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Comment by SeanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

I use Twitch.TV all the time (I have it up right now) and I signed up for livecoding.tv when I initially heard of it, but backed out before committing to anything.

My #1 concern is this:

On Twitch.TV I would never watch someone who is completely quiet. Half the time I have Twitch up as a passive form of entertainment. Similar to a radio talkshow going on in the background.

When I'm developing software... I don't talk. I might do an odd grumble to myself every once in a while, but the loudest thing in the room, by far, is my keyboard.

Are you expecting developers to talk out their thoughts as they type? Are you expecting people to just stare at a quiet developer's workflow and try to glean information?

Also, this comic strip comes to mind: http://www.commitstrip.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Strip-...

TL;DR: Why would I as a developer want to use your service? What do I gain from it?

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"When I'm developing software... I don't talk. I might do an odd grumble to myself every once in a while, but the loudest thing in the room, by far, is my keyboard"

That's often true of games too, though, and Twitch has plenty of popular streamers. I think their greater issue is that the steroetypical twitch viewer in their young teens is unlikely to be interested, and older people who might be interested are more likely to be time strapped. Though as I dig around looking for twitch demographics, it looks like the college aged 18-24 is Twitch's biggest group, so there might be a decent overlap.

I wonder if it might be a good idea for them to push the event angle more, with a special focus around on-campus things like hackathons or contests. If you had screen forwarding set up between multiple projects/competitors, it might be interesting to have a "caster" that helped walk viewers through what the different groups were doing.

Not related to the service, but related to your comment about talking while programming: I actually talk continuously when I'm programming (and not only swearing ;-) ). I've been doing pair programming for many years now and having a continuous patter going on is one of the successful strategies I've found. Even things as simple as, "I'm paging up now" helps the other person stay engaged in the session. Of course there are periods where I have to stay silent because I'm thinking of something difficult, but after that I usually conclude with, "I'm thinking about doing x,y, and z. Does that sounds right to you?".

A good example of what is a good level of communication while pair programming is James Shore's Let's Code stuff: http://www.letscodejavascript.com/ Although it is clearly aimed at teaching, I find that good pair programmers say pretty much the same things as they are going along.

Keeping up this kind of patter is a skill that requires some practice, but it's not really so difficult. It's worth developing IMHO.

> When I'm developing software... I don't talk. I might do an odd grumble to myself every once in a while, but the loudest thing in the room, by far, is my keyboard.

I have previous experience streaming and so immediately got myself in a mindset of talk talk talk. In fact, I stopped working on my project and had an hour or so conversation with viewer/viewers about JavaScript frameworks and a bit of a deep dive on React. To be fair, I've always been someone who yells at the screen while gaming, so extending that kind of behavior of saying what you're thinking while coding isn't too hard for me.

What's your stream? :) I'm trying to "get into" JavaScript again after abandoning its brokenness. I'm looking to see people's workflow and you seem like a knowledgeable person.

Hey - I totally recognise that this is not for everyone and that is the point. Our aim is to educate people, so our best streamers are those who are engaged with their audience and are chatting and discussing what they are doing as they work. Some people do what you say and just show up put headphones on and code, and obviously those people don't have as big a following as people who are engaged!

When I play video games, I don't talk unless there is someone sitting near me watching me play.

I imagine the same would be true for programming.

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