Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch (2017)(meow.noopkat.com)
meow.noopkat.com
Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch (2017)
http://meow.noopkat.com/lessons-from-one-year-of-streaming-on-twitch/
28 comments
I'm not a pro streamer, but sometimes I need to perform and record demos where I need a sandbox environment.
I archive this with a simple setup using xephyr + dwm (or i3) + chromium. I capture the xephyr window with OBS. With this simple setup I'm able to keep all sensitive information and sometimes a script doc on the "host" env.
I archive this with a simple setup using xephyr + dwm (or i3) + chromium. I capture the xephyr window with OBS. With this simple setup I'm able to keep all sensitive information and sometimes a script doc on the "host" env.
Whenever I tried streaming coding on Twitch I found myself being much less productive than normally due to constantly having to pay attention to the chat and whatnot. Actually for me even having something like a chat open without paying attention seems to significantly decrease the productivity, it's as if a constant part of my brain gets dedicated to the potential viewers regardless of whether it's being currently occupied by the said viewers.
That can be an issue, but also if you're streaming then you're probably doing so in landscape and having your display configured in portrait just seems so much more productive.
You can compensate by having a much higher resolution landscape display where certain windows are portrait, but the text won't be that readable on stream without dynamic zooms.
I think the real value is that if you're having motivational issues and streaming gives you more consistent motivation then it may offset the downsides. Writing some code in a suboptimal environment is better than writing no code in an optimal environment.
You can compensate by having a much higher resolution landscape display where certain windows are portrait, but the text won't be that readable on stream without dynamic zooms.
I think the real value is that if you're having motivational issues and streaming gives you more consistent motivation then it may offset the downsides. Writing some code in a suboptimal environment is better than writing no code in an optimal environment.
A lot of people are worried that they'll bring up passwords or open up personal websites like facebook for everyone to see.
For me, streaming myself code on Twitch encourages me not to open those time sink websites. Also, the "Programming" community on Twitch is much smaller and more focused than the wider "Gaming" community, so you don't get too many toxic people. Mostly it's just people who are interested in learning.
For me, streaming myself code on Twitch encourages me not to open those time sink websites. Also, the "Programming" community on Twitch is much smaller and more focused than the wider "Gaming" community, so you don't get too many toxic people. Mostly it's just people who are interested in learning.
I love this idea. And the authors setup seems to have high production values!
Personally, I trawled twitch for a while looking for someone working with C++.
Does anyone have recommendations?
Personally, I trawled twitch for a while looking for someone working with C++.
Does anyone have recommendations?
The creator of Handmade Hero[0] has regular C++ streams on YouTube[1].
Jonathan Blow (creator of Braid and The Witness) sometimes streams[2] development of his language, Jai. He does write some C++ when he digs into compiler internals, but it's mostly in Jai.
[0]: https://handmadehero.org/
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTznQhurW5AaiYPbhEA-KA
[2]: https://www.twitch.tv/naysayer88
Jonathan Blow (creator of Braid and The Witness) sometimes streams[2] development of his language, Jai. He does write some C++ when he digs into compiler internals, but it's mostly in Jai.
[0]: https://handmadehero.org/
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTznQhurW5AaiYPbhEA-KA
[2]: https://www.twitch.tv/naysayer88
Handmade Hero is mostly C with a very limited amount of C++.
I've been interested in checking out Handmade Hero, but haven't yet found the time to start looking at it. One thing I would like to know though is what game they're actually making. Now that it's been going on for some time, is there a video somewhere of what kind of game is being made?
You might want to check his YouTubee stream[0]. He's currently finishing the lighting engine; if you browse through his latest video, you will occasionally see how the scene looks like.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTznQhurW5AaiYPbhEA-KA
Gynvael ( http://gynvael.coldwind.pl/ ) is a C++ person who does streams on youtube. I learned a lot about Virtual Machines from his livestreams. :)
Please list Polish as a prerequisite to follow his livestreams.
He also streams in English. I don't know any Polish.
https://www.twitch.tv/jessicamak
C++, OpenGL, and ingenious offbeat procedural animation.
C++, OpenGL, and ingenious offbeat procedural animation.
I'm always curious why non-gaming streamers would choose Twitch over YouTube or other services. Does Twitch just offer the best features?
I'm definitely not Twitch's key demographic, but a large part of it is that YouTube feels like a negative place, whereas Twitch is largely positive in my book.
YouTube comments/chat are notoriously awful, probably worst than /b/ at times. Then you look at the events surrounding YouTube as a whole: Jake Paul, the ad-pocalypse, Pewdiepie being labeled a Nazi, racist and sexist hiring practices.
By comparison, the last time Twitch made the news was because Amazon bought them. Chat moderation is in a pretty decent place: each channel has enough freedom to dictate what the community around it is like. From the gaming end, Twitch is very well integrated with your gaming profiles to the point where you can get in-game rewards for watching. Relevant content is incredibly easy to find thanks to how things are structured, whereas in Youtube I have to "search" for things.
YouTube comments/chat are notoriously awful, probably worst than /b/ at times. Then you look at the events surrounding YouTube as a whole: Jake Paul, the ad-pocalypse, Pewdiepie being labeled a Nazi, racist and sexist hiring practices.
By comparison, the last time Twitch made the news was because Amazon bought them. Chat moderation is in a pretty decent place: each channel has enough freedom to dictate what the community around it is like. From the gaming end, Twitch is very well integrated with your gaming profiles to the point where you can get in-game rewards for watching. Relevant content is incredibly easy to find thanks to how things are structured, whereas in Youtube I have to "search" for things.
Twitch has a big racism and sexism problem, too.
Are their recruiters being told to purge applicants from their hiring funnel based on race or sex? Are they getting on social media and explicitly telling people to subscribe to people based on their race?
YouTube has really been going the extra mile.
YouTube has really been going the extra mile.
That tends to happen when people are given anonymity.
Twitch at the moment has a better community and better spam detection. YouTube, on the other hand has an awful spam problem in live chats, plus the community interaction seems to be lacking a bit. I greatly prefer to watch live streams on Twitch over YouTube, even though YouTube has transcoding for every stream and easier DVR capability. Twitch provides much better interaction, plus their bits and subscription plans are nice.
Nowadays there a meditators, sports people, musicians... all in Twitch.
Twitch is gathering a large passionate community that is worth to reckon with. If I did streaming, I guess I would A/B test whether YouTuBe or Twitch gave me better results in terms of number of viewers and overall “impact”. Are there studies on this ?
Twitch is gathering a large passionate community that is worth to reckon with. If I did streaming, I guess I would A/B test whether YouTuBe or Twitch gave me better results in terms of number of viewers and overall “impact”. Are there studies on this ?
I've subscribed. Interestingly, she is a Microsoft Tech Evangelist and uses a Sublime Text on a Mac and targets non-MS hardware. This speaks very well of MS as an open place that optimizes for developer happiness.
I have watched a few of noopkat's streams and she's very intriguing and a pleasure to watch. If you haven't checked out her stuff, definitely do it.
I run into karabiner-elements from the twitch webpage, does anyone has a set of useful shortcut? it seems powerful ..
I wrote about how I personally use it here:
https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macOS/apps/karabiner/karabin...
This was really great! Thanks :-)
nice keyboard
I've tried a little bit of streaming my coding on Twitch. I had no viewers during that time, and I was worried quite a lot to hide sensitive things - mainly about making sure password, api keys, IP addresses, etc were hidden.
I considered looking into the OBS or display driver code to automatically blur either previously configured things "please blur this rectangle out" "please ensure this string is always blurred", "never show this file", "please blur email and password input boxes" - in theory could one of these be possible on Linux?