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Comment by hkon | Hacker News Reader

I have watched a couple (out of hundreds) of magical coding demos, one that comes to mind was Steven Sanderson demo of Knockout.js

https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/MIX/MIX11/FRM08

I just felt really old...

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I have had some amazing learning experiences from watching someone live code. When the intention is to show people how to actually go about the act of coding itself then it makes sense to do so with a live demo. In the cases that worked for me the live coding was very much a performance; a scripted lecture that combined theory and implementation with a little room for questions.

Unless the context is a coding lesson, though, I agree that live coding is unnecessary and somewhat stressful to watch. It's like watching someone swallow a sword, I don't want to see it go poorly.

Imo the author isn't saying that live coding talks can't be high-quality or even 'magical' - just pointing out that the practice is more likely to detract from a presentation than improve it.

No I guess I meant to say out of hundreds of live coding talks, a couple were very good.

Most of the time there is this tension in the audience as you see the poor person make a small typo and you wait the longest, hoping they will notice it themselves, then they try to run it and they can't figure it out and you sit there trying to explain it and they are stressed out of their mind and can't understand what you are saying because they are reading a different file in the ide than the one you are referring to and aaaaaaaahhh.... the authors pain is real.

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