I believe that in order to be a live coder, a certain sense of experimentation and creativity needs to be involved, and I found that this reading brought up a lot of points that reinforced this concept. One topic in particular has to do with ownership, and it made me reflect back on some discussions that we had in class. The uniqueness of live coding, and something that had originally drawn me to the course, is the ability to see the coders making real changes in real time. Prior to this class, I had not realized the importance of such a display. By putting the coder’s work at the forefront of both the visual and auditory elements, we are bringing up a very important topic of ownership and inclusion.
“Live coding allows a change in code to be heard or seen immediately in the output, with no forced break between action and reception.”
There is something so powerful about the concept above. We are bringing in the audience into an experience that would otherwise be a private one. The process of creating something, whether a game or a website, is something that is not one that involves others in every step. With live coding, the audience is able to go on that journey with the creator. Even though it is a performance, there still is a sense of inclusion. It is such a unique experience, and reading this paper only helped me further understand that.