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What you can learn from live coders

Dan Vega on May 13, 2019

2019 seems to be the year of the live coder. In this article, I am going to tell you what you can learn from live coders. When I was younger I used...
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Emanuele Bartolesi

Ehi!
Thank you for mentioning The Live Coders on Twitch.
I am one of that crazy guys 😁

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Dan Vega

I love that group and thanks for commenting. I haven't gotten around to watching everyone on that list so I will have to check you out soon!

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Emanuele Bartolesi

To watch everyone is difficult because we stream from almost everywhere in the world... :D

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Tim Bachmann

Thanks for this great article, I too love watching live coding streams from time to time.
I mostly watch Tim Ermilov ( @yamalight on twitter, twitch etc) with his Building X with Javascript series. Would be cool if you could add him on the list.

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Dan Vega

I can't find him on Twitch, can you give me a link?

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Tim Bachmann
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Corey Alexander

Awesome post!! I've just been starting to get into Live Streaming code and I wasn't aware of that group so I'll definitely check that out!

New meta goal is to make it onto a list like yours of live coders to follow 😉

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Dan Vega • Edited

Corey it won't take much to make it on to my list if you do it a few times. Please let me know when you start streaming so I can check it out and add you to the list.

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Adron Hall

Hey Dan, great post. Just stumbled into it! As one of those coders that live streams I've gotten addicted to it for so many reasons. It's great to see posts like this about the value add for people too. Lot's of good things to learn and I find myself watching a lot of those you mention above, and in addition have found out about more that you posted there. Win! Thanks for the post!

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Dan Vega

Appreciate the feedback Adron. I think I did a good job of outlining some of the benefits but I still don't feel like I did it justice. There is so much you can learn from others and I have embraced it.

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Walter Kennedy IV

I find myself watching Jeff Fritz all the time, especially when I work from home. He's good background noise when I'm doing actual work, and hearing him reason through stuff somehow helps me do it better. It helps that I write C# stuff full-time, and it's literally in his Twitch/Twitter handles (@csharpfritz ), but he's just overall great. I like codephobia too. I don't care much for Angular, but he's an entertaining watch.

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Dan Vega

He's on the list and I he is awesome!

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rezmed

my best one is Daniel Shiffman

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Anton

Add tsoding to the mix: twitch.tv/tsoding
and Jose Valim, the creator of Elixir: twitch.tv/josevalim

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Adron Hall

Just added Jose Valim. Didn't realize he was live coding too!

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Anton

Yeah, he was streaming advent of code and left the videos there.

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Dan Vega

I added them both!

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Ady Ngom

Hey Dan awesome post. As someone who creates content I honestly wanted to do hands on and I code without edits like I did in the meetups that I was running.
It unfortunately created long videos and looking at the analytics on YouTube people tend to drop at the 3 minute mark.
I ran an experiment where I took the same video and “perfected” it from 14mn to 3mn by taking out all the little problems and how I debugged and solved them and reposted it. The engagement went to the roof - views matter to a certain extent but engagement is the most important metric to worry about.
The funny thing is that a friend of mine who’s learning JavaScript told me he liked that format, that I was a true master and I made it look so easy. If only he knew that it was the tip of the iceberg and that the struggle was real. Even though I prepared and write that piece of code many times before recording the tutorial, I still struggled a lot while doing it in the long take.
Anyways long story short I feel like there is great value in live streaming if there is an audience for it and I will definitely give twicht a try soon enough.
It is just important to know that centuries ago craftsmen were disciple first and would sometimes operate for years under a master and were eager to maximize and take as much information and knowledge as possible.
I understand why you enjoy watching the highly skilled coders in their element because only a true master can be comfortable into exposing his/her flaws and turn them into valuable lessons for the eager disciple.
Thanks again for this masterpiece 😉

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Dan Vega

I will agree with most of that but i don't think you need to be a true master to live code. You just have to accept the fact that we all make mistakes and be ok with it. When you make a mistake talk it out and walk through the problem.

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Balint Toth

I have a list of personal projects which I never get the time and motivation to do (mainly web projects). What is your take, for a junior developer, would it be beneficial for me to stream it when I work on these projects?

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Dan Vega

I think this is a perfect use case for live streaming. I wouldn't do anything mission critical or that might contain sensitive information but for personal projects yes. This is also perfect for junior developers because it gives you a chance to get your name out there and you can talk through problems. If you get some people in your live streams you will be surprised how friendly and helpful they will be. Good luck and let me know when you schedule that first stream.

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Rickard Engberg

That's really interesting! I wasn't even aware, but now I am so I'll watch a few live coding streams. Thanks for the list! I can see opportunities here in the field I'm mostly interested in; clean coding!

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Dan Vega

It is a really great learning tool.

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Brian Clark 💡

Thanks for this great write up, Dan! I really appreciate the parts you mention around the value we can get out of live streams. Also thanks for the mention 😊

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Dan Vega

Thanks Brian and thanks for all the live streaming content!

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The Key

I miss Adam, creator of Botland on that list. Incredible workflow and gives me always the feeling of "oh, thats how one of those tv hackers look like in real life". Really nice guy.

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kevin

Dan genial, gracias por compartir. Good advice, I appreciate them very much.

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mwilsoninsight
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Dan Vega

Added!

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Periklis Gkolias

Its been a while since I did some research on that. So glad the quality is going up and thank you for sharing

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Carlos Alfaro

Love it!!! I now want to start streaming! It could be another way for me to grow

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rezmed

twitch is for gamers
i see here that developers switch between twitch & youtube
we should build our platform

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florent giraud

Exactly even if i am doing vuejs code review on https:twitch.tv/f3ltron :). Many times i face problem i just have to find in docs :)

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Morgan Murrah

This is a good idea !!

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Witasz

Since im learning to code i will definately look at it. Thanks

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Jhossymar Contreras • Edited

I would add to the list a person who does it but in spanish, @midudev on twitter.

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Jalaj

Great post. You should add The Coding Train youtube channel in the list. His live streams are awesome.

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Dan Vega

He is there under "Daniel Shiffman". I should probably update that to say The Coding Train though :)