Education Ecosystem Blog

It’s time to see who paintballbob REALLY is! Thanks to some good-old-fashioned journalism and a little Q/A, here’s what we’ve learned:

Real name: Scott

Alter ego: paintballbob

Location: Sunnyvale, United States

Powers/abilities: Java

Username: https://www.livecoding.tv/paintballbob/

Questions:

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

A: Definitely the size of Twitch now or bigger. There’s a pent up demand for coding education, and having approachable, interactive, and educational content will be huge in the future. Look at Udacity, Edx, Open Courseware, and a bunch of other website to see the effectiveness of online education.

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

A: Originally I wanted to stream just so I could get myself to actually work on my personal projects, but it’s evolved to be more than that. I’ve never before felt like people would actually be interested in the coding that I’m doing. At this point I have at least a few regular viewers, and it’s great to see people again and again. Being able to teach someone by example (or play music by request 🙂 ) have been moments that make it worth streaming.

Q: As a streamer/viewer, do you have anything to say to your streamers/viewers?

A: Never stop learning or you’ll get pigeonholed into a job you won’t like. The best programmers are polyglots who learn concepts and patterns vs. languages. For example, I’ve recently taken on a project at work in Go even though I don’t know the language. I have been streaming this on Livecoding.tv to share my experience in learning as an example for people looking to expand horizons.

Q: What features/functions would you like to see in Livecoding.tv?

A: More languages 🙂 Seriously, I think the product is great as is, though we could use the ability to stream higher quality video. It’s been hard balancing the quality of the stream vs. disconnections.

Q: What role, if any, do you think Livecoding.tv is playing in promotion/learning of programming/coding?

A: At the very least the interaction that I’ve had with the community has caused me to be an advocate for the site itself. I know this is something that can catch on as a complement to the Udacity-type websites. Interactive learning has always been more effective, and combining people voluntarily teaching with those seeking knowledge will be a recipe for explosive growth.

Q: Is coding as boring as it’s perceived by regular people?

A: It absolutely is. People who are not coders by profession or hobby have a hard time seeing the creative side of the process. I prefer to call what I do as engineering rather than programming, since the majority of “coding” work is actually spending the time to design the system.

Q: When did you first learn to code? How did it go initially?

A: I started with HTML in high school, but moved to Java in college introductory classes. I always did fine in classes, but the real transition to effectiveness only came when I had a real, practical project to complete for a job. Once your livelihood depends on your coding ability, it becomes a lot more important.

Q: If you were a programming language which one would you be and why?

A: Hard question. I’ve recently thought scala, but the source code of a scala program looks so ugly. Maybe coffeescript or something else elegant. Go? I’d aspire to be elegant, effective for experienced programmers, and easily learnable for the beginner.

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

A: I think some of this I’ve covered in another answer, but taking the time to learn new things, new paradigms, and using those new found skills in real, meaty projects is the only way to expand the way you think. Also, nobody programs in a vacuum. Using web searches effectively will help immensely when wandering in uncharted waters. I find programming in public helps hone your craft. Code reviews, public source, and, of course, live streaming keeps me on my toes.

Q: Do you think ‘Aliens’ also code? Why?

A: Absolutely, how else can they get those badass spaceships going? Automation is the core of efficiency. If something else does the work, you have time to do other, higher-cognitive-level things. It almost seems like a law of the universe. Maybe it’s just my programmer mind speaking.

Check out one of paintballbob’s recent streams: Data chunking in Go