Your live coding stream does not need a bigger audience

There's a growing and gamified pressure from live streaming platforms like Twitch and YouTube to increase your viewer count and "get more engagement". But, with particular types of content like live coding, this often only benefits the platform itself 💸. I believe you don't actually need a large audience for a live coding stream, and smaller audiences are more preferable and beneficial to you as a streamer.

Live coding streams are (usually) centred on building something in public and collaborating with viewers as part of the process. Imagine a live coding stream in the real world: a group of software engineers, all sat around a whiteboard in a conference room or around a laptop in an office, trying to solve a problem. You probably imagined a group of fewer than ten engineers, right? Now imagine if you tried to cram hundreds of people into that space and wanted to solve the same problem. It would be chaos, right? Collaborating is very, very difficult to do well when hundreds of people are attempting to “collaborate” at anyone time.

What I have experienced, is that live coding streams actually benefit from fewer viewers. Fewer viewers are usually more engaged because they have more space to engage when chat isn’t scrolling at 100mph. As a streamer, when I have fewer than 100 concurrent viewers, I am able to read and fully engage with each member of chat and what they have to offer. I don’t miss any ideas; everyone in the virtual room gets input. I am also able to physically reply to each viewer, making them feel seen, and as a result, they will hopefully become more engaged in what I have to offer, and return to the stream in the future. And the cycle continues. Yes, there are chat slow mode options you can use to avoid chat-overwhelm, but as a live stream viewer myself, I tend to view this as a barrier to entry to a stream (”Oh no, it’s busy in here, I won’t be seen”).

Being able to respond to and engage with all of your viewers as fully as possible helps build a sense of community around what you're building and why you're building it. That’s why I believe your live coding stream does not need a bigger audience. You just need an audience.