Education Ecosystem Blog

Who is brett-richardson? You’ve seen him online, doing his thing. But what’s he like IRL and what does he think about Livecoding.tv/programming in general? We decided to find out. Here’s what we have so far:

Real name: Brett Richardson

Alter ego: brett-richardson

Location: Berlin, Germany

Powers/abilities: JavaScript, PHP, Ruby

Username: https://www.livecoding.tv/brett-richardson

Questions:

Q: If you were one of the co-founders of Livecoding.tv what would you do differently?

A: Better IA design and site navigation, the ability to create “project playlists” OR “learning paths,” tighter integration with 3rd party services, namely: the ability to link casts with a Github repo, the ability to link YouTube videos to your Livecoding.tv profile, the ability to drive traffic to the caster’s website, and a platform where audience members could be invited to “pair program” with voice support.

Q: What’s the best thing about Livecoding.tv? What’s the worst/most annoying?

A: The audience is much better than YouTube. There’s good visibility on the streams page. Streaming performance is surprisingly good compared to YouTube, however, I find the “offline video” to be finicky at times. I feel the IA design of the site could be improved a lot.

Q: Do you have any suggestions/message for the team?

A: Nice work! Let me know if you’re hiring, seems like an interesting project.

Q: Where do you see Livecoding.tv in 3 years?

A: Honestly, probably still a niche website unless content provides a clear learning path for absolute beginners to enter specific fields.

Q: Share an interesting moment/experience you had as a streamer/viewer on Livecoding.tv.

A: Met a fellow New Zealander who works for Facebook in SF.

Q: What does it take to be a good programmer?

A: Understanding that code is more for humans than for machines. Understanding what it takes to grow a complex project in a maintainable way.

Q: Programmers don’t have a social life. Negate/contradict that assumption.

A: I think people who enjoy programming are generally abstract in mind. I suppose this lends to a general detachment from most common social situations. There are, however, social situations where we thrive. Board game evenings, competitive games, technical meetups, book clubs, etc. The internet has certainly made it easier to find these alternate social situations.

Q: What’s the best thing about coding?

A: Creating something out of nothing.

Q: Does coding help in anyway in imparting social skills? Explain.

A: Uh? Not sure I understand the question. Pair programming is a great social experience that I enjoy greatly in my day-job.

Q: Who would you rather be: CTO of Apple or Samsung?

A: Probably neither… but I suppose I’d prefer Apple. I imagine that managing a company the size of Apple would be more juggling organizational overhead than doing anything creative.

Check out one of brett-richardson’s recent streams: ReactJS + Drupal7 + Docker – Portfolio Site