Talk:Live coding

Untitled
This redirect does not make sense, it is taking a subset for the whole. See discussion on Talk:Computer_music -- 24 December 2008, User:Atoll

Ok I've resurrected it with non-music specific content and some references to support notability. There are more magazine etc references still to dig out. I deleted the TOPLAP entry in the process and redirected it here. I haven't touched the Computer_music entry yet beyond linking here, which needs editing to make it focus on the music specific aspects of live coding. Yaxu (talk) 22:50, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the live coding environments list should be in alphabetical order, but in a table so we can categorise them according to e.g. base language, interface style, license, live coding style etc. Yaxu (talk) 11:44, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Ludum Dare, 48h coding competition
Creating game in 48 hours in front of thousands of viewers. Is this live coding? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYBUCYUNn3Q (Notch coding "Escape" - 20.8.2011 livestream) Handscale1 (talk) 08:47, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

The video has gone but if it's the one I am thinking of, I believe uses java debugging to hotswap functions, in which case definitely. Yaxu (talk) 17:30, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Real time computing
I do not understand why someone is trying to relate live coding to real time computing in this article, without justification, reference or any reason that I can think of. I asked for an explanation in an edit comments which was ignored, so I'm doing it again here.

As I said in my edit comment, live coding does not involve direct manipulation so low latency is not at all an issue.

The RTC link goes to a subsection of the real-time computing article "Real-time and high-performance", I can't see what that has to do with live coding.

Yaxu (talk) 16:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I've removed the real time notion from the article. Some live programmers may use real-time systems, but it is not a defining property of live programming. Pygy (talk) 13:38, 26 June 2012 (UTC)


 * How does live coding have much to do with live programming at all? I'm talking about "live programming" according to how Christopher Hancock defines it in his dissertation (http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/ch-phd.pdf), which is the first mention of term that was subsequently accepted by the HCI/PL communities. 131.107.0.76 (talk) 08:03, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
 * They have a lot to do with each other, in that live coders create and use live programming languages. Furthermore, live coding research has a history of engagement with HCI/PL communities. If "live programming" is now emerging as a distinct concept, then I'd support a new page on it, with appropriate cross-referencing. I think it would need good justification to avoid a future messy merge though.. Problematically, "coding" and "programming" are synonyms, and indeed "live coding" and "live programming" has been used interchangeably for the past ten years. Perhaps it would be clearer if the new page was called "Live programming languages"? Yaxu (talk) 15:16, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Most live coding languages are not very live at all; at best they are just on-the-fly code execution like REPLs. Visual languages like Quartz Composer do provide live feedback, meaning not only does the new code execute, but previous execution of the old code is completely negated and replaced by execution of the new. --2002:7580:A952:0:0:0:7580:A952 (talk) 03:29, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I've had a good look at that thesis, really interesting but also very relevant to live coding, which is no stranger to dataflow programming, including in text based languages. Where do you think the disconnect lies? Yaxu (talk) 22:30, 6 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Chris's thesis is about much more than dataflow; he provides a whole description of live programming backed by Bateson's theory of feedback loops. Its not about "relevance" but narrative. Live coding has one story about live performance and interactive music/art composition; live programming has another story about live feedback during programming (in the spirit of Bret Victor's demo). When you tell story A and then say it also encompasses story B, but you never describe story B, it becomes very confusing. I admit there is overlap in our stories, but nothing close to equivalence. I am too biased to add a live programming article myself, and I don't think the term has achieved sufficient notability yet (but hopefully this will change quickly!). --2002:7580:A952:0:0:0:7580:A952 (talk) 03:29, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd be happy to describe story B, but it is not well known, I don't understand it yet, and I'm not sure if the story is that clear in the first place. Hancock doesn't really define the term in his thesis -- he only really uses it twice, outside of "live programming environments", which seems to be a general term. His use of Bateson's theory of feedback loops certainly applies to live programming environments used by live coders, which does not involve restarts, and revolves around and visualises or sonifies persistent "steady" variables. Yaxu (talk) 22:25, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
 * With the advancements of AI and LLMs, Live Coding using real time is indeed a defining property within this field. IPLaurenL (talk) 17:43, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Video
It was taking up a lot of space, which I found made the article unwieldy, so I made it a thumbnail. Yaxu (talk) 21:51, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Live Notation at the Arnolfini
This might be a useful example performance

Live artists and live coders, working towards live notation
 * http://livenotation.org/

27th July 2012, Arnolfini, Bristol
 * http://new-supercollider-mailing-lists-forums-use-these.2681727.n2.nabble.com/Live-Notation-Unit-at-the-Arnolfini-27th-July-2pm-9-30pm-td7580436.html

Andy Dingley (talk) 09:08, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Live programming
Removed "live programming" from the list of terms live coding is referred by. This is because live programming languages are used 'traditional' software development as well as live interaction, and treating the two terms as synonyms is becoming confusing. The relation between live coding and live programming needs clarification at some point.

Yaxu (talk) 10:03, 15 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Live programming is now back in the lead, as a somewhat cryptic reference. I think the distinction is turning out to be between live coding and interactive programming. I added a See also link for the latter to this article. TvojaStara (talk) 13:18, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Visicalc, lisp, SmallTalk
The page should mention these, and the word "spreadsheet" should appear, for searching purposes.

Encyclopedant (talk) 02:29, 2 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Interesting assertion! How and why are these things relevant to the topic?  (I have used a drum machine programmed in Microsoft Excel by Dylan Tallchief, that can be changed interactively while running.)  yoyo (talk) 14:54, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * A spreadsheet is a great example of live coding; every change is immediately followed by a recalculation. In typical implementations, Lisp and SmallTalk also immediately incorporate changed code. Encyclopedant (talk) 21:53, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Namedropping for organizations and projects
Details about noteworthy organizations and projects should be based on independent sources. Wikipedia is not a PR platform to list random projects without some evidence of significance. Editors affiliated with such organizations or having some other conflict of interest should suggest related changes on article talk instead of adding such mentions themselves. GermanJoe (talk) 10:22, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

Time for a rewrite?
This article is probably too dense at this point - lots of short statements with heavy referencing. It should probably have more explanatory text and figures. Yaxu (talk) 09:45, 7 February 2013 (UTC)


 * At this point, not much has changed (in the article; maybe also IRL) since almost 9 years ago! My concerns:


 * 1) Overall, the article is way too technical and opaque for all but afficionados.  Thus, it cannot serve as a good intro to the subject for our general reader, which is surely an important aim of an encyclopaedic article.
 * 2) Even for readers like me, who have at least a passing acquaintance with some of the things and ideas discussed here, the treatment is too cursory and poorly structured to provide much orientation.
 * 3) Names of events and organisations are too poorly formatted to clearly identify them; if there's no URL or wikilink for a name, one should at least italicise or quote it to distinguish it from the surrounding text!  (Just using Proper Case is not enough.)
 * 4) Certainly the article fails to provide pointers to current practice and concerns of the LC community.
 * 5) The article's received so little attention in the last few years, one wonders whether LC is already dead?  Despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, there surely must have been some activity of note?
 * 6) Is the topic really noteworthy enough; and was it ever, to merit a WP article?  Altho' I tend towards an "inclusionist" position, maybe LC is now just an historical footnote to performance practice among a small, rather nerdy, subculture of musical and visual artists?  (As a nerd myself, I want to be proven wrong here; just playing Devil's Advocate!)  yoyo (talk) 14:49, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Agreed that the article needs all this work. If you look at the citations of this 19 year old paper Yaxu (talk) 23:56, 27 January 2022 (UTC), despite a recent dip (due to the pandemic, I guess), academics continue to give it attention. There are a number of well funded academic research projects ongoing. Live coding tools are breaking through to mainstream use, on high profile music releases. The community has spread worldwide, as can been seen on this kind of event or on these listings (again apart from a lockdown hiatus). There is now a very long list of live coding languages and tools. A quick google I'd love to strip the page down and build it up again with broader references but perhaps am a bit too close to the topic. Yaxu (talk) 23:56, 27 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your response! I'll try to make time to check out your links, then consider whether I can usefully work on improving this page.  yoyo (talk) 03:52, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Great, I'd be happy to gather some key references if that's of help. There's a lot of images tagged live coding on wikimedia commons (from a forthcoming open access book). (BTW I just moved this talk section down and renamed it). Yaxu (talk) 08:42, 28 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, please! I'll also look at those images to see what will be most telling. yoyo (talk) 09:23, 31 January 2022 (UTC)