Live Development: an Experiment

2.7.2023

I've decided to try something (relatively) new to me. I've tried it once or twice before, but never anything serious.

I am, of course, talking about live-streaming development, specifically Kohi. There are several reasons behind this, including but not limited to:

It saves me time - yep, and a lot at that. One of the things that's plagued me in this project until recently is the amount of time I have spent doing stuff other than actually working on the engine.
Rubber ducking - This is one I actually didn't anticipate as being an advantage, but having to explain as I go to an audience comes with built-in rubber ducking, and that's already been proven to be a powerful thing a few times. Plus, sometimes astute viewers catch things I don't, in real time, so I can fix things I normally might not have caught for another video or two doing it the old-fashioned way.
The viewer gets a better insight into my thought process behind the designs and decisions I make in real time - something that isn't possible with the old format of prepping everything ahead of time. I've already gotten strong feedback on this as well.

At the time of writing, I've had my Twitch channel up and running for about a month and a half and am sitting at around 60 followers. I recently (as in, just last week) got Twitch Affiliate, which provides me more ways to interact with the audience as well.

So, why not stream on YouTube, where the channel is almost at 10k subscribers?

There are a few reasons for this, but primarily this is to diversify content distribution across more than just one platform. It's never a great idea to put all your eggs in one basket. So, I'm trying this on Twitch for a bit to see how it works. As with my YouTube channel itself, this is also an experiment. If it proves not to be working out after a decently long trial, I can always switch platforms and try YouTube.

All that being said, I am archiving all Twitch streams on the YouTube channel, so they will always be available there. We'll check back in around a few months from now and see where we landed!

Some links: