I’ve started a coding livestream I: Why
Part I: Why? of III (Why?, What?, When?) series— Come and say Hi! 👋 twitch.tv/joaquimley
Part I: Why?
- Part II: What? (soon)
- Part III: When? (coming up)
While some like to numbly scroll through Facebook, Instagram, insert_your_social_media_of_choice, etc., and there is nothing wrong with that, others try to squeeze every little bit of free time they can get to learn, improve, or explore something related to their passion/interests, at least most often than not.
There’s a reason why podcasts have seen a big surge in both demand and popularity.
For the latter, learning while working out, commuting, or on a awaiting room, is the new (gold-)standard (and we can’t live without it).
TL;DR: I’m live-coding my open source projects on twitch.tv/joaquimley.
At the time of this writing I’m developing an android utility app, which was an example on a previous post, using all the best practices and tools (TDD, CLEAN, Rx, Kotlin, Android Architecture Components). You might also see me tinkering with different tech.Inspired by: meow.noopkat.com/lessons-from-one-year-of-streaming-on-twitch
— More specifics on the “What?” part of this series (soon).
An increasing demand for free on-demand
This is now possible thanks to today’s technology, it is virtually free to create a podcast or go live. Comparing to just 10~20 years ago, you would need a big budget, several tens of thousand €/$ on equipment alone, today? Your smartphone is a stream-ready device, with a simple tap you’re instantly broadcasting to twitch/youtube, for free(!!), anyone with a decent internet connection can now watch you!
Yes, I’ve started a podcast, but that’s a story for another day (article)!
Why?
Some 6 or so months ago, while commuting, going through twitter (my social media of choice 👆), I came across a tweet that linked to a very interesting article by Suz Hinton. In this article, Suz shared some of the experiences and learnings acquired from a whole year of streaming on twitch (check Suz’s awesome channel: twitch.tv/noopkat). Just by reading you can tell Suz has been having a lot of fun streaming, and the first thing that came to my mind was “wow this looks awesome! I wanna do it too!”.
But wait, stream what? — Here’s an idea
With the speed of how things move in the software industry, it is impossible to try and learn everything during office hours, and just because you want to use some interesting/trendy new thing, it doesn’t mean it is the correct or production-ready.
I love to code
I quickly found out the best way to get familiarised with something, is to test it! Reading is not enough, therefore I’m always working/tinkering on a side-project, some of these never see the light of the OOS, others do.
There it was, the purpose of my stream! 💡
I’ll stream myself when I’m working on these projects. It would definitely motivate me to release/stop stopping!
After that, I went to my twitch channel started to think on how it would look, how it works, where would I physically stream from, and how often! Such excitement 🐶.
Although there was already some great information on Suz’s article, I needed to do some further reading on “how to stream”, some tips & tricks for beginners, easily avoidable mistakes etc. such study 🐶.
But, after the initial rush, I started to debate with myself, finding excuses. Sadly for some (now lost) time…
- Would it be interesting? Programming can be so boring to watch 🤔
- Am I good enough?
- Am I interesting enough?
- Not today, I have to do X, Y, and Z, next week! 👎
I never gave up on the idea, and continued working towards on the Hello World, or so I thought!
I quickly felt like I was always postponing that simple tap. I spent a lot of hours thinking, writing, planning, designing/throwing away layouts, learning about twitch alerts, emotes etc., channel description and extension panels, all of this secondary stuff, it was a way to tell myself that “I’m making progress”, when in reality, I was just making excuses to not go live, being self-conscious sucks, and too much of a perfectionist is a very real weakness.
Real artists ship. — Steve Jobs
During this time, I started to see more and more people getting inspired by the same article as I did, and they were already live! Just coding, no fancy stuff, just an IDE and (sometimes) a webcam.
This feels somewhat full circle, writing about a topic that I read. I hope I can help/inspire/motivate someone the same way Suz & others did 💪.
That was it, with the support of some close people in my life, I finally shifted into gear, and I decided, “I’m going live!”.
Hello world 🎥 🔴
It went horribly! My computer could barely function, I wasn’t able to talk much while coding (still find it hard), I was a little “nervous”, and I didn’t know what to expect, I had 3 different viewers, averaged 0 and topped at 1 concurrent! It wasn’t what I would call a positive experience, but it was the kick I needed.
“Can only go up from this.” ¯\_(ツ)_/ ¯
I’m not yet at the phase of the story where I would write about the 1k/2k average viewers, where there’s loads of interaction.
No, like I mentioned, I still haven’t officially-released the v1.0.0, this was an open-beta, so as of today, I currently stand with 32 (edit: 39) followers (such a big win already), I average 3~5 viewers and sometimes I only to stream to the 2 bots I have (yes, 0 humans) still have loads of fun.
I now feel totally fine going live. I’m starting to get used to talk while coding, and some days I do get a lot of interaction (awesome)!
Now I’m always excited to go live! 🎥💻🤓
I hope to see you there, say hello or just lurk around. Hopefully you can learn something or at least get some entertainment. I’m starting only with Android stuff, but it’s not necessarily the exclusive tech I’ll be stream about.
See you soon!
You’ve just read the Part I of a 3 part series “I’ve started a coding livestream” check out the other articles:
- Part II: What? (soon)
- Part III: When? (coming up)
If you liked this article hit that 👏 button (smash it!), if you know someone who might extract value please share, I’ll be looking for your opinion and suggestions in the comments, feedback is always welcome.
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