by wizardofmysore on 9/13/21, 2:45 AM with 53 comments
by ddtaylor on 9/13/21, 4:30 AM
A pattern you'll often find on YT is similar to how Intel and other manufacturing companies do the "Tick" and "Tock" pattern. They'll release a difficult to research, complex and time consuming video, followed by a few easier to produce videos with a lower cost of entry knowledge wise to pay the bills.
Tom7 is an interesting exception to this rule. He puts out about one video per year, but they're all very very well done. But, they're also tongue-in-cheek and he's not _really_ trying to teach you anything - but you'll probably learn something in the process!
by 10000truths on 9/13/21, 2:50 AM
by linkdd on 9/13/21, 3:17 AM
- Primer: mainly about simulations and genetic algorithms - https://www.youtube.com/c/PrimerLearning
- Reducible: about computer science and algorithms in general - https://www.youtube.com/c/Reducible
- The Chermo: about game dev in C++ - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChernoProject
- Sebastian Lague: about game dev/simulations with Unity - https://www.youtube.com/user/Cercopithecan
by zero_kool on 9/13/21, 4:20 AM
Channel link: https://www.youtube.com/c/HusseinNasser-software-engineering
by ThePhysicist on 9/13/21, 6:36 AM
IMHO the best strategy to get high-quality content for specific topics is to look for conferences that post their talks. Personally I enjoy e.g. the CppCon and RustCon channels, as well as the PyCon one. There are some other sites like media.ccc.de where you'll find a ton of technical videos as well.
by disambiguation on 9/13/21, 4:45 AM
The channel covers a ton of topics but the viewership is low and there's no clear trend in video popularity. Therefore you don't know if a video is any good until you get a few minutes in, but some are very good. And they do deliver on the technical quality front.
by ageitgey on 9/13/21, 12:53 PM
YouTube's whole deal is that (1) they will promote you only if lots of people consume your content immediately and rabidly and (2) they will pay you a tiny bit for each view, so you need a lot of views to make anything.
This makes it nearly impossible for an author to make in-depth content on niche topics while making a profit. The audience is (1) too small for YouTube to care and (2) often only needs your niche educational content once, so they don't become rabid, multi-year subscribers. The lack of continued engagement snowballs to make YouTube promote your content less and less, so you never get views. Even worse, every niche video will cause YouTube's algo to actively make each future video on your channel get less and less views - a depressing downward spiral for your channel.
You might say that someone might make in-depth coding content for free (and a few do, like Coding Secrets), but the kind of people who can communicate well and also program well are in huge demand and probably too busy making real money to spend hundreds of hours to make $3 on YouTube when much better options exist.
On the other hand, this is way you see so many YouTube ads for 3rd party paid online course services. These services (LinkedIn Learning, SkillShare, etc.) pay authors more reasonably for their niche content and are built around promoting content for audiences who want to learn. The other strategy that works well is for the author to make very general content on YouTube and then advertise their own course or book to their biggest fans. Both models can sustain someone's full-time income or author's who build an audience and then self-publish their own content can often make 6 figures+.
by quickthrower2 on 9/13/21, 7:00 AM
There are also great meetups that share their video online.
by f0e4c2f7 on 9/13/21, 12:55 PM
You might also consider some of the free courses on YouTube. I've found Harvard's and Yale's courses to be optimized well for video, MIT's less so (it depends on the course though).
I don't really follow a lot of the higher level abstraction channels like "Computerphile." Although I do generally enjoy those videos when I see them.
I'm more likely to search for the topic that I want to learn about and then skip around many videos until I find the one with the production quality, tone, volume, etc that is most clear and enjoyable to me. Often, you do have to settle for badly made videos on obscure topics (but no complaints! Better than nothing.)
by ZealousIdeal on 9/13/21, 7:52 AM
BTW, I'm not disagreeing with you at all as I too agree. I'm just wondering what things you also see as missing.
I find most user content is focused on the introductory level, which makes sense if you are attempting to appeal to the largest audiences for income (so not faulting anyone). I often see content on data engineering but most just define "data engineering" and at most talk about things high level Hadoop, Spark, etc. and do not provide any examples/patterns of working with data that is even close to representative to what I do in my day job. The same is true many other technical disciplines too. With a couple notable exceptions on some security topics (such as demonstrating certain exploits), and some hardware topics -- such as Ben Eater's great work (https://eater.net/)
by nmaleki on 9/13/21, 10:59 AM
and of course my channel!: https://youtube.com/channel/UCuHB_2AOt8vjuvZZp6tSoxg
by Raed667 on 9/13/21, 8:57 AM
Lengthy, in-depth technical content doesn't match those criteria.
So if you want to produce that kind of videos, you end-up with only 2 options:
- Channels that are not motivated by revenue, that will post a series of videos then slumber or get abandoned.
- Channels that are sponsored by companies that will try to sell you their language, framework, SaaS, etc... masquerading as technical content
by tekromancr on 9/13/21, 3:24 AM
Devops: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdngmbVKX1Tgre699-XLlUA Infosec: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiveOverflow
IDK, I think this might be better listed as an "awesome-x" list
by wirthjason on 9/13/21, 1:25 PM
Paid is really the way to go. O’Reilly has a lot of great technical content in video form. They also have live learning sessions.
by matt_s on 9/13/21, 12:12 PM
A lot of the difficult problems at work are specific to the constraints we have so I would assume the same case for nearly everyone else. Most of these problems have nothing to do with the tech stack or specific language features. In software development the actual programming is the easy part, integrating systems and dealing with scale are the harder parts of the problem.
by betwixthewires on 9/14/21, 1:44 AM
I'm not a fan of videos for learning anything technical. I'd prefer write ups, illustrations and photographs. Videos can be useful sometimes, but what it usually winds up doing for me is slowing down my pace.
by wenc on 9/13/21, 4:44 AM
There are actually some really good YouTubers on some really niche topics. For instance I've found Rahul Nath's videos on Azure Pipelines to be exceptionally helpful: https://www.youtube.com/user/rahulnathp
Have you tried searching for content specific to the niche you're interested in? Chances are if it's a topic that's popular on StackOverflow and that's also visual in nature, there's a good Youtube video explaining it. If it's not visual in nature, the probability of your finding a good video decreases because video is likely not the best medium for conveying that information, which decreases the view potential and the incentive to monetize.
by aasasd on 9/13/21, 4:38 AM
Compare that to the three-part introduction to sound synthesis from the 80s where the dude twiddles knobs for three hours and explains what each of them is doing. Just dialing in one sound takes him ten minutes. It's the best educational video I've seen on YT: https://youtu.be/atvtBE6t48M
by cratermoon on 9/13/21, 2:58 AM
Maybe that's because of how many companies have stopped caring if candidates are actually good software developers and just do leetcode tests and call it a day.
by marto1 on 9/15/21, 8:54 AM
The Applied Science channel is a bright counter example, but these are quite rare.
by rcfaj7obqrkayhn on 9/13/21, 8:35 AM
Imo text should be the main source, then use YT videos as supplemental material
by raihansaputra on 9/13/21, 7:28 AM
by dprophecyguy on 9/13/21, 5:01 AM
This channel maybe the best in terms of quality about low level design. If you are a programmer make sure to checkout his low level design playlist: https://www.youtube.com/c/anomaly2104
This is a quality channel to get an intuition for algorithmic thinking: https://www.youtube.com/c/vantonspraul
This is a pretty advanced Rust channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/JonGjengset
If you are a Frontend developer and you want to understand the primitive stuff, how things work from inside do checkout this channel, contains lots of problems and solution including implementation of vDOM, polyfills for Promise, Async Await and various JS stuff: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0qiieVBpjA6YODgIFf6Afg
These two are nice intro channels to get into rust: https://www.youtube.com/c/timClicks https://www.youtube.com/c/RyanLevicksVideos
If you like maths, do checkout this channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/zachstar
This channel also uploads rarely but the quality of videos is very high, it contains general news and stuff related to Science(Physics, Chemistry, Bilog: https://www.youtube.com/c/QuantamagazineOrgNews
If you want to understand modern web layout give this channel a try: https://www.youtube.com/c/LayoutLand
If you are any how involved in Crypto, this is a must to subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/c/Finematics
I see I have posted tons of channels but I think these are really good, in terms of quality of content.
by bawolff on 9/13/21, 4:30 AM
E.g. one of my faves: https://youtu.be/ajGX7odA87k
by edimaudo on 9/13/21, 10:06 AM
by m0llusk on 9/13/21, 5:36 PM
by lmiller1990 on 9/13/21, 2:06 PM
by ___luigi on 9/13/21, 1:54 PM
by tmaly on 9/13/21, 3:03 AM
by manusachi on 9/13/21, 6:26 AM
by wodenokoto on 9/13/21, 2:12 PM
But I think you are right, that videos about programming made explicitly for YouTube just aren’t that great.
Numberphile is great. Computerphile is … sometimes good. Which makes me think there is just something about YouTube that doesn’t lend itself well to programming.
by swman on 9/13/21, 6:47 PM
For example currently leading a big technical project where all the tech is new to me. Just went on youtube and searched for "$the_tech_I_want_to_learn 2021" and found playlists of quality videos (like an hour long) where the presenter goes very deep into these topics.
Some videos I've found are also by authors of popular books of $the_tech_I_want_to_learn, so that's also awesome to get their insights outside of text.
Just avoid "big channels" because just like anything else at a large scale they compromise on many things. Find the channels that are focused on sharing technical information, not milking the monetization system.
by yuppie_scum on 9/13/21, 2:47 AM
by reedjosh on 9/13/21, 5:46 AM