Hi guys - Jamie here, one of the cofounders of Livecoding.tv. If anyone has any questions about the site feel free to ask me and I will do my best to answer!
Hi - Yes we will definitely be creating a mobile app at some point. Thanks for your suggestion as well about timestamps, if you have any other suggestions you can add them to our Roadmap here: http://roadmap.livecoding.tv/
Will you be adding more customization of the "User" or is all customization per channel?
It was difficult to figure out how to set an avatar at first, I had to go under my stream page and edit there, rather than in the settings. Maybe I'm confused between the distinction between a user and a stream?
You can think of your channel as like your profile - so that is where the customization happens. It should perhaps be made clearer where you should upload your avatar, thanks for the feedback.
I've been doing research into code live streaming since I might do it sometime soon. One of the most important things about live streaming is archiving, so people who aren't online and free at that exact moment can still get value from the stream. Twitch has VODs, YouTube and Periscope auto-archives.
According to the sign-up blurb on the right of the window, forced-signing-in-to-watch-videos is the intended behavior, which puts a lot of doubt on the startup sign-up metrics provided. I will never use this service.
Hey, Jamie here from Livecoding.tv, sorry you don't like the login to watch requirement. This is something we will definitely consider removing in the future. :/
If I'm not mistaken, wasn't there huge criticism of the login requirements when this was first posted on HN? That was the most vocalized feedback I saw back then.
Glad to see you guys have realized it's a bad idea though.
Maybe I'm not really tech savvy, but I think it's too many clicks.
2 - When I'm about to sign in with a GitHub account, it says "Livecodingtv by @MrTomato8 would like permission to access your account". Now, I know it's a serious YC funded company and all, but giving information to Livecodingtv would be easier if it weren't a MrTomato8 asking.
Furthermore, when I click on the GitHub profile, it takes me to MrTomato8 with only one contribution in the last year. This doesn't sell very well for an entity having a channel about coding. I assume the GitHub profile doesn't necessarily reflect on MrTomato8's real skills, but it just doesn't look right for that profile to be asking me, a beginner who wants to stand on the shoulders of giants, for information.
Keep it up and I look forward to signing up in the near future.
The tagline is "watch people code products, live". The word "products" appears in almost every piece of copy on the front page. Why not just "watch people code, live"? Why the focus on products? What about open source code, personal projects or other things that will never be sold?
Classifying streams by programming language is also kind of odd. Lots of projects use multiple programming languages. A better classification might be what general kind of code is being written (machine learning, graphics, UI, web frontend/backend, games, etc).
That said, I'm very interested in this and hope to see it succeed!
Hey, Jamie from Livecoding.tv :) We decided to focus on products in the beginning as we really wanted to help people succeed in building something from A-Z, not just learn a portion of it.
That said, we definitely have a broader focus now and have people doing all sorts of amazing things with code, so thanks for your suggestion!
Classification of streams is also something we are hoping to improve over time so we really appreciate your feedback!
If the entire point is to watch someone code something from scratch, why is there no dates on the videos? How can you follow a series from beginning to end if you have to randomly guess which order a series is in?
Reply copied from another answer:
Hi - frankly the usability around discovering videos right now is not great, I totally recognise that. I appreciate your suggestion and we will definitely be finding ways to improve it, including adding dates
I remember on #lisp at Freenode IRC, there was a helpful soul that would help folks by telling them to click a link. Upon landing on the page, the person being helped would see a mirror of the helper's Emacs buffer being updated live as they coded against a Lisp image and the results would show.
I know there are good reasons why it's not included, but a pet peeve of mine is when sites like these do not allow you to sort by viewer count. I think sorting options would be useful for this, especially once more people start streaming on it.
I've done coding through twitch and checked out livecoding.tv before deciding whether I wanted to stick to twitch or move there, since I do/did game streaming on twitch. I ran across several concerns about livecoding.tv such as they don't show you the current viewer count of a stream while listing the streams, they show only the total views, and they specifically require logging in to accomplish anything on the site.
I ultimately went with Twitch as Livecoding.tv has a fairly small userbase, the above negatives from livecoding that haven't changed in months despite the feedback, my app is gaming related, Twitch offers me bots that can help manage and improve the experience, and finally it can help grow my viewerbase for non-coding related streams.
Hey - sorry we have not addressed your feedback, its crap and we should be doing better :/ All I can say is we are a small team doing the best we can, and we have had some growing pains. However, that is really no excuse so I am sorry about that.
Yes we do have a relatively small userbase relative to Twitch, but I guess the reason you would want to come to our site is that our community is focussed on coding, not just entertainment.
Edit: you should be able to watch streams without logging in now.
I just want to clarify that wasn't me who originally made that request. I ran across it while reading up on livecoding.tv awhile back.
You don't see much content not served up on YouTube, unless it is a subscription or pay per video. There are certainly a ton of coding videos, yet you don't see a coding centric site. Twitch is already moving toward expanding into other categories such as programming and game development. The only way I see livecoding.tv beating Twitch is if one can get more regular viewers due to the focus on coding and then offer better features around coding, perhaps things like monetization of past videos and tools to edit them. Perhaps a read only ide similar to collaborative editors that allows viewers to follow along with their own font settings, theme, and navigate through the project (I could expand upon that in a lot more detail). I do wish you guys the best of luck as I'd like more Twitch alternatives.
I'm also glad to see the login requirement gone and will try it out to see how many viewers I get without relying upon WatchPeopleCode.
The way we hope to differentiate ourselves is by being really focussed on livestreaming as an educational tool. Definitely there are many features we would like to develop, but it is still early days yet!
Awesome that you are going to try out Livecoding.tv, hope you enjoy it and let me know if you have any more questions/feedback!
If you could figure out a way for a viewer to live "fork" the code they're watching, make their own changes, then send a merge request, you might have something very interesting on your hands.
A common use case (and I'd imagine most common use case) is someone building an app from scratch. Usually this takes more than one video. The videos on the user page, and on the main video viewing page do not have a date.
So now it's almost impossible to watch old videos in order. I saw some interesting series I wanted to check out, but clicked around trying to find the beginning and could not find out which one it was and then gave up.
Hi - frankly the usability around discovering videos right now is not great, I totally recognise that. I appreciate your suggestion and we will definitely be finding ways to improve it, including adding dates.
Even a sequence number that a video was created by that author would help hugely, if I know that Lesson 2 was #92 then I know that Lesson 3 can't be #0 through #91
I'd settle for https://www.livecoding.tv/livestreams/ actually having, well, livestreams. Nothing more frustrating when trying to watch a live stream on the live stream page and finding one that looks interesting, only to find it's not actually live.
Is there any special consideration/feature to help prevent streamers from sharing secrets (keys, tokens, pw, etc)? Sharing secrets is easily done by accident and can go unnoticed by the streamer.
Hmmm this is not currently something we have any special feature to address currently, except that if you realise you have shown the world a password or credit card details ( it has happened!) they the best thing to do is stop the stream and delete the video immediately. We are currently exploring other ways we can help prevent this.
Letting people have a 30-60 second delay in the stream might help a lot in being able to go and remove it before damage has been done. aside from that I don't have any ideas myself
Hmmmm not a bad idea, though that would put some friction in the interactive nature of it, which is really important to us. We haven't had a lot of problems with people showing passwords etc so far as people either 1. have two screens or 2. just use window capture to avoid showing something they don't want to.
window capture sounds like a pretty good suggestion for the time being. It'll at least mitigate what can be revealed. It wouldn't work for everything but there's definitely a balance to be found I bet. The delay is essentially how traditional broadcasters manage it (with a shorter delay since there's someone monitoring it separately) so it might still work out for this.
> the best thing to do is stop the stream and delete the video immediately
Yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree. The best thing you could do is immediately revoke API keys, change passwords, cancel credit card, etc. I guess you should probably delete the stream too, but if you do these things it's not as important.
If you have anything up on the Internet for any amount of time, you might as well assume that it will be up forever. Someone (or more likely some bot) could have already downloaded it and be mirroring it.
Sorry you didnt have a good experience. :/ Did you have problems with your stream quality? Normally our setting should be enough to have a good quality stream and if you have trouble you can get some help from our support team on skype to make sure your screen is clear and readable.
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?
> 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'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.
Good point - I think we just wanted a balance between having an empty profile and having too many requirements, but perhaps we leaned too far in the required fields direction!
This is because HLS isn't universally available on desktop browsers and I assume you're using that or rtmp, which is even worse and has no real compatibility anywhere without flash. http://www.jwplayer.com/html5/hls/
I myself had to deal heavily with this while working on live streaming and dealing with the client side.
Looks really, really interesting, but I don't really feel like installing Flash. There's this thing called Livestreamer that works really well (not only) with Twitch.
Does anyone know what technology is used to providing streaming? Both in terms of the broadcaster and the viewers. There doesn't seem to be any big open source projects in this space from what I can tell.
I'm a huge fan of streaming coding, mostly because of Markus Persson and the Ludum Dare streams (one of the first http://www.twitch.tv/notch/b/293076467 where he builds a dungeon crawler, skip ahead a bit).
The big downside for me though is the login requirement just to watch - I don't think I'd watch Twitch if I had to login just to see streams. I think getting rid of that would really help you guys grow - code streams are pretty addictive once you start watching.
Yeah, GP post is unnecessarily negative. I think this is a great idea and knew there was always a space for it.
Twitch has really changed the entertainment scene (millions of people individually consuming hours of streamed content a day). More importantly, there's a large subset of Twitch streamers who don't just stream for entertainment purposes, but for education as well. Often times, watching someone do a thing is a lot more instructive than reading about someone doing a thing.
There are people getting much better at video games by watching informative streamers. There's no reason to think that, eventually, live stream coding will be another popular form of learning to code as well.
GP post makes me sad, honestly, due to how willfully ignorant that opinion appears to be and the fact that it's so unnecessarily negative towards something that can legitimately help a bunch of people.
Yeah, I'm quite aware of the struggle with timezones. You apparently try to pick the timezone based on my ip address, which is often good enough, but there are better solutions. I think you should be able to get the timezone with javascript and convert it on the client. This is the best solution IMHO but that requires javascript. You should also aways offer a dropdown dialog with _all timezones_. You currently only have 5 timezones to choose from, none which I live in.
All in all, you should do: If the user has already selected a timezone, use this one. This is the most accurate option, you'll ever get. If that was not provided, try to use javascript. If the user does not use Javascript, fall back to the IP address.
I wish I could filter videos by whether there is any live talking on the stream -- I prefer listening to someone walking me through their thought process along with watching them code.
I'm curious about the way they power the streams... I see they're using django as web framework, but for live streaming... which media server? looks like Nginx's rtmp module in dedicated servers? why a flash videoplayer and not html5?
HTML5 video doesn't work with live video unfortunately, while flash RTMP streaming does. Alternatives include MPEG DASH and Apple HTTP Live Streaming, but not all browsers support them.
I recall that being a limiting factor 3-4 years ago when I was working with RTMP & P2P/RTMFP, but in mid 2015? I thought HTML5 was ready for live video... Reading now about Media Source Extensions (I just discovered the API) I guess we're finally around the corner... =)
Copied from another reply: Yeah it would be good to get rid of it at some point - need to check with my cofounder why we use it but I agree flash isn't great.
I understand, the website is limited to coding - but what are the features that make it different from twitch.tv.. until now, I would always look at the streams on http://www.reddit.com/r/WatchPeopleCode/ to watch people code.. I dont see, this being any different from twitch
I don't think we are trying to compete with Twitch on features, what differentiates us is our focus on live education rather than being for entertainment (though some streams can be pretty amusing!). Further, members of our community are passionate about coding or learning to code, so it is a different audience than Twitch's audience.
Ok, I'm going to bite. And as I am clearly a dinosaur, it's a big bite, but ... Why?! Could someone explain the benefits to watching someone code? It would be like watching someone write a novel. Mostly thinking?
Could you recommend the best one or two - I should at least watch an exemplar before rejecting this out of hand (never had the like in my day, watch someone punch cards out? like watching this new fangled wireless radio).
I guess It's like people listening to game music, will be mainstream in six months
This looks great! I used to watch some live streams on http://www.watchpeoplecode.com, but stopped due to time constraints. There is definitely a lot of value in watching the workflow nuances of experienced devs, but I found that the value was too few and far between. I still watch from time to time, but found pre-recorded/edited video tutorials to be more efficient, although many of the nuances and passive learning benefits are lost. Perhaps, edited livestreams would work well.
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[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 202 ms ] threadAlso a suggestion: timestamps would be pretty useful in chat.
Edit: Oh, there already is a request for that.
It was difficult to figure out how to set an avatar at first, I had to go under my stream page and edit there, rather than in the settings. Maybe I'm confused between the distinction between a user and a stream?
I attempted to load the archive of the linked Stephen Wolfram video and hit this: http://i.imgur.com/m1TEJHS.png
Seriously?
According to the sign-up blurb on the right of the window, forced-signing-in-to-watch-videos is the intended behavior, which puts a lot of doubt on the startup sign-up metrics provided. I will never use this service.
Glad to see you guys have realized it's a bad idea though.
It's really interesting. A couple of remarks:
1 - I don't know if you are aware, but there seems to be a bug for lack of a better word.
How to reproduce it:
- Get on the site (not logged in).
- I'm interested in Python for now, so I scroll down to the bottom and click Python in the "Languages" list.
- ISSUE: This doesn't take me to anything Python related, it only takes me to: https://www.livecoding.tv/livestreams/.
- So then I have to click on "Category>Python".
- ISSUE: It still doesn't take me to anythong Python related, it only takes me to: https://www.livecoding.tv/videos/
- So then I have to click on "Category>Python" again, and finally this takes me to: https://www.livecoding.tv/videos/python/
Maybe I'm not really tech savvy, but I think it's too many clicks.
2 - When I'm about to sign in with a GitHub account, it says "Livecodingtv by @MrTomato8 would like permission to access your account". Now, I know it's a serious YC funded company and all, but giving information to Livecodingtv would be easier if it weren't a MrTomato8 asking.
Furthermore, when I click on the GitHub profile, it takes me to MrTomato8 with only one contribution in the last year. This doesn't sell very well for an entity having a channel about coding. I assume the GitHub profile doesn't necessarily reflect on MrTomato8's real skills, but it just doesn't look right for that profile to be asking me, a beginner who wants to stand on the shoulders of giants, for information.
Keep it up and I look forward to signing up in the near future.
Classifying streams by programming language is also kind of odd. Lots of projects use multiple programming languages. A better classification might be what general kind of code is being written (machine learning, graphics, UI, web frontend/backend, games, etc).
That said, I'm very interested in this and hope to see it succeed!
That said, we definitely have a broader focus now and have people doing all sorts of amazing things with code, so thanks for your suggestion!
Classification of streams is also something we are hoping to improve over time so we really appreciate your feedback!
I remember on #lisp at Freenode IRC, there was a helpful soul that would help folks by telling them to click a link. Upon landing on the page, the person being helped would see a mirror of the helper's Emacs buffer being updated live as they coded against a Lisp image and the results would show.
Lispers, always seeing ahead of everyone else.
http://chrisdone.com:10001/browse/lisp?events_per_page=50&ev...
The "helper"'s screen name was "nixeagle" and his emacs mirror was at http://i.nixeagle.net:8080/t
I ultimately went with Twitch as Livecoding.tv has a fairly small userbase, the above negatives from livecoding that haven't changed in months despite the feedback, my app is gaming related, Twitch offers me bots that can help manage and improve the experience, and finally it can help grow my viewerbase for non-coding related streams.
Edit: For proof that they were asked to remove the login requirement months ago http://www.reddit.com/r/WatchPeopleCode/comments/2zmw29/i_am...
Yes we do have a relatively small userbase relative to Twitch, but I guess the reason you would want to come to our site is that our community is focussed on coding, not just entertainment.
Edit: you should be able to watch streams without logging in now.
You don't see much content not served up on YouTube, unless it is a subscription or pay per video. There are certainly a ton of coding videos, yet you don't see a coding centric site. Twitch is already moving toward expanding into other categories such as programming and game development. The only way I see livecoding.tv beating Twitch is if one can get more regular viewers due to the focus on coding and then offer better features around coding, perhaps things like monetization of past videos and tools to edit them. Perhaps a read only ide similar to collaborative editors that allows viewers to follow along with their own font settings, theme, and navigate through the project (I could expand upon that in a lot more detail). I do wish you guys the best of luck as I'd like more Twitch alternatives.
I'm also glad to see the login requirement gone and will try it out to see how many viewers I get without relying upon WatchPeopleCode.
Awesome that you are going to try out Livecoding.tv, hope you enjoy it and let me know if you have any more questions/feedback!
So now it's almost impossible to watch old videos in order. I saw some interesting series I wanted to check out, but clicked around trying to find the beginning and could not find out which one it was and then gave up.
As long as it had sensible defaults, and was easy enough to change, I think it would make everyone's life a bit easier.
Yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree. The best thing you could do is immediately revoke API keys, change passwords, cancel credit card, etc. I guess you should probably delete the stream too, but if you do these things it's not as important.
If you have anything up on the Internet for any amount of time, you might as well assume that it will be up forever. Someone (or more likely some bot) could have already downloaded it and be mirroring it.
To be honest, haven't really had this be a massive issue up to this point, it has happened a couple of times, but not very often.
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?
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.
I imagine the same would be true for programming.
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.
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.
E.g. "Languages I want to learn" and "Favorite Line of code"
Yeah sorry no, it's why I don't use twitch and it's why I won't use livecoding.tv
I myself had to deal heavily with this while working on live streaming and dealing with the client side.
[1]: https://github.com/arut/nginx-rtmp-module
[2]: https://www.ffmpeg.org/ffserver.html
The big downside for me though is the login requirement just to watch - I don't think I'd watch Twitch if I had to login just to see streams. I think getting rid of that would really help you guys grow - code streams are pretty addictive once you start watching.
Twitch has really changed the entertainment scene (millions of people individually consuming hours of streamed content a day). More importantly, there's a large subset of Twitch streamers who don't just stream for entertainment purposes, but for education as well. Often times, watching someone do a thing is a lot more instructive than reading about someone doing a thing.
There are people getting much better at video games by watching informative streamers. There's no reason to think that, eventually, live stream coding will be another popular form of learning to code as well.
GP post makes me sad, honestly, due to how willfully ignorant that opinion appears to be and the fact that it's so unnecessarily negative towards something that can legitimately help a bunch of people.
The benefit of recording is that you can increase the playback speed or fast forward.
Audio annotation is a bonus in both circumstances.
https://w3c.github.io/media-source/
Could you recommend the best one or two - I should at least watch an exemplar before rejecting this out of hand (never had the like in my day, watch someone punch cards out? like watching this new fangled wireless radio).
I guess It's like people listening to game music, will be mainstream in six months