Livecoding.TV is a new platform where people can watch and interact with developers as they code products in real-time.
It’s the love child of two exploding trends in technology and digital media right now: live-streaming and coding.
The new, free site gives people who are learning to code a way to watch, learn, and talk to more experienced developers.
For developers, it’s a chance to teach, solicit feedback, and market themselves.
When you log into Livecoding.TV, you can browse videos based on what’s currently being live-streamed, what’s archived (all live-streams are archived), which live broadcasts are coming up, coding language, and difficulty level.
Because all of the live-streams are archived, one self-employed developer also wants to use the platform to document the entire process of coding his project, a 2-D physics game, from start to finish.
“I think that would be a fun thing to do,” Adam Wulf told CNNMoney. “[Viewers] could watch a historical record of it being created.”
Names for each video are typically combinations of the project or product and the computer language. “Kivy – WeatherApp,” “PHP MVC Framework Dev,” and “Facebook API + JS” are a few examples of what’s been streamed.
Once you start watching live-streams, the experience is the same: A video player and chat room dominants the top two-thirds of the page. The bottom third is dedicated to a profile of the developer and a link to previous videos.
Many of the products developed live online are iPhone or Android apps. There are also games and fun projects like a program to 3D-print parts to make a Pokeball (see screenshot, below).
Livecoding.TV co-founder Jamie Green says he sees people coding in C, Python, and Java most frequently, but there isn’t an overall trend.
Developers have been recording their coding process for years, but the videos are scattered across personal blogs or sites like YouTube, Twitch, and Reddit. This makes it difficult for viewers to find the videos they need.
“There wasn’t a dedicated place where both types of people could go,” Green said. Livecoding.TV fills that gap, he added.
Earlier this year, a website called Watch People Code emerged from a subreddit to try to solve this problem too, but it relies on user suggestions and live-streams from other platforms like Reddit and YouTube.
“The site mirrors the links, and is sorted by starting time,” Watch People Code’s founder and main developer Alexander Putilin said. “If you want to go to the subreddit, the videos are sorted by upvotes.”
Livecoding.TV — from its design to business strategy, on the other hand — is modeled closely to Twitch, and it’s easy to see why.
Last year Twitch, a live-streaming platform dedicated mostly to video game playing, attracted 100 million monthly unique viewers. Amazon recognized the market potential for live-stream video content and acquired Twitch for $970 million in 2014.
Livecoding.TV is nowhere near this size but it’s still in beta mode. Since its launch a month ago, more than 20,000 people from 156 countries have joined the platform, both as broadcasters and viewers, surpassing its founders’ expectations.
Once the site grows bigger, Livecoding.TV plans to monetize its platform the same way Twitch does too — through viewer donations, subscriptions, and private channels.
