Prince Wilson is a programmer who loves to teach and share. He works on coding projects live on a live stream platform called Twitch, seeing it as a way to teach and share and build community. In this episode, we talk about the benefits of doing this, his motivations, and what it takes to actually do this sort of work.
Matt Stauffer:
Hey, and welcome to Things Worth Learning. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer. And this is a show where a curious computer programmer, that's me, interviews fascinating people about their passions. And today my fascinating person is Prince Wilson, full-stack programmer at Newsela, not Newsela, a Twitch streamer and a lover of Corgi. So Prince, can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and whether it's your personal or professional life, just kind of, who are you?
Prince Wilson:
Yeah. So, like you mentioned before, I'm a full-stack developer at Newsela. Most of my time is spent delving into the world of JavaScript, but also, getting to learn and help and grow other people in the developer community. So that's just really a little bit about me.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. And that makes sense while you're doing Twitch, you're out there teaching and sharing, everything like that. I love it. At first I was like, "I assume this guy's got a job, but all I know is just he's out there teaching and helping people all the time." So I love this. You're a full-stack JavaScript programmer, right?
Prince Wilson:
Yup.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay, great. Just, I know this wasn't something you're going to plan about, but I'm not, but I've delved into Express and stuff like that. Is Express still the main thing people use today, or what do people use for frameworks?
Prince Wilson:
I feel like you have a camp of people who might be doing things with Express or very popular kind of shift in the ecosystem is also doing Jamstack development-
Matt Stauffer:
Oh okay.
Prince Wilson:
... where a lot of people are doing more serverless space things. So it's really interesting to see how that has also kind of shifted how people architect everything.
Matt Stauffer:
I like it. Well, so my company, we use mainly PHP in the backend. And so, I saw the jamstack.org website. I think it was, and we have a static site generator that is one of the more popular PHP based ones. So I bought pamstack.org just because I thought it was so funny that it's Pam. Because anybody knows JavaScript and markups. So I was just like, "Oh, it's like PHP." So anyway, I've never done anything with it, but I just laughed that I have PAM Stacks. So at one point I may do something with it. So anyway, thank you for the context. I appreciate it.
Matt Stauffer:
So what we're going to do here is like, make sure first of all, off the bat that people know who you are. So I do want to talk a little bit further before I actually start asking you some questions so people understand the context of what we're talking about today. So can you tell me a little, actually, no, we're not going to do that. I'll do that right in the middle of the thing. I'm going to change my mind. So we're just going to jump right into the hard hitting questions. So do you have any sort of life mantra or phrase or idea that you try to live your life by?
Prince Wilson:
Yeah. I really sat with this thought of like, what is my life mantra, back when I was younger, ironically. The thing that I kind of drive towards all the time is thinking about how do I impact people's lives. That's actually something that I realized early on, even as a child, where I was like, what do I really want to be doing? And I really want to make sure that I am thinking about how do my actions help other people. And kind of that's been my whole trajectory around in my career is really thinking about, how does my work translate to helping other people get to where they want to be?
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. For those who are not watching in YouTube, sorry, but there's a little Mr. Rogers character behind me. And you know, Mr. Rogers, look for the helpers, I'm on board with what you're doing. So was sort of gargantuan Mr. Rogers poster, but you won't see that in the video. So I'm here with you. I love it. All right. So the primary topic of the episode, every single one of these episodes is going to be about a single specific topic. And of course, you know it because you're the one who's passionate about it. Can you tell us a little bit about what we're going to talk about today?
Prince Wilson:
Yeah. Today we're going to talk about Twitch live streaming. Specifically, we're going to talk about how do we do live streaming with live coding. And so, that's where we're going.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. And so, this is where I was going to... I was going to lead into this a little bit ago, but I realized I probably shouldn't, which is, I want to ask a little bit of context. Before we even talk about that context, what do you do when you're doing live coding on Twitch? Just because I feel like in order for somebody to know something about you, I said some things, you love Corgis and you do blah. But what is your life like? What does an average stream look like to you? How much are you joining other people's streams doing other streams? If somebody has never done or seen live stream coding on Twitch, can you just give us a little bit of a background of what it's actually like?
Prince Wilson:
Yeah. So most of the time I'm thinking about working on a single project over the course of many streams, or maybe I'm doing a single project over one stream. And I tend to kind of scope it in some set of work that we're doing something that I don't actually know or I'm not familiar with.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, impressive.
Prince Wilson:
So every stream it's doing something where I'm like, oh no, how do I build this thing? But I think one of the main reasons why I did it is because I really liked the opportunity to learn with other people. And back in the beginning of last year, I really wanted to figure out a way to kind of branch out and figure out how do I engage people who are also learning in the same ways that I'm learning?
Matt Stauffer:
I like that. Yeah. It's funny because I think that the Twitch streamers that I've watched that do these sorts of things are mixed between people who are always trying to learn. And some people lean really heavily on that. You and I both know Jason, Learn with Jason, his whole pitch there is, every single one is something he's never known before. But some people are live streaming and they're like, this is what I'm a total pro at, but why don't you all kind of hang out around with me? And I think there's value to be had from each. But I got to say that personally, I do like the learning ones better because that's what I do.
Matt Stauffer:
So obviously I'm biased. But I think that seeing somebody else's learning process helps us learn better, but it also helps us understand that we're not alone. It helps battle imposter syndrome a little bit. Because if there's somebody you look up to, is up there, stack, overflowing something. You're like, "Oh really, Prince does that? And I did that too. So I'm not that bad for not knowing how to do that. Okay, cool." So I love that.
Prince Wilson:
That's exactly what it is for me as well. I actually had somebody, I have had a few people mentioned that same thing. It's like, I'm so glad that you really break it down and you really show how you don't know something, but you're always willing to look for the answer or admit you just don't know what to do. And I think that's something we don't necessarily see even in our day-to-day work life. And I just want to emulate that so that people can feel comfortable that this is part of the ever-growing process.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Yeah. I am a mature and grown developer who still has to go learn and struggle and make mistakes all the time. And you can too, that doesn't make you a bad. Right. I love that.
Prince Wilson:
It's healthy. It's important.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. So what got you into Twitch streaming in the first place?
Prince Wilson:
I think ironically, it was Learn With Jason.
Matt Stauffer:
Was it really?
Prince Wilson:
Yeah. So since back in the beginning I'd never actually seen any live programming on Twitch. And so, getting to see his show, I really was inspired by the fact that he was always doing something that he didn't know or he had guessed around and I was just like, oh, I want to explore, what is it like to just perform my day-to-day job or to explore new technologies live with other people?
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. I love that. Yeah, I didn't know Jason at all. Or I didn't know his streams at all. And I'd only found it recently. And it's interesting because now that you mentioned that, this podcast for me is around things worth learning. But I just realized, it's things that are worth learning for me as much as it is for everybody else. Right. So I do Twitch streaming, but first of all, I think you're a great human being. But second of all, I'm excited to learn from you. You know what I mean? I'm not just here for them to learn. I'm here for me to learn. And so, when I was talking about things that influences podcasts, I was talking about like Dirty Jobs. Dirty Jobs as him going and learning from other people. And I talked about Hanselminutes where Scott Hanselman kind of often learns... But I've realized that Learning With Jason is definitely in that direction as well.
Prince Wilson:
Absolutely.
Matt Stauffer:
So thank you for bringing that up because that is sort of an inspiration for me as well. So I've got a million questions for you, but let's start with some of the simpler and more fun ones. What would a dream be for you for doing Twitch? Let's say that you got to a point where you're able to do Twitch full-time, would you still be doing it the same way you're doing right now? Or are there any kind of ideas that maybe you say, you know what, I can't do this right now, but this is something I'd like to know. And if they're all your secret sauce, that's fine, you don't have to reveal them. But do you have any kind of dreams you're headed towards?
Prince Wilson:
That's a great question. I think as far as dreams, being able to do it as my day job-
Matt Stauffer:
That's the dream, right?
Prince Wilson:
... would love that. I think that would really give me the opportunity to explore a variety of different things. Being able to do things in open source, I think, that's really one of those things that people say, oh, do this. Contribute to this project or make these contributions. And I'm like, how does that look for people who've never done it before? And I think doing a live stream kind of gives that space that really show, how do you have conversations? How do you make sure you're thinking about the code? How do you even do the research around contributing to a library, which I think seems really daunting and having more opportunities to see that in live in real time.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Prince Wilson:
Especially because it takes more than a few minutes. You need a few hours, maybe.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. And it's also really cool because the idea, I mean, for a lot of us who were involved in open source, in some ways just being able to do open source as our job as a dream. Right? And so, for you, it's also like open source as my job and share with other people and teach and help other people like all the other ones. This is great.
Prince Wilson:
Exactly.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. Okay. So if you were talking to somebody else and you were saying, so actually here's a great context. I have done Twitch streaming and I have done YouTube videos and I've done blogging and I've done podcasting and each of them has a different cost and each of them has a different benefit. Right?
Prince Wilson:
Right.
Matt Stauffer:
And one of the things I've found recently that has gotten me a little discouraged about streaming is that I can put 30 minutes of prep and no stream, an houred or hour and a half of time no stream, 45 minutes to an hour and maybe even paying somebody else to help me to get the stream on YouTube and get the whatever, right. Or I could spend an hour, pop out a five-minute video on YouTube. And the five-minute video in YouTube will get more views than I had live attenders and rewatched after the fact, because only so many people live attend my Twitch streams.
Matt Stauffer:
And are people going to watch a five-minute video that says, here's how to do this on YouTube? Or an hour long video that's me fuzzing? And some people love that, right. And some people don't like it at all. So when you think about kind of like the usage of your time and energy and stuff like that, what do you think the value is that comes from a live stream that doesn't come from preparing a much more kind of constrained video? What are the things you like most, and you might've said this already, but as you think about that, what's the value that comes from live streaming that doesn't come from prepared YouTube videos?
Prince Wilson:
I really love this question because my previous roommate, he also does live streaming, but he does Android development. And that's something that we talked about quite a bit, is like, what's the difference between those two things? And I think for me is there's a genuine feel, it doesn't feel so cut and clean and perfect. And that's like the reality of programming. And I think a lot of people lean into that authenticity. As well as in real time, you could contribute to the conversation. And you can take the, as a viewer, you can really contribute and say like, oh, I really want to try to explore this. Or I have more questions, which you cannot do in a prepared video.
Prince Wilson:
And I think it leaves room to also explore dimensions that you never expected to and try new things and fail. Because failure is actually where a lot of the learning happens, right? We don't learn just by doing it perfectly. We learn by failing and seeing how do we adapt to that change? And you can't do that in a prepared video.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. I mean, I feel like learning how to debug is like one of the best things that comes out of watching a Twitch stream that you don't get out of a vide., Unless the video was about debugging, Right. I love that. Let's talk a little bit about the interactions with your viewers. So that's certainly something that's very different. And it's funny because a lot of my videos, so I make both YouTube videos and Twitch streams. And people who are used to my YouTube videos will often go to my Twitch streams and say, "I like this video, but I wish I wasn't watching you interact with the audience the whole time." But of course they're watching it later. Right?
Matt Stauffer:
So they're annoyed. They want to get cut right to the thing they care about. But the audience during the live stream absolutely love it. So first of all, we can talk about that in a second. But first of all, as for someone who is listening to this, who's never watched a Twitch programming live stream. Could you tell me a little bit about, just what is it like as a viewer? And maybe even kind of describe the screen a little bit. How are people interacting with you? How are you interacting with your audience live during the stream?
Prince Wilson:
So what I would think about it is, when we're developing, I'm just speaking out my process. I'm very articulate person when it's coming to programming. But then also speaking my mind, I'm doing those at the same time. Because you have to be able to communicate, why am I doing this? What are the considerations that I have? Because watching me just write my program without speaking, kind of a little boring.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. It's not that interesting. Yeah.
Prince Wilson:
No wonder no one would be interested in that. But I think that leaves the opportunity for people to ask questions because they're like, "Oh, I hear you said this. Let me think about what you mean like that." What do you mean? Why are you making that decision? And as a viewer, I think it really also is interesting when you fall into certain, I don't know, when you make a mistake, and you were like, oh, as a viewer, I actually know what we could be doing. Or I saw that you made this mistake. I think, here, change that. And now it's working. And I think there's just a counterbalance between both being helpful. And then also being, oh, how do we extend this? Giving more ideas. Or even just finding little ways to make those beautiful interactions. Because there's other ways, especially on Twitch, on a how to interact with a video.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. So let's talk about those other ways. Because getting a lot of people don't know. So the simplest thing is, and do you do Twitch and YouTube at the same time or do you do just straight to Twitch?
Prince Wilson:
Just Twitch.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. So people can log into Twitch. They can be watching you, but they can type in the Twitch chat and you see it.
Prince Wilson:
Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
When you do it, does it also pop on your screen?
Prince Wilson:
When I type into the chat?
Matt Stauffer:
So some people, when they do Twitch chats, they'll actually, every Twitch chat that is sent by anybody, shows up on their stream. Some people, you're reading them, but it's not showing up on your actual video feed. Which one do you do?
Prince Wilson:
I let every message come onto the screen. So in my screen, basically what will happen is you'll have my little face. You'll have the big screen. I typically make sure it's zoomed in so everyone can read it, even if you're on a mobile device.
Matt Stauffer:
Yup. I'm loving it.
Prince Wilson:
And then right above my face, I usually have a chat so everyone can see the chat. So if I'm taking a video off of Twitch, maybe I'm uploading it to YouTube. I can then have that chat there.
Matt Stauffer:
It's a familiar respond, too. Yeah. Yup. And for anybody who doesn't know, I know what's there, I'm asking him questions for you all. And I like it that way too, because then when you naturally respond to something that somebody said, someone watching the video later is able to see what's going on. So I've had very similar experience where it's not just people asking questions, but it's people catching things. But further, one thing that's really fun is I'm like, somebody asks a question or I get stuck in something I'm like, "Hey, could somebody go look that up?
Matt Stauffer:
And I'm going to keep typing this." And so, it's very much like people call it mob programming. It's like peer programming with a more extended group of people. Right. Where I'm like, "Hey, Jacob, I know that you are a big nerd about those things. Can you go Google that for me real quick?" Jacob, we'll come back five minutes later and give me the code snippet of the answer while I've been working on or answering people's questions. Right. So it's very fun to be able to have this very kind of group space. And you develop a community of people who hang out with you regularly, right?
Prince Wilson:
That's exactly it. And I think that-
Matt Stauffer:
Tell me more about that.
Prince Wilson:
I think for me, that's exactly why I love Twitch streaming, is that you can develop a community. When I started off, and I think you kind of spoke a little bit to the fear of Twitch streaming. You don't know if anyone's going to show up. And the part of Twitch streaming is that ultimately people will continue to show up as long as you continue to do it. But the first and most hardest part is getting started. And I think keeping to doing it. Being consistent and then all of those things allows the community to form around you, especially because sometimes people aren't just there to see you program, but they're there to see you.
Prince Wilson:
And I think that's what people have really showed, for me at least. Is, I started off doing Ruby on Rails development on my stream. And then I pivoted actually to learning rust and doing the rest programming language but live on stream. And people really found that enjoyable because they were also learning it. And they also felt like they contribute to that conversation. And even when I am doing other things, like I one time did a video game stream and people still showed up.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, really?
Prince Wilson:
Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, cool. Because it's like, I like you. I don't really care what you're doing. I just enjoy hanging out with you. Oh, that's cool.
Prince Wilson:
And I think that's really it. Right? It's like they enjoy that person and they enjoy learning from that person. We can still talk about all the things, even if it's not directly the same thing that we're doing on that stream.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. That's really helpful to think about. So if you think about, because just to continue that conversation about YouTube versus Twitch a little bit, if you were to think about the value that comes from the people who are attending versus the value for people who are replaying, do you get the sense that a lot of people are kind of going back and watching your videos later? Or do you think that the primary interaction you're having right now is mainly on Twitch?
Prince Wilson:
I think there's a little bit of both. Okay. So I think that there is value in having the live stream being there. I save all my replays. So for about 60 days, I believe they say up onto my Twitch profile so people can watch them directly there. But then I upload them into YouTube. And then with YouTube, people can go and replay them whenever they want. I think that for the most part, I see most people going and seeing them on Twitch and catching me their live. I have seen people come later on and do things as well and interact there, but I think most of it's the live stream.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Okay. So for anyone who's not familiar, Twitch's mainly a video gaming platform. Doing programming on Twitch is a little bit... They didn't even add programming. It's like a game that you can market yourself as player until pretty recently, like a year or two ago. So have you found that you have any opportunities to look up to any other Twitch programmers? Because you're kind of not... There's not a lot of other people in that space, right. Are there any other people who you've watched where you learn how to do it or you look up to them or do you kind of feel like you're pioneering and you're just figuring it out as you go?
Prince Wilson:
I think there is actually a fairly large community of live programmers who are doing it on Twitch. And I think each person has something different to add to the conversation. For instance, we spoke earlier with Learn With Jason, Jason Lengstorf stream. That's an example of a more prepared stream in terms of like, we have a topic and we're going to go through that topic. I have a guest who's a specialist or an expert in that thing. There's people who are doing just like their day job also in the stream.
Prince Wilson:
And they're just doing coworking. I think all these different people just kind of give me information like, oh, what do people enjoy watching? And are there different ways to have the stream? So maybe not every day is just me writing a program, but maybe we're just having a day where we're co-working together and you just see me and we're just conversing. And like that, I love seeing that kind of shape out as well.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. I love that. Yeah. One of the first times I learned that there was other people doing it, I found this directory of people doing it. And one of the popular ones, I don't remember the specific shtick, but it was something like code and cooking or something. And I felt like there was like, they did this mixture where some of the time, I don't remember exactly how it worked, but some of the time they were talking about baking and cooking and sometimes they're talking about code. And again, that doesn't mean everyone should do a shtick. But it was a cool idea to recognize that like, there's not just one way to do it. Even if you've seen one person doing it one way, there's not just one way.
Matt Stauffer:
And that was really helpful. And one of the things you'll find a lot of people doing, it almost feels like the old MySpace stays and I may have aged myself with that one, but each person creates their own layout. And do they put a little animation every time they get a subscriber? Do they put their chat at the bottom of their left? Or they only put those top two chat things? And so, there's all these like kind of creative outlet opportunities for us to kind of show, are there any things, not that saying everyone should do this, but any kind of creative layout things or things to pop or whatever that you found. Oh man, it was really cool when I had the idea to do that on mine or to add to mine or I saw somebody else do it or something like that.
Prince Wilson:
Yeah. So I can speak to two different situations. One is I saw somebody else's stream and I really love that idea. This is Alex Trost's, Trost Codes on Twitch. They have a little to-do list on their stream layout. So as viewers come in, they can actually see what have they done, and what are we getting ready to do? And I was like, wow, that's so amazing. They have a very lovely kind of layout to make sure people are always aware of what's going on.
Matt Stauffer:
That would save me a lot of time explaining.
Prince Wilson:
My roommate I mentioned before,, Adam McNeilly, he has a Twitch stream as well. He does Android development. He has commands in his chat that allow people to say, Hey, can you give me a recap of what's going on? Or can you show me the repository for what we're working on? And so, there's ways to make sure people are still able to follow along or find where the code is living. Something I did is more fun in my stream layout, I used to have my lights on my background, these Nanoleaf lights. And when a person would subscribe to my channel, what would happen is that it actually activated my lights, which is-
Matt Stauffer:
Love it.
Prince Wilson:
... a non-trivial amount of work to make set up.
Matt Stauffer:
No. It's a big deal.
Prince Wilson:
Yes.
Matt Stauffer:
I've done it before and it's not working anymore because it was also a non-trivial amount to keep it going, so.
Prince Wilson:
But I loved doing something like that.
Matt Stauffer:
That's cool.
Prince Wilson:
And I actually built that live on Twitch. People to see, how do you make Twitch API requests or how do you make a request to the Nanoleaf lights? I ended up doing some rust programming to make a web server on my Raspberry PI and then were able to block communications in case. So that way one's turning on my lights at the middle of the night.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. It's funny because I did a talk at a conference recently that was live, but it was virtual. And it was to do this with PHP. And switch lights on. And then at some point I was like, also, you know all this code we're building I actually put it on this website and it was like blink.muststop.com. And then I was like, if you go there and you click on a color, it'll actually flash that color. And the entire rest of the talk was just my light flashing every color.
Matt Stauffer:
And it was kind of funny because then a month later or two months later, all of a sudden it would just flash a couple of times and I wouldn't know who did it. And somebody might hit me up on Twitter and be like, "Did it turn red? I just." And it's very fun to have that physical interaction. And that's just people feel like they're a little bit more connected with you and a little bit more actually in your world.
Prince Wilson:
Exactly.
Matt Stauffer:
So I love that. That's really cool. So this is a little bit nerdier. So those of you who are not familiar with Twitch, sorry. But from a Twitch nerd to another Twitch nerd, what's your software setup?
Prince Wilson:
Oh, that's a good question. As far as my software, what I use is I use OBS Studio to make sure that I actually do my own recording. I have two computers. So I have my main desktop, which you're seeing me here. And then I have, onto the side is my laptop. So generally I'm looking this way when I'm doing my coding, but I'm trying to make sure that I always look this way so that way, when I'm looking at my chat, it's always right in front of me. And that's pretty much how the setup is.
Matt Stauffer:
I didn't realize you were using two computers. So is one of them streaming video to the other or they both... How is both of the video getting in to the same place?
Prince Wilson:
Yeah. So what I do is I have my main desktop, which is running Windows. And that's what's doing the actual live streaming. My laptop is a MacBook and I'm using an Elgato capture card so that way I can actually capture that screen over here. So that way there's no resources being used beyond just sending out that video output and then bringing it over here.
Matt Stauffer:
So does the capture card set it up as a second monitor and just stream? So you mirror your second monitor, it streams the exact same output through the capture card and it comes in like it was a camera.
Prince Wilson:
Exactly.
Matt Stauffer:
That is really freaking cool. Okay. Are you using any of the stream decks or any of those other things to... Okay, cool.
Prince Wilson:
Yes. I have a stream deck. I have on a stream deck, for people who don't know, it's like a physical device, a pressing buttons that you can do certain animations. You can do certain audio mix. It's a very neat tool to have, because when you need to switch scenes. So typically in Twitch, you're going to have different layouts. That's a really easy way to go and switch those layouts.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. It's like, if you were imagine a keyboard, I tried to hold my in front of the camera but the code's too short. But if you were imagining a keyboard with maybe, I think this one, 15 keys. But you can customize the picture that's on each key and then customize what happens when you press the keys. Right. So it's fun because, not only can you use it for things like Zoom or like that, but you can also use it for things like Zoom. I have a mute me on Zoom button. I haven't opened up my Zoom or turn off my camera on Zoom or I have a turn my lights up or down. Or stuff that or like play music, stuff that I'm doing on a day-to-day basis. So it's pretty nerdy and fun, so.
Prince Wilson:
I know people who have things where they actually can open applications directly from their stream deck, which is really nice. I use it sometimes for a soundboard because I love having little sounds as I'm playing video games or whatnot, but.
Matt Stauffer:
I've never had a soundboard before, but everybody, this podcast is the first time I'm using a tool that has a soundboard built in it to record the podcast. And now I'm trying to think about like, what do I have in here? Like, oh my gosh, that was such a funny joke, Prince. Now I have to find excuses to use these. And you're absolutely right. Thank you for reminding me of that. Okay. Sorry about that.
Prince Wilson:
No. You're totally fine.
Matt Stauffer:
I'm a total professional here, okay. Awesome. Okay. So I'm trying to remember. I got a little distracted by soundboards. One of the other things I was going to ask you about, Twitch live streaming. Have you ever through your Twitch livestream found a personal or professional opportunity or relationship come up from someone who discovered you on Twitch?
Prince Wilson:
That is such a lovely question. I would say, doing my streaming, offered me the opportunity to go onto other streams. So I've done that. And that was really lovely. I've had people reach out as far as like, "Hey, I know that you do this. Would you like to work with us to do these things." I have had those kinds of opportunities come up my way, but I never really thought about it like that. I never really connected the dots of like, oh, this is because of my Twitch streaming. But that is how a lot of people have found me as well as through Twitter as well.
Matt Stauffer:
I mean, I found you through Twitch. But that's just a little thing, but yeah, no. And I think that's a thing that we don't think about as much as teaching in public has this often accidental. I guess it's not accidental for everybody, but it clearly was for you and me. A benefit of people now know who we are and they know what we're good at. And even if they know we're not amazing at it, they're like, but that person teaches or shares or collaborates in a way that I like. And so, we're putting ourselves out there. So it's a little bit less kind of like, well, people have to imagine how I code or how I interact with people or how I teach. No, they can just go on YouTube and see it. Or they can go every Friday or whatever else it ends up being and see it. So I like that.
Prince Wilson:
Exactly. I think to that point, right, it's like a lot of people were always like, how do I know if I would like this person as a coworker? And Twitch live streaming, especially for programming, you really get to see like, how do people communicate? What are their thought processes? What do they do when they run across an error? And I think that those kinds of mannerisms really do translate out to like, how would they work?
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. And I mean, I said like, at the beginning of this, I also think you're a great person. The only reason I know that you're a great person is because I've seen you on Twitch before. And I go, I like that guy. I would totally hang out with that guy. If it weren't a pandemic, I'd go up to New York and hang out. You know what I mean? To me, that's something that I might not necessarily know about you just from your profile picture and your website, right? You write on your website in a way that makes me seem like a nice person, but I'm a much better sense of who you are based on your streams. So I just love what you said, it is like a podcast. If you listen to someone's podcast for awhile or you read their blog, you do get a sense of who they are. But there's something about streaming that it's just less sterile, less controlled, like you were saying.
Matt Stauffer:
Because you were saying that earlier from a programming perspective, right. You run into programming problems. But I also think it's from an interpersonal perspective. You might get a troll on your feed or you might get someone who you didn't expect to teach you something, teach you something. Or people get to see what happens when you get stuck on the same problem for 10 minutes straight. And when you get flustered. And it's funny because I had a checklist that I run through every time before I do a stream and I was co-streaming with someone. So one of the ideas I had around the learning concept was to bring somebody on who didn't know how to code in Laravel and say, "Can you just hang out with me and we're going to code together?" And so, she's like, "Are you kidding?"
Matt Stauffer:
And I was like, "Yeah. I mean, you'll be learning out loud just like you described." So I'm the one sitting here, like I know what I'm doing. And she actually now works at Titan like a year and a half later. She now works for me. She's great. But it was through that that we developed that relationship. But one of the things she started telling me, she's like, "Matt, you need to remember to get a drink of water and eat a snack beforehand because you're always, my blood sugar gets low." She's like, your blood sugar gets low, during the call. And you always tell us, "Oh my God, my blood sugar is getting low. I'm melting down." And she's like, "You should probably put it on your list." And I was like, "I probably should." So it's just those little things to get to know someone's personality and stuff like that.
Matt Stauffer:
So I love that. I told you before the call, that the problem that we would have with this is that I could talk to you for three hours about the topic and I would try to not run too long. And as always, we're running into that problem because I'm trying to keep this podcast at 30 to 45 minutes and I still have at least one more big question for you. So before I start wrapping this particular piece of the section up, I want to ask you, is there anything else you'd want to tell people or you want to just make sure they get the chance to hear about streaming or your experiences in streaming or what you think they should try in terms of watching or trying. Is there anything else you wanted to say about streaming?
Prince Wilson:
I think I have like two thoughts that come to my mind. My main thought is really take the opportunity to go and look on Twitch. And when you find somebody you really enjoy, tell them that you enjoy their work. Make sure that you also feel free to find the communities that they are around. I think showing up and being consistent. And if you're like, I really want to get a job or if I really want to be learning new things. Being consistently inside of somebody else's streams is a great way to get started in developing your networking. I think people think that networking has to look like this stuffy, like, "Oh, how are you doing today? Let's go to this thing."
Matt Stauffer:
I did networking meet up. Yeah, exactly.
Prince Wilson:
Yeah. It doesn't have to look like that. I think networking is really just one of those words that people kind of say, but really it looks very much like making connections. And that is a way of making connections with people.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Prince Wilson:
And goes back to the, how opportunities come up is that you being there, that's how they end up thinking about you. And if you're interested in doing live streaming, my biggest piece of advice is to just do it. Press the play button and just do it. It's going to feel awkward. But the thing about it is the worst year of livestream is ever going to be, it's the very first one. Right? So it will never get any worse than that.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. It only goes up from there. Right.
Prince Wilson:
It always will go up. And that's what convinced me. I was really afraid of starting. I actually did it one time. I didn't tell anybody I did it, but it made me very comfortable because I knew that this is the worst it'll ever be. And from there, I was like, "Hey, y'all, I'm going to do this now." And if you want to practice, even if you don't want to do it on Twitch, if you are into Discord communities, which are like another form of social media, which have live chat rooms where you can share your screen. If you want to more, I trust these people kind of experience, that's a way to do that and still kind of get your exercise with doing what is live streaming.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. That's brilliant. I love that a lot. And I, especially, I really like your note about joining other people live streams. Because there's a lot of people who, I don't know whether I've hired anybody other than Zuzana, who I just mentioned, but there's a lot of other people who have joined my live streams and who I felt like I've gotten a sense of what they're like. And even if they haven't started working at Titan, I've been able to recommend them to other people. Or something, like where I'm just like, oh, I know this one guy, John Sugar.
Matt Stauffer:
Shows up to my live stream and it has since the very beginning. And John is working a lot of my open source projects and I've recommended him to work on other stuff for other people that I know just because I'm like, I know John. I know his personality, I know his knowledge base because he helps me all the freaking time. And since he started working with me in the live streams, I'd be working on an open source project on live stream. And afterwards he would keep doing pull requests about stuff I had mentioned, but never gotten to.
Prince Wilson:
That's amazing.
Matt Stauffer:
And so, I'm just like, I know this guy, this guy's great. And so there's that relationship building from the other perspective as well. Like now I know you, the people who kind of hang out with me. So I think that's a fantastic point.
Prince Wilson:
Definitely.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. So I have one last big question for you. So which is what insight or support did you receive or need when you were younger that you hope more people would give to others?
Prince Wilson:
I think one of the biggest things, and this goes back to impacting people's lives is I didn't get to see a lot of people who are like me look like me, do the job that I do today. One of the biggest things was, I didn't know what was possible to do. I came from a town that's like 12,000 people.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. Wow.
Prince Wilson:
My graduating class was just like less than 200. So I really was like, I don't know what I'm about to do. And I told myself before I left, go and study computer science and do something that excites you. It started with video game programming. So it all comes back.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. All right.
Prince Wilson:
It always comes back. But my second semester I got to see a college professor who was me, I as like, this is the first time I've ever seen somebody who is where I want to be in my life.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. That's goosebumps right now. Jeez.
Prince Wilson:
And that's what kind of really, it really just inspired me to make sure to represent that as well.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Prince Wilson:
I became a coding boot camp teacher. And I had the opportunity to teach and show people like, there are people who are professionals who look like you who have different experiences than what you might see. And I wanted to make sure that they could see that that's possible for them-
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Prince Wilson:
... because a lot of people don't.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. God, I still have goosebumps. I normally don't want to have to comment on this, but I just want to, like when I asked that question to people, but representation is so freaking important when we don't... We realize the impact it makes to not have that representation until you see what representation does to, especially like kids, when they go, I see... And we always talk about the superheroes, right? Oh my God, Black Panther, there's a black superhero or whatever, but it doesn't just happen for superheroes. And it doesn't just happen for black people. There's lots of other contexts. And I appreciate you didn't say that.
Matt Stauffer:
You didn't say, I wanted to find black representation. You said like me, because like me could be different for a lot of different people. Right? And it can be gender identity. It can be a religion. It can be country of origin. It can be ethnicity, whatever. Socioeconomic status, whatever. And that's a specific point when you were talking to people about like, just try it. I think that the people most nervous to just try it are often the people who have not seen that representation. But then who have the possibility to be that representation for somebody else.
Prince Wilson:
Exactly.
Matt Stauffer:
So a further oomph in the, just try it, because you might be setting an example for somebody that they'll tell the story about when they're in a podcast 20 years later, and you're that person that they looked up to whatever. Oh my gosh!
Prince Wilson:
And if you're ever like, oh my gosh, I want to start live streaming. And I don't feel safe doing it, or I don't feel like anyone is going to show up. You can message me on Twitter and be like, hey, I'm about to start live streaming. Could you be there?
Matt Stauffer:
Come be my friend.
Prince Wilson:
I'll 100% hype you up. Everyone can recommend that I am the hype man, so.
Matt Stauffer:
Yes. I love that. Oh my God. Prince, the hype man. That makes me so happy. All right. So before we cut for the day, how can people follow you, support you? What is your Twitch? What's your Twitter? Laugh joked earlier and said, "What's your Cash App?" But I mean, I would say like, how can we support you in any way you need support right now?
Prince Wilson:
The best way that you can always show up for me is just be able to say, how I've impacted you. If you want to find me on Twitter, you can find me at twitter.com/maxcell M-A-X-C-E-L-L. Unfortunately, I don't have the Twitch handle that matches, but it's almost the same. It's twitch.tv/maxcellw. So yeah, those are the two places you can find me.
Matt Stauffer:
And so, check Prince out in those places, go check out a Twitch stream. And those of you who are not programmers, I would say that folks like Prince are probably going to be the most approachable for this concept, if you don't know programming at all. So I would say like, you could probably go to his Twitch and actually just find one of them and say, "Hey, you know what? I don't even know what rust is." But when you get these people who are kind of talking through their thoughts out loud, you might find it interesting to go watch one, even as a nonprogrammer, so.
Prince Wilson:
Absolutely. I've had plenty of folks who've never done programming and be like, "Wow, I really see that you are so passionate. And I actually learned something out of it."
Matt Stauffer:
Yes. I love it. I can't thank you enough for hanging out with me today. This was so freaking good. Thank you, man. It was a total pleasure.
Prince Wilson:
Thank you for having me.
Matt Stauffer:
All right. Y'all, until next time, be good to each other.