Watching highly-effective programmers navigate, explain, and modify code can be a career-changing experience.
If you're not working in a place where these kinds of programmers accrue, you might never get the experience. Thank goodness for youtube and screen-recorders!
If you're reading this, antirez: thank you for making these, they're really special!
I also recommend "Hacking with Andrew and Brad: tip.golang.org" [1]. They are part of the Go team. It's just something to watch the pros doing live coding. By the way, what's with antirez's colorscheme? I wonder if he really uses that blue background or is it just for the video.
> By the way, what's with antirez's colorscheme? I wonder if he really uses that blue background or is it just for the video.
I don't know what you were expecting but those all look like colors from the original DOS and Windows color schemes. It's probably just a guy using colors he grew up with.
This is great! Can we replace the original article with this, it's much higher quality than most of the ones listed and fills a gap in Youtube content I'd never been able to find (though I haven't tried recently) - that is: legitimately intermediate/advanced content.
I remember seeing some videos of notch (creator of Minecraft) working on Minecraft.
Watching that video I was impressed how much "courage" he had to try weird ideas immediately, see what happens, and not be afraid to mess up progress he has made, etc.
Of course, notch, like antirez, are gifted, way above average, people. So we have to keep that in mind.
I was just watching an old YouTube video of a couple guys throwing a giant rock off a bridge into a river in a remote part of the U.S with no one around. It was 20 seconds long.
If it were produced in 2020, you'd have 10 minutes of useless preamble including discussion about how hyped they are to throw a rock, how difficult it is to carry a rock, fake drama about being followed by non-existent security, a drone shot of the environment, how awesome it was to throw a rock, and random memes. Use my promo code ROCKMAN to post your first job free on ZipRecruiter and hire your own rock thrower, and don't forget to Like this video to smash that Subscribe button!
Hey, what's up everyone, it's your man Todd. I'm back with another video and, today, we're gonna throw a giant rock off this bridge! But first, a word from our sponsor.
Now, I don't play games very much, but I've been playing Raid: Shadow Legends and I can't get enough! It's got all sorts of shit that other games have, but Plarium let me play Raid: Shadow Legends for free. Boo yah! Trust me, you won't want to leave your mom's basement again once you've played Raid: Shadow Legends. Use my exclusive code right now to get 3% off and a free wrist brace for carpal tunnel.
OK guys, so I'm gonna tell you a story about how I've been throwing rocks off this bridge for years. You see, my ol' grandpappy showed me how to throw rocks into the river when I was 10, and he told me "Boy, life's a lot like these rocks. It goes up and up, and one day you find it plunging straight into an icy river of death." And that just really inspired me, y'know? Rest in peace, ol' man. I love ya! Hey Frank, did your grandpa ever teach you to throw rocks into a river?
3 minutes later at a convenience store
Sorry, we can't film in here? We just wanted to buy some snacks. Yo, we're just a youtube channel, alright? It's not cool? Okay, fine, we'll turn it off. You coulda just been cool about it, jeez.
8 minutes of nonsense later
(couple walks by)
How y'all doin'? Oh, we're just having some good wholesome fun here, throwing rocks into the river.
Oh shit, I hope we don't see Officer Bradley around here again. The last time we throw a rock off the bridge he was like "You darn kids" and I was like "Whoa, bro, chill!"
3 minutes later
Alright, here goes nothin'!
(throws giant rock off bridge)
Guys, this was incredible! That's actually one of the BIGGEST rocks we've ever thrown in here! Unbelievable, dude. Oh. My god. WOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Another 3 minutes of bro'ing around
So guys, if you want to see what happened after we threw that rock into the river, stay tuned for my "Tossing a Rock into the River AFTERMATH" video.
Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe! Also, don't forget to hit the bell icon and select "All".
Yeah, this article oozes of "we need to create content that gets eyeballs and backlinks to market our website/product", which unfortunately is all too common these days.
Next time someone tries to find youtube channels for programming, they will end up on this list, rather than finding some real recommendations by real persons.
The "author" of this article is even "Team Codegiant", it's a red flag when no real person wants to put their name on content. Which is especially funny since throughout the article the author refers to themselves in first person.
Every time I cook and look up a recipe for the ingredients I have on hand my whole family has to listen to me rant and rave about this phenomenon. I clicked through the link above, scrolled and scrolled, figured out I had been duped, and gave up to come back here for the comments to commiserate.
Am I the only one who thinks watching videos is an inefficient way to learn new programming techniques?
There's no way to copy and it's hard to remember where a specific concept was so that you can reference it again. Sometimes, the video or audio quality is bad enough that you can't even really tell what's going on.
I like them principally because I can actually see what they did rather than them writing what they think they did in an article.. this is a common problem with documentation where if you follow it to the letter, there's still some other thing they failed to mention.
Articles are much better once you're up to speed and knowledgeable about a space, but I find videos ideal to set the scene when I'm totally new to something so I can mimic their actual activity in getting things going.
> this is a common problem with documentation where if you follow it to the letter, there's still some other thing they failed to mention.
This makes sense but it seems like an enormous price to pay in return for the tutorial not having mistakes. "We'll use a really suboptical delivery mechanism because it forces us to check our steps as we go".
Videos are great when the narrator reflects his/her thought process and adds relevant history(of how things come to that) when doing things.
Articles can do it even better but can get very lengthy and people looking to quickly learn how to do something will seek short, to the point articles and missing out on significant depth.
Of course just watching a video won't make you learn something but I think the situation is the same with articles. Remember school times, the articles were not that lengthy(I mean STEM of course) but to truly grasp something you would have to go over it again and again and try to solve problems by yourselves.
I think the article have the advantage of extremely fast skimmability, you can even condense everything into a single page and use it as a reference because you can skim to the point in a single glance.
I honestly tried now when I am back in college because I just thought its a bad habit from old times when we learned pascal and basic from help files. But no after trying all the labs I could I started building my labs and just focusing on portfolio.
For my first stab at learning something new I usually try on my own, but when I'm getting lost or things aren't working as expected I like videos, especially ones that weren't prerecorded. The number of times documentation either takes a mental leap or actually skips a step can be frustrating. It's also helpful to see where someone else makes mistakes because it's often the ones I would've made also.
> Am I the only one who thinks watching videos is an inefficient way to learn new programming techniques?
Just watching wouldn't be of help. Watching and doing will probably get you far. As for how efficient they are, it probably depends on the quality of the video and the student.
> There's no way to copy and it's hard to remember where a specific concept was so that you can reference it again.
That's true for books, audio, class lectures, etc. But at least with a video, you can always go back to the part your didn't understand - unlike say a class lecture.
> Sometimes, the video or audio quality is bad enough that you can't even really tell what's going on.
I like videos a lot but I absolutely need to write the code along with the person on the screen otherwise it doesn't stick. Coding Train [1] is a recent example that has worked well for me.
Really depends on the type of programming. The "Coding Train" channel is pretty much all about animations, and it works really well for that. Same for things like OpenGL, Computer Vision, CSS, or UI design where the results are highly visual.
To me videos are more akin to conference talks. They are interesting when they focus on presenting an idea, a technique or a pattern with simple code. An exercise where the code itself doesn't matter too much essentially.
The miss efficient way to learn is to use all medias available appropriately. You can integrate video lessons into habits that wouldn’t be practical in other forms.
Audio maybe as I can listen while walking/driving.
But video stops me multitasking, I can't skim at my own pace, the speed of information delivery is order of magnitude slower than reading and skipping back and forth is much harder than with text+images.
I just honestly can't find a role for video where it's not significantly worse than reading+images (+ allowing for small, embedded video snippets for things that need to move to be understood like complex UI interactions or animations)
i think it depends on what type of learner you are. i learn much easier through video than through text, so for me a well made presentation, that i watch with my full attention while taking notes (i don't generally look at the notes after, but it helps commit things to memory), is a much more efficient way to learn about stuff. shame that there aren't that many videos beyond basics stuff
I have found myself going to YouTube first for solutions as of late, even though I find the medium less effective for learning.
So many websites feel like copy-paste jobs these days that it is difficult to tell whether someone is talking from experience, they are rephrasing something they read by never tried, the content is scraped from another site, or even if it is automatically generated. YouTube does have its problems, but it is more difficult to produce fake content in certain presentation formats.
The sad thing is that books have even been sliding downward in my order of preference. While a great book will blow away almost anything available online, investing good money into a product that doesn't reflect my needs in the end is all too common. I suspect the people who review books simply have different expectations than I.
>, I have tried learning to code from YouTube videos but I really don't recommend it
Videos can work better for learning visual UI tasks of programming. E.g. learning how to navigate visual IDEs such as Jetbrains, MS Visual Studio, Apple Xcode, Qt Creator, Amazon AWS dashboard, etc.
If the above were all reduced to text-based materials, you'd end up with a bunch of static screen shots which misses the movement of the mouse and the button clicks that showed how the IDE changed from one state to the next.
On the other hand... if you're primarily learning the syntax of a language or studying the Big-O properties of an algorithm, you don't need a talking head on a video to explain it. It's more efficient to just read the text.
I think everyone has their own preference to learn but I second this recommendation. Videos work well to have a friendly face explain how things work and get interest generated, but if you intend to level up your programming skill you are better off reading code documentation and googling your way through every concept that needs explaination. Videos don't allow you to navigate away from the original learning path. I personally keep finding myself in situations where I am reading something up and want to fork out to get a good grasp on a concept being discussed. Text is your friend.
I've found one YouTube-based technique that helps me sometimes.
Basically, search youtube for some specific topic (eg "MediatR" b/c I'm working in .NET)
Using the relevant results, create a playlist and order it with the shortest videos first, or in numerical order if some are part of a series.
Then, start watching the video's. You'll get some garbage, some useful insights, and some really solid advice. Stop when you've had enough and you're at least in a better place to get on with your own work in that particular topic.
Good youtube videos give you the benefit of some context and opinion around the topic. You can't get that with documentation because it typically takes too much of a "reference" approach that isn't helpful if you're just starting but need to get something done.
Stackoverflow works if you got a specific question and can navigate past the smug a-holes, but it also eschews context and advice though in a different way than reference documentation.
Of course, the best thing you can do is to have a kind mentor that will patiently answer your questions, or better, ask YOU questions to guide your learning. Sadly, that's not always possible.
My main complaint with learning to code from videos is that it's really difficult to match the pace at which information is entering your head to the pace at which your head wants to absorb information. I believe (but cannot prove) that that mismatch is a major impediment to knowledge retention. With written material, by contrast, it happens so naturally that you don't even realize you're doing it. You unconsciously slow down or even re-read difficult bits, and skim over the stuff you already know.
I'm also a big proponent of active reading techniques for learning new material efficiently. It's nigh impossible to scribble notes on a YouTube video. With written material, virtually anything can be converted to PDF and read on a tablet with a stylus in hand.
That isn't to say that videos are useless. Lectures are great for learning things at a high level. And there are some YouTubers like 3blue1brown that make excellent use of the medium. But, unless you really just can't even with reading, even the best of them are probably still best used as supplementary rather than primary materials.
I'm an avid consumer of recorded conference talks and the like, too, but I recognize that as being a form of entertainment as much as anything else.
I know a guy who apparently has photographic memory. When a new programming language comes out, he buys the book, and reads it, and then he's fluent in that language.
It's terrifying to watch.
And the guy had no idea that's not how people do it. He saw me fiddling with a new language, and was baffled with what I was doing.
To be honest, it's weird after learning 5-6 programming languages how quickly you can pick up a new language.
Grab your variable declarations, inheritance support, static typign, flow control, loop forms, your variable casting, your i/o for files and the standard output for strings and you can learn any language pretty easily.
Edit: String concatination if it's not Java-like (because . concatination is a thing)
Given that many readers of HackerNews have an entrepreneurial side and are therefore interested not just in software — but in the business of and marketing of software —, you might get value out of my channel.
Basically my story is that is that I solo-bootstrapped a web-app and have lived from it independently for over a decade. Because of these circumstances I face no red tape in showing the code, the analytics, or the online advertising campaigns I use on screen, and this makes for a more concrete, example-filled treatment of the full gamut of what goes into running a web-based software business.
So if you're an indie-hacker or software founder that does (or at least _should_ be doing) online marketing, I think you'll get something out of my story:
Readit News
Episode 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBrnmciV9fM
Watching highly-effective programmers navigate, explain, and modify code can be a career-changing experience.
If you're not working in a place where these kinds of programmers accrue, you might never get the experience. Thank goodness for youtube and screen-recorders!
If you're reading this, antirez: thank you for making these, they're really special!
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rZ-JorHJEY
I don't know what you were expecting but those all look like colors from the original DOS and Windows color schemes. It's probably just a guy using colors he grew up with.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=24590896
Watching that video I was impressed how much "courage" he had to try weird ideas immediately, see what happens, and not be afraid to mess up progress he has made, etc.
Of course, notch, like antirez, are gifted, way above average, people. So we have to keep that in mind.
Then, waaay down at the bottom, the actual list of YouTube channels.
Seriously, this is worse than those recipes where you have to get through three anecdotes about cooking with grandma.
If it were produced in 2020, you'd have 10 minutes of useless preamble including discussion about how hyped they are to throw a rock, how difficult it is to carry a rock, fake drama about being followed by non-existent security, a drone shot of the environment, how awesome it was to throw a rock, and random memes. Use my promo code ROCKMAN to post your first job free on ZipRecruiter and hire your own rock thrower, and don't forget to Like this video to smash that Subscribe button!
Now, I don't play games very much, but I've been playing Raid: Shadow Legends and I can't get enough! It's got all sorts of shit that other games have, but Plarium let me play Raid: Shadow Legends for free. Boo yah! Trust me, you won't want to leave your mom's basement again once you've played Raid: Shadow Legends. Use my exclusive code right now to get 3% off and a free wrist brace for carpal tunnel.
OK guys, so I'm gonna tell you a story about how I've been throwing rocks off this bridge for years. You see, my ol' grandpappy showed me how to throw rocks into the river when I was 10, and he told me "Boy, life's a lot like these rocks. It goes up and up, and one day you find it plunging straight into an icy river of death." And that just really inspired me, y'know? Rest in peace, ol' man. I love ya! Hey Frank, did your grandpa ever teach you to throw rocks into a river?
3 minutes later at a convenience store
Sorry, we can't film in here? We just wanted to buy some snacks. Yo, we're just a youtube channel, alright? It's not cool? Okay, fine, we'll turn it off. You coulda just been cool about it, jeez.
8 minutes of nonsense later
(couple walks by)
How y'all doin'? Oh, we're just having some good wholesome fun here, throwing rocks into the river.
Oh shit, I hope we don't see Officer Bradley around here again. The last time we throw a rock off the bridge he was like "You darn kids" and I was like "Whoa, bro, chill!"
3 minutes later
Alright, here goes nothin'!
(throws giant rock off bridge)
Guys, this was incredible! That's actually one of the BIGGEST rocks we've ever thrown in here! Unbelievable, dude. Oh. My god. WOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Another 3 minutes of bro'ing around
So guys, if you want to see what happened after we threw that rock into the river, stay tuned for my "Tossing a Rock into the River AFTERMATH" video.
Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe! Also, don't forget to hit the bell icon and select "All".
I must ask: what led you to view this video?
And 1 second
Next time someone tries to find youtube channels for programming, they will end up on this list, rather than finding some real recommendations by real persons.
The "author" of this article is even "Team Codegiant", it's a red flag when no real person wants to put their name on content. Which is especially funny since throughout the article the author refers to themselves in first person.
Edit: and check out the submitter's post history. 15 submissions - all for codegiant.io: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=spiderjako22
But yeah seems like an SEO grab.
Would love if Google changed their algorithm just to screw all these companies who have the resources to dedicate to SEO perfection.
* Traversy Media: https://www.youtube.com/user/TechGuyWeb
* 3Blue1Brown: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw
* ThePrimeagen: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ENHE5xdFSwx71u3fDH5Xw
* Gaurav Sen: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRPMAqdtSgd0Ipeef7iFsKw
* Jon Gjengset: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_iD0xppBwwsrM9DegC5cQQ
* Two Minute Papers: https://www.youtube.com/user/keeroyz
* Raymond Hettinger (no channel): https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Raymond+Hetting...
* Simple Programmer: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRxWW_Ncs308nW4An23Yeig
* The Coding Train: https://www.youtube.com/user/shiffman
* Academind: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSJbGtTlrDami-tDGPUV9-w
* Derek Banas: https://www.youtube.com/user/derekbanas
* Mark Lewis: https://www.youtube.com/user/DrMarkCLewis
* Dev Ed: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClb90NQQcskPUGDIXsQEz5Q
* The Net Ninja: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW5YeuERMmlnqo4oq8vwUpg
* Fun Fun Function: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO1cgjhGzsSYb1rsB4bFe4Q
* Computerphile: https://www.youtube.com/user/Computerphile
* Bisqwit: https://www.youtube.com/user/Bisqwit
* ThinMatrix: https://www.youtube.com/user/ThinMatrix
* Gary of Destroy All of Software (non-youtube): https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts#:~:text=Destr....
* PatrickJMT: https://www.youtube.com/user/patrickJMT
* Ben Awad: https://www.youtube.com/user/99baddawg
* Google Chrome Developers: https://www.youtube.com/user/ChromeDevelopers
Deleted Comment
There's no way to copy and it's hard to remember where a specific concept was so that you can reference it again. Sometimes, the video or audio quality is bad enough that you can't even really tell what's going on.
Articles are much better once you're up to speed and knowledgeable about a space, but I find videos ideal to set the scene when I'm totally new to something so I can mimic their actual activity in getting things going.
This makes sense but it seems like an enormous price to pay in return for the tutorial not having mistakes. "We'll use a really suboptical delivery mechanism because it forces us to check our steps as we go".
Articles can do it even better but can get very lengthy and people looking to quickly learn how to do something will seek short, to the point articles and missing out on significant depth.
Of course just watching a video won't make you learn something but I think the situation is the same with articles. Remember school times, the articles were not that lengthy(I mean STEM of course) but to truly grasp something you would have to go over it again and again and try to solve problems by yourselves.
I think the article have the advantage of extremely fast skimmability, you can even condense everything into a single page and use it as a reference because you can skim to the point in a single glance.
It's so god damn slow.
To be honest - it's the speech bit more than the video bit. Reading is better than listening to someone talk in nearly every way.
https://docdrop.org/video/VBrnmciV9fM/
Just watching wouldn't be of help. Watching and doing will probably get you far. As for how efficient they are, it probably depends on the quality of the video and the student.
> There's no way to copy and it's hard to remember where a specific concept was so that you can reference it again.
That's true for books, audio, class lectures, etc. But at least with a video, you can always go back to the part your didn't understand - unlike say a class lecture.
> Sometimes, the video or audio quality is bad enough that you can't even really tell what's going on.
So watch better quality videos?
Some rare videos definitely are worth the time, like those of 3Blue1Brown or the excellent Jamie Windsor (on photography).
[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw
Audio maybe as I can listen while walking/driving.
But video stops me multitasking, I can't skim at my own pace, the speed of information delivery is order of magnitude slower than reading and skipping back and forth is much harder than with text+images.
I just honestly can't find a role for video where it's not significantly worse than reading+images (+ allowing for small, embedded video snippets for things that need to move to be understood like complex UI interactions or animations)
bad audio is a killer for sure, though.
I've seen people who go first to youtube to search for solutions to their programming struggle.
So many websites feel like copy-paste jobs these days that it is difficult to tell whether someone is talking from experience, they are rephrasing something they read by never tried, the content is scraped from another site, or even if it is automatically generated. YouTube does have its problems, but it is more difficult to produce fake content in certain presentation formats.
The sad thing is that books have even been sliding downward in my order of preference. While a great book will blow away almost anything available online, investing good money into a product that doesn't reflect my needs in the end is all too common. I suspect the people who review books simply have different expectations than I.
Like physical books?
Tech with Tim (Beginner) https://www.youtube.com/c/TechWithTim/videos
George Hotz (Advanced) https://www.youtube.com/c/commaaiarchive/videos
BNT (Life Risking) https://www.youtube.com/c/BNTfullHDvideo/videos
Videos can work better for learning visual UI tasks of programming. E.g. learning how to navigate visual IDEs such as Jetbrains, MS Visual Studio, Apple Xcode, Qt Creator, Amazon AWS dashboard, etc.
If the above were all reduced to text-based materials, you'd end up with a bunch of static screen shots which misses the movement of the mouse and the button clicks that showed how the IDE changed from one state to the next.
On the other hand... if you're primarily learning the syntax of a language or studying the Big-O properties of an algorithm, you don't need a talking head on a video to explain it. It's more efficient to just read the text.
Basically, search youtube for some specific topic (eg "MediatR" b/c I'm working in .NET)
Using the relevant results, create a playlist and order it with the shortest videos first, or in numerical order if some are part of a series.
Then, start watching the video's. You'll get some garbage, some useful insights, and some really solid advice. Stop when you've had enough and you're at least in a better place to get on with your own work in that particular topic.
Good youtube videos give you the benefit of some context and opinion around the topic. You can't get that with documentation because it typically takes too much of a "reference" approach that isn't helpful if you're just starting but need to get something done.
Stackoverflow works if you got a specific question and can navigate past the smug a-holes, but it also eschews context and advice though in a different way than reference documentation.
Of course, the best thing you can do is to have a kind mentor that will patiently answer your questions, or better, ask YOU questions to guide your learning. Sadly, that's not always possible.
Codingtrain youtube has some decent series, but I like buying courses on Udemy. They’re usually like $10 since there are always promotions.
I'm also a big proponent of active reading techniques for learning new material efficiently. It's nigh impossible to scribble notes on a YouTube video. With written material, virtually anything can be converted to PDF and read on a tablet with a stylus in hand.
That isn't to say that videos are useless. Lectures are great for learning things at a high level. And there are some YouTubers like 3blue1brown that make excellent use of the medium. But, unless you really just can't even with reading, even the best of them are probably still best used as supplementary rather than primary materials.
I'm an avid consumer of recorded conference talks and the like, too, but I recognize that as being a form of entertainment as much as anything else.
It's terrifying to watch.
And the guy had no idea that's not how people do it. He saw me fiddling with a new language, and was baffled with what I was doing.
Grab your variable declarations, inheritance support, static typign, flow control, loop forms, your variable casting, your i/o for files and the standard output for strings and you can learn any language pretty easily.
Edit: String concatination if it's not Java-like (because . concatination is a thing)
The next human evolution should be synthesized to traject towards this prototype.
You should tease him a bit, somehow convince him he is behind on something, ask him where is his language book, everyone has one..
step 3. ???
step 4. profit
Game Design and Design Criticism:
Design Doc https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNOVwMpD-5A1xzcQGbIHNeA
TB Skyen https://www.youtube.com/user/TBSkyen
Game Development
HeartBeast https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrHQNOyU1q6BFEfkNq2CYMA
Brackeys https://www.youtube.com/user/Brackeys
Sebastian Lague https://www.youtube.com/user/Cercopithecan
GDQuest https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxboW7x0jZqFdvMdCFKTMsQ
Javidx9 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-yuWVUplUJZvieEligKBkA
Basically my story is that is that I solo-bootstrapped a web-app and have lived from it independently for over a decade. Because of these circumstances I face no red tape in showing the code, the analytics, or the online advertising campaigns I use on screen, and this makes for a more concrete, example-filled treatment of the full gamut of what goes into running a web-based software business.
So if you're an indie-hacker or software founder that does (or at least _should_ be doing) online marketing, I think you'll get something out of my story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOE_sQTyQOo
"The page you were looking for doesn't exist (404)."