Twitch.TV was once the exclusive domain of gamers. Now, it is being used to teach enterprise software design, with Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS at the forefront).
AWS published March’s first installment of its Live Coding with AWS series. This series features AWS developers, or “senior technical evangelists”, livestreaming their coding projects. The videos cover everything from “Application Delivery with AWS” to “Chatbots with Lex & Slack.”
The site states that Live Coding with AWS will cover nearly every AWS service from a developer perspective and occasionally will have guests (from Amazon and other members of the community) to talk about their projects. The live coding videos and related resources will be available on the AWS website, but they will also be available on the Twitch AWS website.
It’s not surprising that AWS is a major player in the growing “live coding” movement on Twitch. This is because Amazon bought parent company Twitch Interactive in 2014. (which started as the gamer-oriented Justin.tv back in 2007).
Live Coding with AWS now has 18 livestreamed video videos that can be replayed. These videos are also available on the Twitch AWS website where more videos (72 and counting) can be found. Content ranging back to the 2015 re:Invent conference.
The videos keep coming with “How to Use SSM” scheduled for broadcast today, and four more lessons planned through the month.
[Click on the image to see a larger view.] Randall Hunt teaches Coding Chatbots With Lex & Slack (source : AWS). The following description of a June 26 stream (“Chatbots With Lex & Slack”) gives an idea of the videos:
Slack and AWS team up live on Twitch.TV/AWS Monday, June 26, at 4PM ET to create a chatbot using Amazon Lex. And then users can vote on the next episode by voting on the Lex-powered chatbot. We’ll be covering authorization, operations and persistence using AWS DynamoDB and Amazon Lambda (as well third-party authorization through Twitch or Slack). Monday streams can be a great place for ideas and questions to be answered if you are taking part in the AWS Chatbot Challenge. Randall Hunt (@jrhunt), will be joined by Helen Zeng who is a Partner Engineer on Slacks Developer Relations Team. She assists developers and partners in integrating their workflows into Slack. Randall Hunt is the guide. He is shown even when he is staring at the screen trying find the cause of a bug, while rubbing his chin, murmuring “hmm”. Livestreaming has the advantage that viewers can share helpful hints. Hunt was reminded by one viewer in this video that he had forgotten to include a return. Every time! “Good call!”
These moments might not be of interest to programmers, but the videos can be used as an alternative instructional venue for coders who enjoy visual learning and the social interaction that livestreaming offers.
According to AWS Twitch, there are 2,210 followers. They can be grouped together into friends, followed, or even contacted via “whisper”
If you are not interested in social interaction, the livestreamed video can be replayed at the official AWS or Twitch sites and other venues such as YouTube. The AWS videos include not just the “live Coding Videos” but also other videos such as impromptu interviews and code demonstrations with the likes Amazon CTO Werner Vogels.
Twitch is the leader in live coding, but there are other options, such as WatchPeopleCode (with an associated Reddit website) and LiveEdu.tv, formerly LiveCoding.tv.
Twitch is where you can find live cosplayers.
