Counterpoint, there are also some great things about live demos:
- you can see the thinking process progressing in a certain order. I know it helps me understand it, because I can see something unfold piece by piece instead of being dumped as a big fat pile of info. But also because things have a relationship, and decisions have a cause, which a good live demo will highlight.
- I can see the person interract with tooling. I like tooling.
- it gives me a sense of the time and energy necessary to put the code in motion. Yes I know the person knows the damn thing by heart, but I take it in consideration. If you use slides, or pre-made scripst, I can't even make an approximations of the time it takes to get there, because I'm missing tons of steps, outputs and links.
- it's reassuring. The thing doesn't seems so abstract anymore, as you can see it coming to life, instead of "in theory, it works like this". It makes me want to try the thing.
- it's easy to follow. A lot of coders suck at making presentations that lead me from their A to their Z, and I have to adapt to every style, every slide, etc. But most coders on stage know how to code, and I understand their process. It's like peaking into the box to see the product instead of reading the packaging. Plus, so many speakers suck, either because they are too shy, or try to be too much. But live coding is just natural to me.
Now, I don't always live code during conferences. Sometime I use slides, sometime I use scripts, sometime I code, and often I mix and match, with hand drawing, pictures, schemas and every tool I get. I also speak, stand alone, about something unrelated to the computer screen, to maintain attention and create a more personnal interraction.
But those are hard to do for most people, not trained to speak in public, not used to explain their though process or understand how people will interpret it. It's a skill that needs a lot of practice. And not everybody will get such practice before their conf. Live coding can help with this, as it's a nice compromise.
- you can see the thinking process progressing in a certain order. I know it helps me understand it, because I can see something unfold piece by piece instead of being dumped as a big fat pile of info. But also because things have a relationship, and decisions have a cause, which a good live demo will highlight.
- I can see the person interract with tooling. I like tooling.
- it gives me a sense of the time and energy necessary to put the code in motion. Yes I know the person knows the damn thing by heart, but I take it in consideration. If you use slides, or pre-made scripst, I can't even make an approximations of the time it takes to get there, because I'm missing tons of steps, outputs and links.
- it's reassuring. The thing doesn't seems so abstract anymore, as you can see it coming to life, instead of "in theory, it works like this". It makes me want to try the thing.
- it's easy to follow. A lot of coders suck at making presentations that lead me from their A to their Z, and I have to adapt to every style, every slide, etc. But most coders on stage know how to code, and I understand their process. It's like peaking into the box to see the product instead of reading the packaging. Plus, so many speakers suck, either because they are too shy, or try to be too much. But live coding is just natural to me.
Now, I don't always live code during conferences. Sometime I use slides, sometime I use scripts, sometime I code, and often I mix and match, with hand drawing, pictures, schemas and every tool I get. I also speak, stand alone, about something unrelated to the computer screen, to maintain attention and create a more personnal interraction.
But those are hard to do for most people, not trained to speak in public, not used to explain their though process or understand how people will interpret it. It's a skill that needs a lot of practice. And not everybody will get such practice before their conf. Live coding can help with this, as it's a nice compromise.