Watch.dev
So, Adam, dev streaming is getting huge. You're really excited about it. Tell me more.
Adam:Yeah. It's getting so big that we started another side project. We started watch. Dev, which I think the mission of watch. Dev is, like, help people who are developers get into streaming, but also just make a place for developers who like to stream and developers who like to watch developers stream, hang out.
Adam:Does that make sense? Is that the goal of watch. Dev? We didn't really talk about it too formally.
Dax:Yeah. I mean, I was pretty excited about it because, I think there are a bunch of people getting more into this and there's like a second wave, there was a first wave. I don't know, I mean, I don't know what wave we're on but I know there's there's like a current wave which I kind of think of that as you kind of got into it, that pulled me into it and I think that's kind of there's like a chain of people that are that are getting more into it like around the past couple months and I don't think people
Adam:in our circle especially like we see that much more closely.
Dax:Right. Exactly. And we're all like kinda doing it together but it would they're pretty fragmented efforts, right? Like we would ask each other for advice, things like that here and there. So it's nice to have like an official place, you know, obviously for the audience so that they can discover each other and it's like a single community of people that like doing this weird thing.
Dax:But then also for us on the streamer side to, you know, learn from each other, coordinate stuff together. I'm pretty excited about like doing more stuff with with each other. Yeah, think that's that's what I'm excited for.
Adam:Yeah. So you asked the question and I totally ignored it and just said what I wanted to say at the beginning. Let's go back to your question, which was there's a lot of, like, hype around it. Dev streaming, like, it's happening. Let's talk about what it is.
Adam:Mhmm. So dev streaming when we say dev streaming, mostly we're talking about Twitch. I guess people stream on YouTube and maybe other platforms. But largely, it's like programmers who wanna turn on a camera and log in to Twitch and stream their workday or just stream them doing programming with other people watching. That's dev streaming for those who maybe don't know what we're talking about.
Adam:And in terms of, like, its history, I'm gonna try. So Theo just made a video about this, right, like, about the history of streaming on Twitch with Des. Twitch is, like, largely 95% people playing games and people watching people play games. And there's this, like, burgeoning community of creatives, which includes developers, that are doing non gaming things on Twitch. We are a small sliver of that, so we're a tiny, tiny sliver of all of Twitch.
Adam:But there are dozens of us now. The dozens mean. There are dozens of us streaming our programming on Twitch and even dozens of people watching it. That's just some context, just so you know. There are some big dev streamers.
Adam:The Primogen comes to mind that you've got more than a thousand people watching at a time, which is a huge deal when you're talking about, like, we're writing code. I don't know. Is is that all, like, setting any context, Dax? Would you add anything to that?
Dax:Yeah. I think that makes sense. I think the overarching thing is turns out people like watching other people do stuff live and there's really no limit of what that could be. You know, like we're a niche community, I would say. But if you look on Twitch, there's all kinds of like really niche things, right?
Dax:And they all have viewers and audiences and it does feel still like at the beginning, like we're all figuring it out and you start to see people pushing the bar on like, how they're doing it. Like, for you, you, like, really went crazy with with the production quality. So it still feels like early. I don't know if you feel the same way.
Adam:No. For sure. Yeah. I mean, especially the programming thing, and I think, like, it does seem to be growing. So I'm optimistic that there's a lot of room here for lots of people.
Adam:Who's trying to join? Someone's trying someone's trying to join our our How do they find So the I guess it's on your stream. So we're actually streaming this podcast episode. Someone typed today. Very meta.
Adam:Yeah. Somebody typed in the URL, and someone's trying to join the RiverCast. So this is funny. Yeah. So we're actually streaming this live on Twitch.
Adam:I think, like, the I do have thoughts on just the, like, getting into it, whether you think you could get into it, whether you think it's for you at all. I would say I never would have thought I'd be on Twitch. Like, I just to me, it didn't seem like a thing that was, like, my speed. Don't know. I'm not, like, I'm not very young anymore, and it seemed like a young man's thing.
Adam:I don't know. Just getting into Twitch and getting into streaming has just totally changed my career. I mean, it's injected so much into my workdays. Like, I thoroughly enjoy the process of having other people around while I'm working. I don't know that that's everybody, but for me, having worked from home for a long time, over ten years, like, it was a pretty isolated career.
Adam:You know, you work alone in your office every day. Something about opening that up and having other people to hang out with while I'm working, I'm getting a lot less done, but I'm I'm enjoying my work a lot more. There's something about it that's that's really enjoyable. So I I do think, like, there are probably a lot of devs out there that that would not enjoy it. They would try and they would find out really quickly, not for me.
Adam:Or other people don't enjoy watching them do it. But I think there's a lot of people that probably would and maybe never even try. I hope someone I guess what I'm trying to get at, I hope somebody hears this. They're a developer, and they've maybe thought about it once, but then they just dismissed it, that they would try to stream. And there's a whole lot you gotta do to kinda get into it.
Adam:There's a lot of barriers to that, and we could talk about kinda what that looks like. But, yeah, it could just totally surprise you. It totally surprised me. I love it so much.
Dax:Yeah. I feel the same way. I think there were like, years ago, I first heard this concept of someone even just doing this live to a random audience. And I actually thought it was pretty cool. And I was like, oh, it would be, you know, cool if I could do that one day but it really felt like something kinda unattainable or it felt it felt impossible like how could I ever actually do that?
Dax:But then seeing a lot of people like yourself start to do it and I would I just saw so many people go from never having done it before to then having done it before to like being really comfortable doing it and it becomes a habit, and that really convinced me, oh yeah, you know, I can definitely definitely jump in and do this and yeah, I agree. I don't think it's for everyone and I also genuinely love it. Like, it's just people on the internet are so funny and it's just fun to have all these funny people around at least for, you know, a couple hours in the day. It's definitely less productive so Yeah. Don't expect to be like your maximum productivity while you're on stream but it is a fun fun environment and I think for me it also I kind of view it as one, I genuinely love it and two, it's kind of practice for just being comfortable talking to yourself and without like, you know, in front of an audience of people.
Dax:It's not literally like you're on stage but I definitely find myself getting more comfortable when I started out a little bit more uncomfortable and I like that I developed in that way.
Adam:Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's teaching you stuff that you you really wouldn't otherwise, I guess, pick up in this career at least.
Dax:Like Mhmm.
Adam:Yeah. We don't spend time on stages. I I you said something like, it doesn't have to be your whole day. Like, I think just doing it for a portion of your workday makes a difference. Like, I I think I streamed early.
Adam:I kinda started just streaming everything I did that day, and that that starts to get hard because you do get a lot less done when you're interacting with all these people. But you learn so much. I think I've learned more on Twitch just from, like, people watching you do what you're doing than pointing out things that you could do better or things that you just didn't even know you didn't have the question to ask. Like, you're not even seeking ways to improve something you're doing, but people are seeing it and pointing it out, kind of pushing that information at you. I love that part of Twitch or streaming, I guess, more broadly.
Adam:Yeah. It's a there's kind of like a series of hoops you gotta jump through. But if you can get through that and just see if you enjoy having people around and if people enjoy watching you because I think, like, some people maybe stream a long time. And if people aren't showing up, that may be a sign. I don't know.
Adam:Maybe just, like, you're not cut out for it. It's not a thing that people resonate with you. I I think it helps, like, have a thing a thing that you will kind of, like, draw people in with. And then if you have a personality that resonates with other people, then you'll probably build up an audience. I think that's, like that's part of it.
Adam:I don't know. Am I am I being gatekeepy? I don't know. I feel like this is where someone would be like, you're being a gatekeeper. I think I think
Dax:there is just it just comes down to what your goals are. Like, if it's just a thing you wanna try out, like, obviously, you know, do whatever, who cares? But it is one of those things where it just gets exponentially more fun and easy after a certain amount of viewers that you can kinda consistently draw. If you have the same people coming back, you know, that's that's even more fun. And I found that it's really hard at the beginning because you're just literally talking to yourself and you have no feedback to go off of because no one's really in your chat and that's very difficult and then you feel really awkward and you feel like why would anyone ever watch me?
Dax:But if you can build up a decent sized audience, it doesn't have to be huge, know, like ten, twenty people watching you, then there's a little bit more feedback for you to for you to react to, and it gets way way easier. So it's definitely extremely difficult at the beginning and as long as you're able to grow somewhat, it's it should be something you enjoy doing and can continue to do. I think Theo's whole thing about you can't just stream on Twitch and do nothing else and expect to have an audience. I think that is very accurate especially if you're trying to do this, you know, more professionally or like a bigger part of your life. You do need to be building audiences and like being known.
Dax:Like you said, that you need to have a thing that you're known for. It can literally be anything. The magic of the Internet is no matter what the thing is, as long as nobody else is doing it, there's gonna be enough people interested in that. It could be literally anything. Just figure out what is unique about you and what you're into that other people aren't.
Dax:Just keep doing that and over time, you should be able to people think of that thing, they should think of you. Right?
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This whole time you've been saying that, I've been trying to think of something, like, funny to say about your thing, like, what is your thing? But I can't come up with anything.
Adam:Was gonna be something insulting and it's just like, you're smart and you say smart things on the Internet. And I got nothing. I got nothing. Okay. I really
Dax:wanted
Adam:something. I mean,
Dax:I think my thing I think I'm gonna my entry to streaming was a little bit easier because I already had somewhat of a presence, just from my open source work and SST and doing serverless and AWS and all that stuff. So yeah, I was doing it a little bit more casually like six months ago and that was pretty much just for the SST audience. In the past couple of months, I've been doing it a little bit more seriously and I've been able to kind of build off of the initial SC audience and branch out a little bit more. It's totally doable. You know, it just feels impossible in the beginning when you're literally at zero, but you can figure it out.
Dax:It's not a lottery or anything.
Adam:Yeah. If you have like a social media presence outside of Twitch, I had kind of a a Twitter following. I think that helps a lot. Mhmm. Can just kinda, like, keep shilling your stream to your existing audience.
Adam:I do I wanna talk about Twitch chat and, like, the people who are watching. Because that's other side of watch. Dev is, like, a community for the people who watch a lot of us, and it's a lot of overlap. A lot of the same people are watching our streams. One thing I wonder because I know I get less I get less done, like, when I'm streaming.
Adam:But I feel like the people watching also have to be getting less done, and I I do worry about, like, the sustainability. I know, like, I I'll get done streaming for four hours, and then I watch you, Dax, and you'll stream for a few hours. And I realized, like, I've got nothing else done today. Like, I just I hung out on Twitch all day. So there's that element of it.
Adam:Do you worry about that, like, in terms of sustainability of this thing long term?
Dax:Yeah. I gotta figure out a better balance for myself because the past two week or two, I've been watching you every single day. And I actually think you get more done during your streams than I get done because I'm just, like, trying to think of fine things to say in chat the whole no, mean, while I'm watching you, I'm like, I'm very unproductive and you can actually see that in what my schedule has been like. I've been working a lot more at night like before I sleep I just haven't been getting enough done during the day. So, yeah, I think what we're currently doing probably isn't fully sustainable.
Dax:I need to, like, you know, background you a little
Adam:bit more. Really funny in my Twitch chat. You're probably too funny. You should probably calm down. Just too many witty comments.
Dax:There's too many opportunities. Even when I start working, I hear your voice and I hear you say something, I'm like, I can say something snarky back to that and I have to I have to switch over and and get the comment out. It's funny.
Adam:Yeah. I guess I I try to, like, hop in and out. And I I hope that people that watch us stream are doing the same. I hope they're not just the entire time locked into what we're doing. It is easy to make that assumption, though, as you're streaming to just assume, like, oh, these people that are all here, they're watching everything I do.
Adam:Right? But I don't think they are. I hope not. But there is I think there's a good opportunity for people who maybe, like, you're new into the career, you still are kinda getting your feet wet, so to speak. Watching people stream coding, I feel like there's there's value there.
Adam:Like, versus Twitter where people are like, here's a JavaScript tip. I feel like you watch somebody on Twitch, if they're actually doing real work, I think you're gonna pick up some stuff. And most of the time, you're gonna ask questions, we're gonna answer them. Like, we it's not like we're overwhelmed with chat or we can't just, like, respond to stuff. I think there's value on the viewership side too, I guess what I'm trying to say.
Dax:Yeah. Exactly. And I've gotten really explicit feedback about this that I found pretty interesting. So with SST, we're always trying to create educational content to get people to understand certain things. And we think about very explicit things that, you know, we think people should know.
Dax:But when people watch my stream, they comment on learning all this stuff that we literally would have never thought of or we just wouldn't have it's just something that wouldn't make sense in any other form. People will talk about how it's interesting to see how I use my tools, like how I lay out my windows, when I go from my editor to like the SST console, like when I go to Google or when I go to ChatGPT, like those like little workflow things, there's a lot of information there that you really can't explain that in in any other format aside from consistently streaming every day.
Adam:Yeah. You just take it for granted. Like, it's not things I would think to tell people Mhmm. That I do, which I'm not cool. I'm not using Arch and I three and all that.
Adam:But, like, when I swipe between my workspaces on Mac, are like, oh, I never thought to do that. And I just assume, like, everybody does that. I don't know. Yeah. Somebody asked actually and we're not gonna hide the fact that we're streaming this one.
Adam:It's very I think it's on brand. Right? Yeah. We're we're talking about dev streaming. We're doing this on Twitch.
Adam:Someone asked, do you get any anxiety? I think they said anxiety. Are you are you afraid of people judging how you code?
Dax:Do you wanna answer that one, Dax? I've never had really had that cross my mind. I think naturally, I don't care about that. But on top of that, all my stuff has been open source for so long. So I'm thinking I'm gonna see all my stuff being public.
Dax:Yeah. I've never had a negative interaction really. Like even if I was worried about it, there was actually nothing that's ever manifested that I was like, oh, I feel bad about that or someone made me feel bad. It's almost always positive and like useful for me to hear. The worst is that sometimes a fee piece of feedback is not relevant.
Dax:That's like the worst you can possibly really get.
Adam:Yeah, sure.
Dax:But besides that, like, you know, I I've never really had anything bad happen.
Adam:Yeah. I can't think of, like I know people have pointed out, like, you could do this this way or this way is better, but I'm usually looking for that. And I think if you go into it just assuming you're gonna write bad code, probably whatever bad code is, and just not hold it too dearly, then you're gonna learn a lot. And I think you'll get over it pretty quick if if there is any fear there.
Dax:Yeah. If it feels like a superpower, you just get even in places where you're writing something where you don't think there's any problem, sometimes people point out, oh, you could actually do that. And it's like, wow, I would have never even stopped to think.
Adam:Yeah. Sorry. Was distracted reading Twitch. No. Chris is here.
Adam:Hey, Chris. Sorry. This is weird. This is a podcast episode. Chris gets trolls a lot though.
Adam:I don't get a lot of trolls. I've not had a lot of that. Maybe people ban them before I see it.
Dax:I don't yeah. I haven't gotten any trolls. I mean, I'm I'm at a much smaller scale, so I'm sure that shows up once once you hit a certain size.
Adam:Yeah. We had another question. Would you always prepare or just hit record and go for it? Do you ever prepare anything for your stream?
Dax:No. I think for me the way I view Twitch is it's the lowest effort content I can make and that I don't have to do a bunch of work outside of literally just doing the thing. So for me, that's where it fits in like the spectrum of content that I do. It is just a thing I can do every day without having to have a bunch of ceremony around it. So no, I don't really prepare.
Dax:And obviously, at the beginning, you maybe are a little awkward, but over time, you start to feel really normal.
Adam:Yeah. Two things I would say. One, it is it's it's so true. It's the lowest effort content. Like, I I wanna put myself out there in the world, but, like, I just can't be bothered anymore to, like, write a Twitter thread or, like, make a polished video.
Adam:It's just so it's so much effort. And something about Twitch, even though it's more time and you probably spend more time doing it than anything else, it's very low effort. You just kinda, like, get to be yourself. The other thing I would say, though, in terms of preparing, I did spend, like, four months building my Twitter overlay my my Twitch overlay. So I guess I prepared, like, in that sense.
Adam:You can spend a lot of time kinda, like, making your stream better, but I don't think of it as, like, preparing for an individual stream. Like, I don't prepare for day to day what I'm gonna do on any given stream. But I think putting a little time, a little effort into just polishing the the stream in terms of, you know, like, your your ergonomics, your overlays, and and that kind of stuff. And if you're gonna have, like, any kind of bits that you do or things that you do every day that are kinda consistent, I know people like to to feel like they know what to expect and, like, that that kind of stuff I think is good to prepare for.
Dax:Yeah. I mean, speaking of, that's another whole angle to this that I find extremely fun. Like, similar to you that it's kind of a new thing you can go really deep in and learn a bunch about. And with streaming, there's so much. Right?
Dax:There's literally like, like you said, the overlays, like the different ways you can produce your stream and there's all the equipment that goes behind it. I'm actually having a blast figuring out how to do all this on Linux. It's that it's I'm not I don't actually find it painful. It's like it's fun for me to learn about all this stuff that I haven't had to, in a long time. So it's just like another hobby that you can just go super deep in.
Dax:And, yeah, I think people might be wondering like how do they even get started? Like, where how deep do they need to go? But, yeah, I don't know if you had any thoughts on that.
Adam:No. I mean, I'm I'm an obsessive, so I love to go very deep on any new hobbies. And the Twitch and streaming has been that for sure. Like, I've spent a ton of time and enjoyed just like how could I make it better? How could I make it, like, a higher quality stream?
Adam:I I've really enjoyed that whole process. Yeah. It's a lot of hardware. It's a lot of software. Once you figure out the Linux thing, I'd love to to see if I can make it work on my like, I'd love to, like, play with that.
Adam:Mhmm. So I'm very curious where that all heads. Yeah. No. I think it's all it's all a lot of fun.
Adam:I think the development part, the actually coding on stream part is a very small sliver, I guess, of what makes it actually enjoyable. And it because sometimes it's a small sliver of what I actually do on stream. Someone else asked how important are the projects that you work on? Like, I'm not interested in some projects streamers work on while others seem really interesting. I honestly, I've had the feeling I don't know if you feel the same way, Dax, but, like, sometimes I think I could just stream any random thing.
Adam:It doesn't matter. Like, I think it's more just the conversations and that that kind of stuff is why people are there. Do you think that's true?
Dax:Yeah. I feel the same way. Like, the the working on a thing is just to provide some framing for the whole stream. So it's like you said, people know what to expect. But I find that it doesn't really matter.
Dax:I don't know if people are really there for the specific project that you're working on. I think it's like, you know, people join where they feel comfortable, where they feel they can engage, and they have a consistent community. So, yeah, I I haven't I haven't cared too much about what I actually work on.
Adam:Yeah. Chris says he only works on the projects that he does on stream on stream. So it's like Mhmm. He never works on that project offline, so it motivates him to keep streaming. That's a good call.
Dax:Yeah. That's a good call. Yeah.
Adam:That'll keep you doing it. And Chris does it like, you do it every day, Chris, I think. Well, now we're having a conversation with someone in Twitch chat on the podcast. Mhmm. I don't know.
Adam:This is interesting. It's fun, though. It's it's become my life's passion, and I feel like I should talk about it more because I just know there are people out there that would really enjoy it. And I think that's the hope. We've seen some friends starting to get into it.
Adam:Yeah. I don't know. Anything else you would say to people that are new to it that maybe have all kinds of fears or questions?
Dax:Yeah. I've just found it's an incredible creative outlet. I think if you have creative energy you might not even think you have creative energy and you might discover that you do. I get really excited when I get an idea for my stream, like this whole thing with my little dog camera. Like, I was that was so fun.
Dax:Like, you know, just being able to build something that's an idea you have. It's purely for fun, right? You're not like what's the business model behind this which is what 99% of my life is otherwise, it's so serious. But here I can use my same skills, you know, my software engineering skills to do these things, build these overlays, build these automations but it's all towards like just for having fun and that does feel so different than the rest of my life. And, yeah, I I love having that in here and I think I'm gonna want something like this forever now that I know what it's like.
Adam:Yeah. No. I would say like, as a developer, if you get into this, you're you're gonna have a phase probably early on where you just wanna do all the things you can possibly do with the Twitch API. Like, you're gonna build channel point rewards. You're gonna build crazy overlays.
Adam:And just, like, embrace it. Enjoy that little season. It is like this pure joy phase, but I think every developer on Twitch goes through it. Like Mhmm. You're gonna build a a lot of stuff to just kinda make it your own, and and it's fun.
Adam:And then you kinda like get to settle into that and just enjoy it every day. Yeah. It it's just it's pure fun. I love it. Yeah.
Adam:Oh, wow. Is this the first time we've ever not had anything to say? Neither one of us. Are we reading Twitch Chat?
Dax:Think we're reading Twitch Chat. I was just looking at the Twitch Chat.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. Same. I guess, do we have anything else we wanna say on this? We don't have to.
Dax:No. Let's just plug the Discord again, watch.dev. Yeah. You can just go to
Adam:watch.dev, like, your browser, it'll redirect
Dax:you to the Discord. Yeah. So it's a community for people that like doing this both as an audience and as a streamer. If you're interested in getting into it and you have questions, you know, I think when I was getting into it, I had a lot of questions on what mic do I get, what camera do I get. Again, you don't have to go crazy.
Dax:You can get started with something pretty basic. I wanted to go crazy, so I had a lot of questions about this stuff. But it's fun. Like, people there, there's just some really knowledgeable people there that, will be able to help you out. And whatever scale you wanna go to, you wanna go to intro scale, you wanna go to Adam scale, Adam's the top end of the scale.
Dax:You can't go really past Adam. In terms
Adam:of investing in your yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've I've invested in my setup more
Dax:than you should.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:It's a great place to figure out how to do it and yeah. So so join if you're interested.
Adam:Cool. Hope to see everybody there. Alright. We're done here. Thanks, Tags.
Dax:We forgot to hit record. Stop it. Just kidding. No.
Adam:He really got me for a second. It's hard to see my monitor. It's, it's still recording. I'm gonna stop it now.
