personally, I am afraid I am not technically as ready as needed. Another concern is to find a perfect schedule to appear in front of the camera. By the way, I appreciate your braveness to dig into the twitch and share your experience with the community.
I don't think there is a right time to jump in, just do it. Don't be worried about not knowing enough, most of us are riddled with imposters syndrome. I had pretty much no idea what I was doing 90% of my streams, I just winged it, googled it, and hacked away!
Reminds me of the old PC game called "Swarm". Anybody old enough here to remember that game?