

Watch someone else code and learn - abijlani
http://thecodeplayer.com/

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digdugdirk
First off, that site is simply gorgeous. Seriously.

Secondly, I have a request to the makers of the site: Could you make this
open-source? Or at least make the platform available for other people to
create lessons on?

I think something like this would make computer science education amazingly
simple to share around the world. Given some additional plug-ins, this
platform could move beyond the simpler html/css/javascript coding, and
straight into more intricate lessons on all sorts of programming languages.
Throw in a social voting aspect, and the best lessons for each topic would be
able to rise to the top of the heap. If it were open, then people would be
able to translate the typed lessons into various languages so that everyone
could learn the fundamentals of computing.

Like I said, the site is excellent as-is. It just seems to me that there is a
huge amount of untapped potential here that needs to be taken advantage of.

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VMG
I just discovered Notch's screen captures of his development process:
<http://www.twitch.tv/notch/videos>

Interesting to see that it isn't as different from mine as I expected.

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wccrawford
I wish more people screencast like Notch. He spends most of his time coding,
and very little talking to the camera.

Most people who code for the camera thinks it's the 'Me Show!' and act like a
starlet.

He also codes from scratch, without practicing beforehand. (At least, not that
exact problem.) This means you get to see his thought process and all his
trial-and-error. When watching most tutorials, they've got it all planned out
beforehand and it doesn't teach you to think, just to copy.

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jdlshore
If you like this sort of thing, you might be interested in my "Let's Play TDD"
series. 187+ episodes (!) developing a real-world Java application using test-
driven development and evolutionary design, with audio commentary.
<http://jamesshore.com/Blog/Lets-Play>

My experience with the screencast biases me, but I prefer the straightforward
video recording approach to thecodeplayer's approach. It's a nifty hack, but a
screencast is simpler and more flexible. An audio track is particularly
important for this sort of thing, I think.

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teach
In general this is very cool. Some constructive criticism:

1) I was _really_ expecting an actual programming language instead of "just"
HTML/CSS.

2) When watching some of the CSS demos, the switch back and forth between the
HTML tab and the CSS tab was pretty jarring. I'd like to be able to see both
at all times.

3) It took more clicks than expected to get things started.

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Moneyherd
That's really cute.

I'm a visual thinker and find it easier to grasp things where I can see the
pattern unfolding. So I find the typed comments clearer than an audio overlay.

Played the CSS family tree "codecast" knowing very very little CSS. No idea
you could do that with just CSS.

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akarambir
Awesome idea. But the site is giving me 500 error after 2-3 clicks.

~~~
armenarmen
Same here, I look forward to checking it out though

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joshaidan
I guess I'll join in on the bandwagon as everyone else and ask, are you going
to support languages other than HTML5?

Now, I noticed the site is very Pinteresty. I guess this is the start of a
Pinterest design meme. I expect will see more Pinterest-looking sites in the
future.

Do you think Pinterest will do anything to stop Pinterest-looking sites? Is
there anything they can do? Or does having people copy the essence of their
design in the end help their brand?

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cfinger
Great concept. Watching other people code is a great way to learn AND teach.
Really would like to see this for Obj C / other languages. Python would be an
easy one to do.

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kibwen
This looks really neat, as long as each lesson remains fairly small and self-
contained (could be a bit unwieldy otherwise). It also appears to be using the
page visibility API, so bonus points.

I'd like to know what's up with the typing speed, though. Surely nobody really
types that slowly!

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hello_asdf
This is pretty awesome, any thoughts on how to implement support for other
languages than html5?

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manish_gill
This is seriously cool. Watching live programs in execution appeals more to me
than just watching a video for some reason.

I hope there's other language support in the future. Good luck!

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pygy_
ruby_on_tails, who's apparently the author of the site, has been dead-banned,
probably for suspected spam, even though I think that the mods/algorithms have
had a heavy hand: he submited two links to his site in two months, and the
second one was flagged, even though it was on topic.

It would be nice if he could be unbanned.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ruby_on_tails>

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instakill
Nice. Suggestion: Make the default walkthrough speed only 4x. 10x is too fast.

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dcaranda
ditto \- love it \- wish there were more languages (I vote Python & ObjC)

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finalword
script(1) ttyrec(1) scriptreplay(1)

