
Watch other people code - jgeralnik
http://www.castingcode.tv/
======
tomjen3
Am I the only who loathe the current trend of posting things before they are
finished?

I am all for the lean approach, but this isn't a minimum viable product (that
would be a player and a tagging system to find the language I was interested
in) it is a website.

~~~
rhygar
Unfortunately MVP is one of those terms like "pivot" that got out of control.
An MVP is "the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which
allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about
customers with the least effort."

[http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/08/minimum-
viable-...](http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/08/minimum-viable-
product-guide.html)

This is a great example of an MVP. If nobody signs up, he knows there is no
demand for this product.

~~~
rhygar
Wow. Posting the textbook definition of MVP gets downvoted. The Redditization
of Hacker News.

~~~
mattdeboard
This is not "a version of a new product," it is a screenshot of a version of a
new product and a call to action. There is no product to evaluate minimally.
Since you like definitions:

 __viable __: Capable of working successfully; feasible: "the proposed
investment was economically viable".

A minimum viable __product __is a product that's capable of working
successfully; in this case it's one that potential customers can interact with
successfully. This is not a product. This is a "coming soon" page.

------
spodek
I bet I have a better idea for you.

Set up the same thing for watching people design. I don't design much, but I
love and learn incredible amounts from watching people design. Could be any
format -- web, print, architectural, etc.

Design is inherently more visual, so watching others communicates more and is
probably more fun and engaging.

Also I suspect more people design than code so you probably get a bigger
audience getting more from it.

~~~
revorad
This is a brilliant suggestion. I've seen countless posts here on "how should
I learn design?". When I think about learning to design, I want to learn the
process of a good designer, not just theory or tricks. For example, I learnt a
lot more design from this post and video than other stuff:

<http://paulstamatiou.com/startup-web-design-ux-crash-course>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYEQpwduyPU>

~~~
danl
This would need some good editing. When I'm working on a website design, it
can take some time for the finished version to come together. There's quite a
lot of experimenting, tweaking, undoing etc... going on.

Nice idea though.

~~~
angrycoder
That is all part of the design process, I'm not sure why you would edit it
out.

~~~
bricestacey
Gotta edit out when you check HN =P

------
genieyclo
Well, there's already <http://showMeDo.com> which is really great. Covers lots
of programming and related functions like using IDEs like Eclipse and editors
like Vim. There's also tutorial episodes on design like suggested by a
commenter before. No Photoshop or the rest of the Adobe CS suite however, all
F/LOSS like GIMP and Inkscape. I'm actually practicing by learning from Eric
Florenzo's playlist on Django here[1]. The only problem with ShowMeDo is that
lots of the material is dated (and that's not necessarily a problem always!)
and there isn't much new content. The site was busy 07-09 but unfortunately
seems to have been forgotten.

I hope castingcode.tv doesn't fall to this problem, as this is a really great
and useful way to learn lots of computer skills.

There's the commercial solution by PeepCode[2] with excellent quality pieces
by the crew there. The material there is much more up to date and consistent
in quality standards. It's not as huge an offering, but it's certainly a lot.
I'd also definitely recommend them to anyone who enjoys this style of
learning.

The last and probably most accessible solution out there right now are the
Youtube playlists and video series in this format. The quality there is a
little hit and run, with some series excellent and others so-so. The target
audience is almost always for the beginner, but that shouldn't dissuade those
more advanced from perusing a vim tut to brush up on new tricks.

[1]
[http://showmedo.com/videotutorials/video?name=3360000&fr...](http://showmedo.com/videotutorials/video?name=3360000&fromSeriesID=336)

[2] <http://peepcode.com/>

~~~
gstamp
Another good option is destroy-all-software [1]. Very cheap too.

[1] <https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts>

~~~
rapind
This looks awesome.

------
albertzeyer
Haha, funny coincidence; because of this and also because I just wanted to try
out, I recorded my working sessions of the last days and uploaded them to
Youtube.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w8z9ryoulE>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-4jpbcHHD0>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12D6S25aY8o>

I guess most of it is pretty boring but I cannot really tell Maybe also
because the first two are without sound; the last one is with system audio
mostly playing music (and thus blocked in Germany :)); another one will be
uploaded soon will be with audio from my mic but I am not really saying that
much.

I, for myself, really like watching other people coding.

Btw., I was working on <https://github.com/albertz/ChromeWebApps>. :)

------
zupa
I think it is a good idea, but..

(1) do you really want to do it live? Why not do it the youtube way? Store the
videos, rate them, comment with videos, etc.

(2) you could instead of making true videos split it into 2 parts. Making a
video, and attach a text area to it so users can copy/paste your code. One
could see the changes live.

(3) I guess this works hard if you want to present an SDK. Maybe you could
turn the editable fields into text areas? At least the main one. Kind of a
layer over the video.

------
wccrawford
I signed up for the email, but I hope most people will just code and give a
few comments, rather than trying to explain every single thing they are doing.
It just makes it boring. Code as fast as you can, and keep the comments to a
minimum.

Watching Notch was amazing. He did it perfectly. There were times during the
first few hours that I fast forwarded, but only when he was experimenting. And
it was never for long.

------
richcollins
It would be awesome if you could also somehow download a VM that you could run
that would match the environment and then replay the coding session, pausing
it to poke around when needed.

------
localhost3000
Am I the only one who thinks this might be incredibly boring? Seriously, over
the course of say, a 10 hour coding day, how many inspired, exciting, or even
interesting moments are there? That is alot of 'dead air'... This feels like
an Onion satire on the popularization of 'geek'

~~~
jqueryin
You've got to think outside of the box a bit. They could use this for remote
interviews that entail live problem solving. It could really help cut down the
number of candidates that require in-person interviews if they live in another
state.

~~~
jmilloy
That just sounds like a different product. I wouldn't want anyone to be able
to pop in and watch my interview.

Also, are you sure that it does already exist?

------
Amokrane
Great idea! When I watched that livestreaming from Notch, I thought about this
and I almost bought the domain name <http://watchmecode.net>. I am curious to
see how well this is going to be executed!

------
Ogre
I watched a little bit of Notch's thing, it was fun. And for a more in depth
topic, it could certainly be a great way to learn.

On the other hand I've come across 1-2 minute YouTube videos several times
when googling how to use some specific API call, and I find it aggravating
when all I really need is one little code snippet. I know how to type or copy
'n paste. I don't need to watch someone else do it. All I want most of the
time is a well commented, nicely highlighted, code view on someone's blog
(StackOverflow and github are just fine too!)

Maybe I'm just old or old fashioned.

~~~
bobbles
I can definitely see this as more of a 'watch me code something cool' idea
rather than wanting to learn how to solve a specific problem. A lot of the
benefit of being able to watch the streams is to see people get their
questions answered during the cast, that relate to what the caster was
broadcasting at the time.

------
JTxt
Now you have to record/stream while you build this. Looking forward to it!

------
click170
My only gripe is that its not available _now_ hehe.

I read the headline and was like "score, I want me some of that pie" and
clicked on the link only to discover they aren't ready to launch yet.

Really excited though, hope it takes off for them. I think it would be a great
way of not only learning to program better/differently but also to expose
yourself to different programming styles.

------
vdm
This is a great idea.

Here's a 8h-1m time lapse of somebody implementing Snake3D in Clojure.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHARNkMi5Lg>

Time lapse could be a way of getting an overview of the session, and then
'zooming' into the bit you're interested in, like when you say 'wait! how did
you do that!'. Perhaps this could be implemented as a scalable timeline
scrollbar.

The timeline could include comments like Soundcloud so people can ask and
answer how to do something when and where they see it.

The stream should include keystrokes and mouse gestures as well as video.
There should also be links to things like dotfiles on github.

If the recording/uploading process can snapshot the process tree of the window
it is recording, this could be used to automatically tag the video (e.g. vim
editing Clojure code on Windows, Illustrator on Mac), which would be nice for
subscribing to feeds of tags.

------
rodh257
An interesting point of reflection this poses to developers is 'am I doing
something that other people would care to watch?'.

I like the motivational factors a site like this poses, challenges you to
become an expert at something, and when you are coding live, forces you to
stay focused on the task at hand. Looking forward to the launch.

------
beaumartinez
Interesting detail: I saw this link in an email I got very recently about
VimConf. At the bottom it says "Copyright 30 Cubits LLC"—the contact email at
30 Cubits' page[1] is for Joey, I'd assume it's the same Joey as the guy
behind VimConf. Man's on a roll!

[1] <http://30cubits.com/>

~~~
swaroop
Actually, I assumed that VimConf was a great marketing strategy for
castingcode.tv - am I wrong to think that the product came first and then the
conference idea?

------
CesareBorgia
You may want to build it like soundcloud so that viewers can add their own
comments at certain points in the video.

~~~
jwarzech
I second this idea, however I think it would be better to rotate through the
comments as they reach points in the video rather than have a cluster of icons
on a timeline that you have to hover to read the comment.

------
brittonrt
I really do like this idea, not because it does anything new (as other's have
mentioned it's easy to do this on plenty of existing venues like youtube),
it's more to do with the community you could build around this. If you could
find a simple way to match users with coding sessions that are relevant to
them, you'll have no problem building a community. You absolutely must allow
videos to be stored (not just watched live), indexed, commented on, rated,
tagged, etc if you want to make this useful, imho.

If I could go to site, search for "best way to write a y combinator in c++" or
something similar and get videos showing people doing just that but sorted by
user rating, I would be a happy boy! I love when other users do the hard work
of telling me what's good and what isn't. :)

------
gospelwut
That's right. Use that lambda expression. Right there.

------
quinndupont
As a researcher who studies how software gets produced this is a potential
goldmine. This has the ability to offer significant insight in to how
programmers work in their native environment.

------
amccloud
I was just wishing for this. Sign me up! I hope this becomes a reality. I'd
love to stream while I work. I just need to figure out a way to keep things
like our api and secret keys private.

~~~
derrida
I agree, there has to be a feature so that when a particular sequence of
characters gets entered, the screen blurs it out. But even then, it would take
many other people using it, and the functionality working, for me to trust it.

~~~
Amokrane
Or a private button to push in order to be off air for a while.

------
jasonkostempski
The most common problem with code casts is the visual quality of the code
window. How do you plan on improving that?

------
rjd
I think mine would need an R18 rating when I go into swearing fits at the .net
framework and permission issues :P

~~~
anons2011
Ha! "Why won't this work!!!" Endless alt-tabbing for googling stuff, I know
because I do it too!

------
ParadisoShlee_
Notch had thousands of people at one time, watching him code and justin.tv
cost him 14k? I hope you can find a way...

I wonder who would pay to watch linus pull in git requests :)

This would be amazing for teaching people how to code.. step by step lessons
with a verbal explanation on top of the visual aids and real code on a real
ui..

------
robjohnson
It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how beneficial it would be. There
is a segment of the population who does learn better this way, but not
everyone. I suspect that this would be more beneficial for extreme beginners
than people who have experience.

~~~
alexpogosyan
It could be very useful if he could convince some great hackers to submit
screencasts to his website.

For example imagine looking over Alan Kay's shoulder as he creates a program.
I think I'd learn lots of new things if I watched something like that.

~~~
bphogan
This is actually something PeepCode is doing with the "Play By Play" series.

<http://peepcode.com/products/play-by-play-zed-shaw>

------
mrushton14
Funny I just live blogged submitting our iPhone app last night and it was a
lot fun. Thumbs up on this!

<http://blogcastr.com/mrushton/2011/9/13/app-submission>

------
wgx
Nice idea - I'll be watching to see how this one pans out.

Just signed up for the notification.

------
wiradikusuma
I don't think I dare to use it. I usually code and Command-Tab to HN quite
often, that would be annoying for people who watch me. On a positive side,
that _could_ force me to focus.

------
lbarrow
This looks pretty cool, but why can't we just get a channel for it on justintv
or twitchtv?

------
swah
Yes, but as I've picked those bash and vim tips, I'd like to see someone
hacking on a largish, real world project.

Perhaps the coder would be given a random bug and you would see the process
from he reading the bug until the patch lands. That I would pay.

------
motters
Software as performance art?

------
politai
just curious, why do they have a tracking gif in their confirmation email?

~~~
derickbailey
the creator of this site used <http://kickofflabs.com> to create the landing
page. this service tracks how many people visit the site, sign up, open the
email, respond, etc etc etc in order to give accurate and informative reports
about the interest that has been generated.

------
razzaj
I Love the idea.

------
maeon3
I've grown the most as a programmer literally kneeling or standing behind the
shoulder of programmers with 5 to 8 years more experience than I had. Those
hours I spent in that position was more beneficial than hours sitting in
expensive classes, hours spent debugging, hours spent reading, hours spent
building new programs... combined.

The speed of great content delivery by watching someone much better than you
code can be overwhelming. If the gap in experience is too large, it is like
trying to show calculus to a monkey. He's not going to get it, and it will get
bored. There needs to be a common ground to transmit common ideas, analogies,
and new knowledge. The viewer has to put in a huge effort to keep up.

There needs to be feedback from the viewer to say: "Hey stop, what is this
devil magic you are doing right there". And the presenter can stop and explain
how this is muscle memory to him.

~~~
varikin
I agree. It isn't just pure programming that I have learned either. It is
learning more about tools, different apps, different workflows, and new
debugging tips. Also, I don't think the experience matters. Someone fresh out
of school may have a new trick to teach me or a 20 year veteran has an old
school trick I never new.

~~~
re_todd
Yes, it is often the non-programming tricks that allow me to be a more
productive programmer. Watching other programmers use a few powerful commands
in vim, plus a cool flag for grep I didn't know about, plus how to efficiently
organize things in directories to quickly find things, etc. All these little
tricks I learned from a couple programmers my first year probably doubled my
productivity as a programmer.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
So basically, watching people solve problems?

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drstrangevibes
er cant you just share your screen in skype?

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pointyhat
Do they do a naked version?

