[bananabiscuit]

I think the appeal is the same for watching any other high performance. Specifically, it can be entertaining to see how others do things, and there is potential for you to pick up some useful knowledge in the form of a problem solving technique, or maybe a workflow you haven’t considered.

[Walkman]

But you can do that by reading code of Open Source projects, which is more effective IMO.

[jolmg]

No... For example, let's imagine a developer needs to find the source of a bug on a big rails app. All he knows of the bug is that a certain line of logged SQL should be near the location. He knows how to trigger the bug. A simple method call triggers a myriad of unknown things, one of which is where the bug lies. He gets the idea to write a method that takes a regex and a block and temporarily override the logging method while the block executes so that it outputs a backtrace when logging a line that matches the given regex. The method is called, the backtrace is output, and the bug is found.

Development ideas and methodologies like that don't appear in code.

[gitgud]

Well, you can learn actively from researching opens source projects. Or you can learn passively by watching others code.

The first is more effective but the second is easier and more entertaining.

[Walkman]

I disagree with this. I think you are not passive watching live coding almost the same way like you are pair programming and you are the observer.

[gitgud]

Watching a stream is passive, like watching a movie. Pair programming is interactive, as you are right next to the person.

Unless you're commenting on the stream, it's a very passive act of learning.