[yoanizer]

I don't think watching someone "code" (God, I hate this word) is going to teach you much.

It might teach you about what tools he uses, and what keyboard shortcuts he likes, but not about the more important tasks of understanding problems, and organising solutions. That's what makes writing software hard, not the "coding" part.

[tajddin]

I haven't actually scoped anything out beyond the article, but I'm not sure this is necessarily true. I've noticed while screen-sharing coding sessions that -- for those who are interested -- it is a great way to convey how one approaches programming at a fundamental level: that a lot of it is about planning and researching and how you think about problems. That can be pretty valuable to someone with no experience but a willingness to learn.

Also, as the article suggests, the developers appear to describe what they're doing, so it could be a window into the thought process of a talented developer. I think I would have valued this quite a bit as a novice when the technology to enable this wasn't as developed.

[ggreer]

I agree. I think it's much more educational to watch two people pair program. Pairs have to explain their ideas and concerns to each other, so viewers are more likely to understand the problem, potential solutions, and general problem-solving approaches.

It can also help if the solo programmer is "rubber ducky" programming[1], but people typically assume more shared knowledge than actually exists. It takes another human to counteract this by asking for clarification.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

[lfowles]

Because I was just reading about this last night, it's the Curse of Knowledge[1]. Who knows what your audience is on a live stream? Viewers could range from "I'm also building a search engine and I'm curious about the techniques others use" to "I wonder what programming looks like". There could be gains for both audiences depending on how the process is presented.

Edit: I don't get how HN footnotes work... So I'll just pretend this is close enough.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

[Lrigikithumer]

How do you figure? Reading source code is incredible helpful for understanding how to program properly. Watching somebody step through their code and solve each problem in real time would be absolutely fantastic for understanding problems and organising solutions. Also what's wrong with code as a verb for programming?

[TkTech]

Reading "refined" source code for projects will likely teach you significantly more about programming if that's what you wanted to learn. These videos are mostly to see someone else's process rather than the code itself.

For example, I watched the linked video. Using it as an example for Python programming would be terrible - it does not follow PEP8 (extremely long lines, no spaces around operators, excessive descriptive names ("Java style")), has many unnecessary assignments and copies, very few comments, no sphinx docstrings, etc...

[hueving]

Coding sounds like a monotonous task of slapping together stuff until it works without any thought about architecture, testing, or anything 'big picture'.

[omouse]

It's interesting that the most important part, the part of the process that will cut your costs and cut variability is the requirements/analysis and architecture design part. It's the thing that many people skim over and don't see and apparently don't know how to do well. That's the most important piece and you can't get that from watching someone write code.

[FLUX-YOU]

>but not about the more important tasks of understanding problems, and organising solutions

Where do you go to learn the proper way to do that? Couldn't you teach that through streaming as well?

Even if the viewer isn't learning much, the streamer certainly might be because he's getting people to review and help him. Maybe the real value is in what the streamer can learn, and not really the viewers.

[enraged_camel]

What if they were explaining what they are doing and why? Kind of like a screencast, but much longer.

[pjbrunet]

Like looking over Shakespeare's shoulder, hoping to absorb some genius through osmosis ;-)

[greatabel]

I fully agree！