Do you watch streams (on Twitch, etc.)?

A few years back I found the youtube series where it was creating a video game from scratch. The pace was too much for me to commit to but for a number of episodes (feels funny calling them that) I was able to follow along. I've tried other sites in video format and found its hard because the presenter will fly through whatever and you start to feel lost. I found myself pausing videos for some period of time and trying to catch up and that is jarring.

Sometimes the presenter will have some setup or just mention a config and if you aren't on the exact same version of IDE/editor then everything looks different and you're lost. Then there is the larger problem of older videos are 100% irrelevant if the stack of tech they use has had recent updates. Maybe this is more game programming related because major version changes will have menus moving around or new/different options. I would imagine a new person to web development would feel the same if videos were on IDE version 1 and that IDE is on version 3 now (replace IDE with editor or whatever you use).

When I tinker with something new and there is a written setup guide, its much easier to follow along. I almost think video streams aren't the right format for learning.

Most streamers publish the interesting parts of their streams on Youtube, and that's how I watch them.

I only watch live streams when it's like a game tourney, but even then they if it's important enough they also have a live stream on Youtube.

Not that I like youtube or anything, but that's how I interact with the streaming world.

I once attended a live stream on Twitch because I wanted to ask the streamer a very specific question. He had 15 viewers at that time, he read my question and answered it. Then I thanked him and logged off.

Short answer: nope. Long answer: I haven't found Twitch to be suitable as a platform and I think it's because I aged out of the demographic it is targeting. I have attempted to watch live coding streams, competitive gaming, casual gaming, and even some streams that my friends do. Nothing seems to keep me attentive. I find the chat is mostly flooded with nonsense. I'm impressed that streamers can interact well with a lively chat. In the off chance the streamer is doing something interesting to me - they'll interrupt it by interacting with chat.

Higher level you may want to focus on what a great educator does when teaching. A big part of being a good educator is understanding the different ways that people learn and accommodating for each of them. I think? If you can leverage Twitch's chat system to help groups that learn differently you might have more impact. (Personally I would want an educator to present ideas and get through fully-thought out concepts before taking questions and interacting with chat).

The only streams I typically watch are conference type presentations that I could not see live. For me personally I find most educational type streaming content is inferior to the same material presented in text. This is most likely because I learned my fundamentals via text books when there was no such thing as "streams."

If I try to give a more objective critique I think the act of writing something is more thoughtful than just saying it. Live content rarely, if ever, will have the same sort of detail as something written in a book because doing so on camera would be unwatchable tedium.

I agree with others that streams could be useful for introduction to topics (ex: conference presentations) but in my opinion, fall short beyond that.

I used to watch a morning stream that recapped the news from yesterday in a very engaging way.

I wanted to make it part of my routine, but then the streamer started doing that twitch thing where they drop their sentence to thank someone that subscribed or paid some contribution.

It became too annoying as they got more and more popular, and eventually I just stopped tuning in.

Now I listen to a couple of NPR and Times podcast with much better quality and no annoying live interruptions.

For me livestreams are only good if you are a complete beginner on a subject. Actually, even if you are a beginner, I don't know if streams/youtube videos are a good starting point.

I like learning. I remodeled my house with my father, I rebuilt an engine, I completely modified a car, built home servers and computers, I'm planning a patio project. Youtube videos and streams often have a lot of bad information, additionally I don't want to watch a 1 hour stream just to learn halfway this person doesn't know what they are doing. There is sometimes a lot of fluff in those videos and marketing. Books and even online tutorials are much MUCH better, easier to briefly see what is in it.

A lot of people who are making these videos is basically a blind person leading another blind person. They don't know the subject well enough but want to make a how to video. For example, anyone can build a patio that looks nice......however, not everyone can build a patio that will stand the test of time. There are different guidelines for different climate/soil types.

Imo, if you are really want to learn something you need to dive deep, start with the basics so you can then at least filter good information.

I would love to watch some people solving algorithm challenges (leet code type ones). It's something I have never grokked even though I code a lot, I wouldn't be able to solve any hard leet code problems and probably not many medium ones either.

Major sports championships when teams from my hometown are playing. Since I'm from Los Angeles, that is actually fairly often, but those are the only events I watch live. Everything else can be recorded without losing urgency. "Technical topics" sounds more unnecessary than usual as far as transmitting in real time. The content shouldn't become less useful if people watch it a day or week or year later.

Except for movies and TV shows I watch almost everything at 2x speed and skim when it's too verbose or when I know the subject decently well.

None of that is possible with streams, so I don't. From time to time, I will just explore the stream to see if everyone is working on something interesting (I am trying to get a feel for Rust at the moment)

I've 'watched' streams of stuff like teardowns, but normally that's just skipping around to watch as it progresses. I just can't bring myself to devote that much time to one video - a timestamp of much longer than 10 minutes on a Youtube video is a pretty big deterrent for me.

My brother-in-law streams on Twitch, but I only really find it interesting when he's playing an adventure or JRPG game with a plot and story. Right now he's doing one day a week of Final Fantasy X for a couple hours and it's been really fun.

I find streaming terrible for learning as I like skipping the boring bits/things I already know, not to mention no way to speed up the playback.

I don't. Streaming could be interesting as background content, but Twitch is so bad it ruins my experience and I actively avoid it now.

Very very rarely, I don't feel like I have enough free time to sit and watch a stream for several hours.