14 Code Streaming Channels to Make You a Better Programmer

An increasing number of people stream as they code and hundreds of people watch their every stream. You might wonder why. After all, why would you want to watch someone else code? These code streams often last for hours. Isn’t it a slow and ineffective way to improve your programming skills?

You’d be surprised. Watching a live stream of someone programming is a great way to learn something new or improve an existing skill. Firstly, you’ll notice that even experienced programmers struggle. They’re no different from you. They have no magic tricks. They google for solutions, just like you do. They forget the semicolon, just like you do. They struggle, just like you do.

Secondly, watching other people code live will show you the little tips and tricks they use to speed up or improve their code. These are often things you would never see in an edited video, but they can be incredibly valuable nonetheless.

Thirdly, streamers are often very interactive with their audience when they’re live. They answer questions, ask questions, and change what they’re talking about depending on their audience’s wishes. That’s fun!

If you’ve never watched a live stream before, I recommend you give it a try. Here are 14 live programming channels worth watching:

Fun Fun Function

Mattias Petter Johansson is the creator of Fun Fun Function, one of the most popular programming channels on YouTube. FFF has both: plenty of excellent, edited videos for developers and recordings of live streams that show his struggles as he programs.

Traversy Media

Traversy Media has hundreds of videos and dozens of video series on a variety of programming topics, from basic web development to MongoDB deployment. His videos walk you through whatever he’s building from beginning to end without any edited cuts.

Jason Lengstorf

Jason Lengstorf has a “Learn with Jason” live stream where he pairs up with another developer in the community to learn something new. He typically covers JavaScript and React techniques and best practices, as well as how to use SaaS tools and platforms.

Adam Wathan

Adam Wathan is a YouTube live streamer who streams his coding projects from start to finish. This is code streaming pur sang: you’ll see Wathan struggle, look up things, and interact with his audience as he goes along, all of which make for very educational videos.

Naysayer88

Naysayer88 is a Twitch programmer with over 18,000 followers. His live streams almost always have hundreds of viewers. He has videos on compiler programming and game engine programming, as well as more relaxed gaming streams.

Chris Biscardi

When one teaches, two learn. Chris Biscardi has taken this popular proverb to heart and streams whatever he’s learning, whether that’s making changes to his blog’s code or figuring out AWS Websocket APIs.

csharpfritz

For those of you into .NET code, csharpfritz is the Twitch channel for you. You can watch his live streams on Twitch or, if you missed the live stream, watch the recording of it on his YouTube channel.

Shirley Wu

Shirley Wu is a freelance software engineer who streams about data visualization, JavaScript, and React. She has over 1,600 followers on Twitch, where she streams every Sunday around 11 AM PST. If you miss it, you can find her recorded streams on her YouTube channel.

RadicalFishGames

Radical Fish Games is a game development studio that streams the development of its game CrossCode, a retro-inspired 2D Action RPG set in the distant future. They stream every Saturday at 8 PM CEST. A great channel for those of you looking to learn more about game development.

Brian Lagunas

Brian Lagunas is a Microsoft MVP whose Twitch channel is all about teaching you simple coding tips, tricks, and techniques that you can use to improve your software development skills and take your apps to the next level. Often talks about WPF, Prism, Angular, and Blazor.

Handmade Hero

Handmade Hero is an ongoing project to create a complete game from scratch while streaming everything as they go along. They already have several hundreds of videos, which you can browse through on their website.

DevChatter

Brendan Enrick is the host of DevChatter and a former Microsoft MVP. He mostly streams about web development, but sometimes about Android and Windows development too. There’s a useful countdown timer on his Twitch page that tells you when his next stream is. His Twitch recordings are stored on YouTube.

Ferrissstreamsstuff

Ferris is a Graphcore developer who streams every Thursday at 7 PM CEST, usually about Rust, C, C+, emulator development, and more. You can watch his recorded Twitch streams on his YouTube channel.

Coding Garden With CJ

Coding Garden With CJ live streams several times a week, both on YouTube and Twitch. CJ has talked about and programmed in a wide variety of programming languages, and you can browse through his many videos here. You can also browse his GitHub page, where you can find the repositories that he stores his code in while doing his live streams.

Those were 14 live code streamers on Twitch and YouTube. Of course, there are many more. You can discover many great streamers by browsing through the Science & Technology channel on Twitch. For now, however, these should be plenty to keep you busy!