Programming as a performance - Live-streaming and its implications for computer science education

This article discusses an emerging phenomenon of streaming programming to a live audience who in turn can interact with the streamer. In essence, this means broadcasting the programming environment and typically a web camera feed of the streamer to viewers. Streaming programming bears many similarities with live-streaming playing of video games, which has become extremely popular among gamers over the recent years. In fact, streaming programming often use the same web services as streaming gaming, and the audiences overlap. In this article, we describe this novel approach to programming and situate it in the broader context of computer science education. To gain a deeper insight into this phenomena, we analyzed viewer discussions during a particular programming stream broadcasted during a game programming competition. Finally, we discuss the benefits this approach could offer to computer science education.