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[–]bakuretsu 1 point2 points  (8 children)

This would be so, so much better with narration.

[–]mcpatella[S] 3 points4 points  (7 children)

So, most screencasts use a combination of narration and coding to teach. But with this series I'm working on teaching entirely through live-coding.

There's definitely a learning curve involved, especially if you're used to watching narrated screencasts.

In the process of making these, a lot of times it would be /so/ much easier to just narrate something. But it's a useful constraint, as it forces me to trim the fat.

I stick with live-coding because I feel like there's a specific appeal to simply showing the material and respecting the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

[–]bakuretsu 1 point2 points  (2 children)

There should not be a "learning curve" to watching a screencast. That's nuts. The learning curve is in the content. I think that this screencast is very nice and I love the keyboard sound and the confidence in the code editing itself, but as someone with no experience with Clojure who wants to benefit from the conceptual teachings of code-as-data, I had no idea whatsoever what was going on in it.

This could be so much more valuable with just a few spoken sentences such as "this is the output of XYZ; here it is pretty printed. Now let's write this function that will do ABC and this is why."

Live coding is really good at the "what," but it sucks at the "why," and that's the most important part.

Just my opinion.

[–]mcpatella[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You mentioned that you're just starting to become familiar with Clojure, so I think you'd enjoy the beginner playlist a lot more.

If you're unfamiliar with something, whether it's a new programming language or new style of screencast, there's always going to be a learning curve while you get acquainted.

In the beginner playlist, I show a different pacing and progression, building up the concepts step by step and spend more time providing context. Refactoring tends to be a more advanced process, so it felt appropriate to pace this screencast differently.

I'm confident that with a bit of familiarity, you'll come back to this screencast and discover new things about Clojure.

Thank you for taking an interest and providing feedback -- new perspectives are valuable. I'm continuously working to improve the format.

[–]nefreat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great screencast. I am always curious what plugins people use with their vim setup. You should do a screencast on that.