CODING PEEP SHOW offers chance to hire devs as they program

Script kiddie

Can script kiddies script some really good coding to fool the hirer?

I really doubt this will work

As it's not Office, HR wouldn't know what they're looking at. The people who do have the technical skill to understand what's going on don't have time to watch people's desktops all day.

Just a way to keep developer salaries down.

stupid idea. boring to watch . rushed code .

deadline arrived before you start

I'd give it a try though - better than what im doing now

Completely mistaken idea of what coding is

From the part of whoever set up that site. If you think that you can equate an essentially intellectual activity with an industrial labour task, you've never, ever coded anything.

And those that hire coders and find any comfort in being able to peek at their screens... well, they'll get what they deserve: the equivalent of workers in an assembly line. Good luck with the results.

Coding isn't done in an editor

Its done in your head. Typing the code is just putting down what you've already thought of.

This is about as useful as learning to write a novel by watching an author type out a book.

You may as well cast the Matrix screensaver for all the insight this would give HR types into programmers' abilities.

80% of development isn't writing code.

Sites like this and people per hour let clients think they will get a working system with the whole spec "something like ebay but with social built in" and expect a working site within a week...

Coding cams...

Watching people online type stuff has about as much to do with real software development as watching ladies online taking their clothes off and making funny noises has to do with real sex.

Anonymous because, err, I know which I'd prefer to watch!

Calling Andy Warhol

Yesterday after work, I put in an hour and half painting a bathroom at home. It strikes me that one could in fact learn a fair bit about my painting skills* by watching the paint dry. A skilled painter will have shorter drying times, as having applied just the right amount of paint, and adjacent sections of wall will be at about the same stage of drying. Watching the paint dry would be about as exciting as watching me code.

I await massive investments. https://livedrying.tv : Get in on the ground floor!

* Not that great.

Which screen?

I typically have 3-4 screens going at once with 2 computers, with multiple web browser windows going, a text editor into which I'm writing comments as I work, Evernote for occasional references and other side notes and 2-3 IDEs running with multiple tabs open in each. How is anyone live streaming going to make sense of that?

Using it wrong?

The site is set up to be more useful as an education tool, and to allow some collaboration. Lets say some ambitious sprout is trying to code a linkage to AD to pull contacts out using LDAP. They may be able to get help in stack exchange, but if someone could reply and work with them in real time, so much the better. And if that sprout wants to pay to have their temporary mentor contribute more code, then the Hire button has some value.

That said I am not going to sit around coding all day hoping that some HR or recruiter will throw freelance work at me. I will leave that lifestyle to bored camgirls. I AM willing to help other people getting started, just like other old timers helped me back in the day. This is just another tool as far I am concerned.

Methodologies

When I was a member of a programming team methodologies were all the rage. I've still got books on Michael Jackson's structured programming techniques, as well as SSADM and a tenth generation photocopy of coding using Nassi Schneiderman charts (where it was very difficult to NOT practice desirable structured techniques). In those days everything was designed on paper and signed-off before coding commenced.

Mind you, because the systems we were coding were real-time in nature, much of the code didn't look very logical on paper due to the need to deal with the critical-path first, and only if something anomalous happened (analogous to the infamous "Invalid Page Fault" message in older versions of Windows) then we'd go hunting for the reason - instead of crashing (which was Microsoft's solution to the problem). Being real-time meant that we had to recover gracefully from any catastrophe that could happen.