[3] It is most prominent as a performing arts form and a creativity technique centred upon the writing of source code and the use of interactive programming in an improvised way.
[7] Live coding techniques are also employed outside of performance, such as in producing sound for film[8] or audiovisual work for interactive art installations.
The specific affordances of time-based media and live interaction with code has led to a number of novel developments and uses in programming language design.
Through mutual embedding of imperative and declarative subsystems, the programming language SuperCollider[12] permitted to build a library that allows incomplete and provisional specifications which can be rewritten at runtime.
Technical elements within a programming environment continue to locate compressors and recursion solutions, but timing had been a major issue.
[18] Additionally Overtone, Impromptu and Extempore support multi-user sessions, in which any number of programmers can intervene across the network in a given runtime process.