Twitch made streaming video games into a hugely popular phenomenon, so what could be next big livestreaming thing? Perhaps it’s watching other people code.
An emerging trend appears to be live streams in which viewers can tune in to watch people code things like Minecraft servers, writing a compiler from scratch or building a search engine. There are tons of streams already popping up around the internet.
Pair programming is already a popular way to learn how to code in businesses, but it’s not always realistic to have someone shadow you while you work. Livestreaming a coding session, it turns out, is gaining popularity fairly quickly.
A new subreddit dedicated to keeping track of live coding sessions saw almost 2,000 subscribers in 25 days and a website that tracks currently available coding streams was floating near the top of Product Hunt yesterday.
Actually watching one of these sessions is incredibly illuminative and gives great insight for both novices and experienced developers into the way developers think. Many streams allow observers to ask questions and receive answers from the host.
I personally would feel awkward having people watch me code — I spend most of my time Googling answers — but the value of watching others code is clear when compared to simply reading a tutorial or watching a pre-recorded video. Just like on a Twitch stream, having a person you can interact with and learn from in real time is incredibly valuable.
As the learn to code movements gain more steam and coding becomes even more popular, these sorts of streams could become an interesting mashup of entertainment and learning opportunities.
Is it possible that the next big thing in streaming video could be watching people code? Or even just doing normal day-to-day tasks?
If Twitch’s popularity is any gauge, there’s plenty of interest out there in following along live, but it’ll be interesting to see if this trend sticks.
Featured Image: Shutterstock
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