
Lessons from my first year of live coding on Twitch (2017) - allenleein
http://meow.noopkat.com/lessons-from-one-year-of-streaming-on-twitch/
======
thinkingemote
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14720614)

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?

~~~
postit
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.

------
YaLTeR
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.

~~~
CMay
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.

------
frindo
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.

------
dijit
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?

~~~
Cyph0n
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/](https://handmadehero.org/)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTznQhurW5AaiYPbhEA-
KA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTznQhurW5AaiYPbhEA-KA)

[2]: [https://www.twitch.tv/naysayer88](https://www.twitch.tv/naysayer88)

~~~
adrift
Handmade Hero is mostly C with a very limited amount of C++.

~~~
johnc1231
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?

~~~
vntok
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](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaTznQhurW5AaiYPbhEA-KA)

------
kindohm
I'm always curious why non-gaming streamers would choose Twitch over YouTube
or other services. Does Twitch just offer the best features?

~~~
tenpies
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.

~~~
empath75
Twitch has a big racism and sexism problem, too.

~~~
whatyoucantsay
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.

------
juanmirocks
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 ?

------
whatyoucantsay
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.

------
joshmanders
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.

------
esseti
I run into karabiner-elements from the twitch webpage, does anyone has a set
of useful shortcut? it seems powerful ..

~~~
nikivi
I wrote about how I personally use it here:
[https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macOS/apps/karabiner/karabin...](https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macOS/apps/karabiner/karabiner.html)

------
nthState
This was really great! Thanks :-)

------
esseti
nice keyboard

