This special issue of the Journal of Music, Technology & Education focuses on ‘Live Coding in Music Education’. The idea for this issue arose from discussions about the educational affordances of live coding at the Dagstuhl Seminar on Collaboration and Learning through Live Coding held in 2013. At that time the practice of live coding was developing strongly and since then has blossomed even further to include an annual International Conference on Live Coding.

The articles in this issue explore a variety of educational applications of live coding tools and practices. The authors variously emphasize live coding as a teaching, learning and music-making activity. Several authors suggest that live coding practices blur boundaries between the traditional categorization of music-making as performing, composing and instrument-making.