That's fascinating, and I had no idea web dev influencers were so big. I checked, and there really are people with millions of followers doing development. Personally, the idea of learning anything related to coding through a video is extremely frustrating. It's a text medium. I want to look at things, take time, think it over, compare code, follow references, look up functions.
That people like video formats isn't really surprising to me since it's everywhere, but I still don't fully understand the appeal. Even if you were raised on video content and started coding that way, at some point you have to reference text documentation, right? At that point, I would think you would just stick to the text and not go back to the video, but maybe it's just more entertaining the other way.
> That people like video formats isn't really surprising to me since it's everywhere, but I still don't fully understand the appeal.
Me either, but I have a hunch about why.
Are you a fast reader?
I am, at least compared to the population at large. And one of the reasons I can't stand video as a format for learning about coding topics is that it is so frustratingly slow compared to my reading speed. To get anywhere close, I have to crank the playback speed up so high that I start having trouble understanding what the presenter is saying. That's on top of other things like poor searchability and no way to copy-paste code snippets.
The decline of reading skills, at least in the US, is pretty well-documented. And my hunch is that for the increasingly large number of people coming into the industry who don't read quickly or well, the efficiency of learning from videos is closer to parity with text. What's more, I suspect there's high correlation between lower reading skills and dislike of the act of reading, so videos are a way to avoid having to do something unpleasant.
I have no solid evidence to back any of this up, but it seems at least as plausible to me as any other explanations I've run across.
That’s a really interesting take. I say that as I’m the opposite — a slow reader — and I, too, cannot stand learning via video.
I’m by no means a weak reader, I love reading and do so often. I just find myself re-reading complex sections to ensure that I understand 100%.
I also like to be able to read something and then follow it on a train of thought. For example, if a post/article says that X causes Y because of Z I want to find out why Z causes it. What causes Z to be etc.
With a video I find this sort of learning to be inefficient and less effective while also making the whole experience a bit rigid. I also find that videos tend to leave out less glamorous details as they don’t video well if that makes sense
I'm also a slow-reader by your standards, re-reading to me is part of the learning process. Going over text with your eyes is not reading, let alone learning.
I think your dislike of video over text is because you're a quick learner. Like you said, going on a tangent and researching some word or sentence or statement makes you a thorough learner I think. Eventually you have a quicker and bigger grasp of the subject at hand, which is the whole point if you ask me.
Thanks mate! I think I consider myself a slow reader as I’ve grown up with my mother and sister who both read at some ungodly pace. They’ll finish 5 books for every one which I finish.
I do agree with the thorough learner aspect. I think having come from physical engineering backgrounds helps a lot with that.
When studying aerospace, for example, there was a lot of ‘but why’ which usually ended up leading to ‘natural phenomenon’ after abstracting far enough.
Alternatively: you can listen to audio while commuting or driving or cleaning or working out. I love audio for higher level things and to get an overview of the topic. Then text to dive into the details.
Another big driver to move from text to video: It is easier to monetise video via YouTube compared to a blog. People with millions of subscriptions on YouTube aren't creating FE learning material out of the goodness of their hearts; it is a big business. Also, video is almost always lower information density compared to text, so it is easier for your net to capture more customers.
And you can't just search in it. It's truly trashy format for anything other that presentation or lecture. For simple information sharing it's horrible.
I have a fairly fast reading speed, but I mostly consume my non fic (not technical) books in audio format.
Why? Attention span. If someone is reading to me, I tend to get 'pushed along' and it makes it easy to slog through a non fiction book that really could have been a pamphlet but the author needed it to be 400 pages. If I space out listening, it's usually not a problem because most non fic books are so repetitive. I suspect that's the secret behind video's popularity, people's attention is in short supply.
I’m a pretty slow reader. I tend to reread sections, pause and play around with the ideas that come into my head, get lost while doing that and have to start over… I still prefer reading specifically because it allows me to do all that at my own pace. I don’t have to feel rushed along by a presenter or actively pause, rewind, try to scrub the timeline to find a point I want to rehash etc.
I really think you have got a point, I'd add however that reading is more cognitive effort than watching a video, at a basic level (that is, information in the text or video put aside).
Just see how hard it is to read more than a few paragraphs when tired before bed vs. how hard it is to watch something in the same state.
I think this gets added to the point you are making about reading skills declining.
People learn best in different ways. Some learn best by reading, some by tinkering, some by watching and listening. I heard this over and over in school and college.
I don’t think it has anything to do with reading speed. When taking in complex technical information, you spend more time thinking and trying to understand than actually reading.
If you’re finding that you can quickly race through content, it probably just means you find the content easy to understand because you’re already familiar with many concepts.
I happen to agree with the conclusion also. And you don't need a rigorous proof to do what you want to do. But I often find that people appeal/resort to "common sense" when they don't have a coherent argument, and just can't conceive of any other point of view.
>, the idea of learning anything related to coding through a video is extremely frustrating. It's a text medium. I want to look at things, take time, think it over, compare code, follow references, look up functions.
That people like video formats isn't really surprising to me since it's everywhere, but I still don't fully understand the appeal.
I like (some) programming videos and I'll give my perspective as someone who learned 100% from books and 3-ring binders for old languages like C/C++/C#/Javascript/Python/bash/etc. (The 1980s Microsoft C Compiler manuals were 3-ring binders.)
The newer languages I learned with a hybrid of videos + traditional books would be HTML CSS, Apple Swift, and PyTorch with the latest AI toolkits and libraries.
The extra dimension that videos offer besides plain text is the live usage of IDE, tools, troubleshooting, etc. For me, watching a dynamic screen with a moving mouse cursor and voiceover seems to activate extra neurons moreso than just reading static text in a book.
There's also a lot of "activities in-between the coding" that's helpful such as seeing the programmer looking up something in various pages of documentation, scrolling around, navigating etc.
Another useful aspect that's underappreciated is seeing the mistakes the programmer makes during the video recording. E.g. the code doesn't compile because of invalid syntax. Or a config setting is wrong and he troubleshoots what's preventing it from working. In contrast, virtually all text books or blogs of coding are "perfect happy path" outcomes. But real-world programming is messy with broken intermediate states. A lot of videos show the messy steps to get to a working state.
The videos that are not that helpful would be the videos of C++ CppCon conference sessions where there are a bunch of static slides with bullet points and the speaker just reads them aloud word-for-word.
Although I learned C++ from textbooks, I found videos of Matt Godbolt showing tips & tricks of how to use his Compiler Explorer (http://godbolt.org) very helpful.
In summary, the artifacts of coding may be the text, but the activity of coding involves a lot more than just the text and that's why some videos can enhance learning.
Definitely. As long as the videos are uncut, they can be a confidence booster that I'll be able to replicate the result, because I can follow them knowing they won't skip over those little steps that often go without mention. Well, unless they're being sneaky with hotkeys.
These videos are edutainment at best, which is generally not a good way to learn something well enough to be able to actually work with it. A lot of them are pretty much straight up entertainment, where the entertainment value comes from drama and strong opinions. They're totally fine if you know that, but some of their audience does not know that.
I've been seeing more and more of a certain kind of person who are into these videos on some Discord servers, and it is clear that they are driven more by culture and style than by the goal of creating some thing, or having a strong understanding of how to make computers do certain things.
> That people like video formats isn't really surprising to me since it's everywhere
That’s because those “people” are either larping students or kids that want to become programmers. I have never in my 10 year career met a person who said “yeah, I learn my craft from Fireship videos”.
Likely these videos did not exist when your reference / age group was acquiring these skills.
Videos are sort of easier to produce (via screen capture), and are much easier to show the effect of FE things: look, we write code like this, now we can click here, and the page reacts that way. No need to muck with JSFiddle or something.
I'm not a fan of videos as a reference medium, but they can be elucidating to those who needs more hand-holding, literally "click here, see the result". Back in the day, a few short videos about Blender helped me quite bit to grasp certain things that were not obvious from descriptions.
This correlates to my parent post - when my generation started with Flash around 2000 there was no literature on how to programm in Flash, it just happened.
So we went to the nearest bookstore and got a bunch of other books on programming. For many Flash developers the bible was Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel. Most of the source materials for game programming (and that was a lion share of Flash programming) was in C++.
I'm not claiming that we were smarter, but by sheer coincidence, most people, even folks like me who skipped school, had very solid fundamentals. And partially due to the fact that it wasn't that lucrative back then.
Today most people don't care, IT is just easy money, kids have short attention span and trends are tailored by tiktok videos. All in all, it's just a fashion driven developement.
>I'm not claiming that we were smarter, but by sheer coincidence, most people, even folks like me who skipped school, had very solid fundamentals.
Higher barrier of entry should statistically lead to less people making it past and that those who do make it past aren't a random sampling of the initial group making the attempt. While the selection isn't only for intelligence, specifically the subsets of intelligence related to programming, I would doubt any claims it wasn't a factor at all.
It's not about learning (anymore). It's about consuming content. People spending (wasting) their time on X and YT are not there to learn something but to get their social media (dopamine) fix.
I hate YT, X, Insta. Don't even have an account. Some years ago there was really great content on YT, now it's mostly clickbait.
There's still lots of great YT content, much of it by the same producers you allude to, and they need your support more than ever with all the slop around them.
These grifters sell entire courses on the product, that's their game. So when you find an unmaintained Remix app at your company, well, the grifters got the ears of your junior devs :(
Pure grift. But since most people are decent people they don't know and fall for it, and something like this influencer emerges. They have entire Discords of customers, the same as crypto scams.
Edit: I don't know why people would downvote calling out a notable grifter in a thread that extended out to a discussion about influencers. WHICH influencers? Are we scared of that topic? The climate of the JS ecosystem didn't happen accidently.
People fall victim to this shit right here on HN, and then write blog posts about what the fuck is wrong with frontend:
I find Remix really nice to work with, it’s a framework that embraces and utilizes web standards (what the article is arguing we should get back to doing more), and I’ve learned everything I know about it (and the majority of everything else I know about front end dev) for free. It’s not like you need to purchase courses to learn. At the same time, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with selling courses to teach people about a framework. But the idea that the entire thing was created just to sell courses about it is not true.
But I do agree that there’s just way too much fast moving, breaking changes on front end in general, frameworks released every other week, etc…
It does. It bridges a purely server-rendered architecture with a SPA really nicely, and does it mostly with web standards. You don't need to run any client-side JS with a Remix app. It's not perfect, but there are a lot of benefits to its approach.
I won't try to argue there's no front-end treadmill: there absolutely is, and I had to laugh reading the current top comment because I just had to migrate off Apollo CLI at work.
But this "The web was perfect in 1999--stop changing things!" take is tedious and intellectually lazy. (I'm not accusing you of it, but it's certainly a common sentiment.)
We should be working together to solve concrete problems, and avoid both chasing the latest fads and pretending there's no room for improvement.
It’s a nuanced topic. If we want to dive in, I can provide a glimpse into the first layer of the anus as we stick our head into it.
When we shepherded a lot of sheep into frontend via these courses and boot camps and quasi courses/bootcamps in the form of certain frameworks (hey, you only know this one framework?), we created a cohort of something.
Now what is that something? It’s not really the tinkerer that loves doing this stuff and would have found a way to express themselves (please pay attention to the word “express”, as in, can’t help it). That something was … a pragmatic identity. A pragmatic identity was formed where “I am now a software engineer because I and my cohort agree, we really know how to do our stuff”.
Such a cohort can only be fueled by identity, not passion. This cohort can’t innovate and must cling to the identity of their original accreditation, so they will always be defensive.
That’s the first layer of the asshole as we enter it, it goes deeper. The second layer involves large amounts of money and people’s livelihoods, to which they’d defend unto death.
Okay? I'm having a lot of fun talking about some of the parts of our circus. I can't change anything. There will be new cult leaders (evangelists) for frameworks, and new cohorts, we can't change the past. Just pay attention to the rough framework (no pun intended, swear) as it happens again, and try our best to call it out, because it didn't always lead to great outcomes.
Money will be made on all sides regardless and we will all be fine financially. I'm talking about something else, inner. The infinite anus, asshole, is real - but now I'm just projecting.
IMO, the pain from "mostly" starts to show when integrating React Router v6 with legacy frameworks and applications. I'm sure if you go all in on React Router v6 it's great.
At my $DAYJOB we are migrating to Remix w/ GraphQL Federation. It's been a pain.
Especially because we haven't finished any of these migrations:
* ExtJS -> JQuery
* JQuery -> React class components
* React class components -> MobX-observed components
* Observable MobX components -> functional React components with context
* Functional React Components with context -> React Router v6
* React Router v6 -> Remix w/ GraphQL federation
I understand my situation is unique - I'm just bitter from needing to know ~6 different frontend technologies at once. Let alone all the Not-Invented-Here-Syndrome abominations in our codebase.
It's not that unique. The one enterprise app I worked on (that was started with Rails 1) had all of: Prototype, jQuery, Backbone, Angular, React, Handlebars AND mustache, vanilla CSS, SASS, CSS in JS (or whatever it's called). I wouldn't be surprised if they've introduced Tailwind at this point.
It actually wasn't even THAT bad considering how huge it is. People still complained (admittedly myself included), but it had been TDD'd from the start so had very good test coverage, at least. Also, some people who had worked on really massive Java applications called it "really good!" so it's all about perspective, I suppose :)
your last note that adds not-invented-here abominations… if chasing endless frameworks of the month is bad, and building stuff in house is bad, then what do you propose to avoid making this mess?
Skip a couple framework versions and indeed entire frameworks. Maybe go a couple years before you "upgrade" to something else. It is entirely possible you could go as much as 5 or 10 years on something. You'll still have to evaluate and potentially mitigate some CVE's. But that could actually be less work and less aggravating.
My point being, it's "based on" Web Standards, it is _not_ Web Standards.
What if I use `fetcher.submit(data, { encType: "application/json" })`? Why not just use fetch directly at that point? I believe it adds a layer of indirectness that just wasn't there before.
If web standards are so important, why don't we use `window.fetch` and `new FormData()` directly instead of wrapping it?
My favorite example of this being JSON gets converted to FormData on the frontend, which then gets POST-ed to the server, which then converts it to JSON on the backend.
I think you're mistaken. I can't comment on the quality of Kent C. Dodds' educational content, but his formal affiliation with Remix was short-lived. The courses that he sells have no apparent affiliation with Remix (the open source project or the company).
Incidentally, Remix is an open source project started by the React Router devs to create more framework features around React Router. React Router is probably one of the most widely deployed JavaScript libraries ever and is the furthest thing imaginable from a project created by grifters to sell online courses.
Remix was also a company that raised a $3 million seed round and then was acquired by Shopify (for presumably much more than $3 million). Shopify appears to continue to invest heavily in Remix and React Router development, and appears to use Remix heavily.
I don't think it's weird to like a piece of software and have that lead you to work at the company that builds the software and also to develop an educational course about that software.
There are only a few popular, promoted alternatives to NextJS right now (that I know of): Remix and TanStack. That is, if you're fully React focused, ofc. I dont see promoting Remix as a red flag.
Promoting it? No problem. But promoting something you profited from without disclosing it violates FCC rules for broadcasting. I would say influencers aren't technically broadcasting but they are in principle.
> React Router is probably one of the most widely deployed JavaScript libraries ever and is the furthest thing imaginable from a project created by grifters to sell online courses.
This is a funny example (to me) because in 2017, one of the two co-creators of React Router (Michael) came to my job and gave a two or three-day in-person training course on React. I think he also covered Redux and React Router. We had a great time getting to know him.
It turns out that Ryan and Michael spent a substantial amount of time and effort on a side business called React Training. It is fair to say that their speaking engagements were a solid revenue stream, but agreed - definitely not grifters.
In case anyone isn't familiar with remix, bloomingkales seemingly has no familiarity with the framework. Obviously it's not been created as a conspiracy to sell training courses. The idea is ludicrous.
It's quite a nice framework. It's easy to learn, straightforward, the people in their discord are very helpful. It has the backing of a large company (shopify) who are using it extensively.
It is, I'll say again, obviously not a conspiracy to sell training courses.
I get why you might feel that way. Ryan and Michael used to run a company based around React training. They created React Router which some people love to complain about. They've since moved over to working for Shopify. Shopify pays for their development on React Router/Remix. They do NOT sell training anymore.
Kent on the other hand, worked with them for a short time. He makes his living selling training. Filling in a gap (selling training) isn't really a grift is it? The dude's got a family and he's found something he can sell.
E.g. react-router was ready 5990 commits ago. It is a grift, they keep rewriting it and reengineering the API over and over and over again just to be able to sell more training.
Look at wouter for what is possible if your motivation isn't selling training material. It was written and left alone, it works just as well, it's stable and doesn't change for no reason.
You asked if react-router team sold courses, they sold consulting services. Seems like a conflict of interest to sell consulting on a tool you built while introducing breaking changes (but hey if you need quick help throw us a few dozen grand).
I guess that's fine for you but it's very smarmy IMO.
I think that adds to my point. How does that have so many stars on github? The customers "star" it. Who uses this on a real app? It's alright to slowly accept the bitter truth that grifting scales.
Not really sure that's relevant. Grift implies an intentional value extraction without providing anything. Using your example: I'm confident that the time spent working on remix and courses related to it resulted in far less monetary gain than spinning out courses on React. If you think Remix is misguided or a bad framework etc... that is very different from grifting. A corollary: Is Deno a grift because it shares the same creator as Node and has a paid product attached to it? In my opinion no but you might disagree... I'm mostly opposed to the idea remix in particular exists purely as a grift - love it or hate it there are far easier ways for someone with the influence of Kent to make money.
That was the end goal for this whole thing. I do look at the pricing page (what are you trying to sell constantly?) on anything people put up on the internet and judge from there. You can have the last word and put in a testimonial for Remix, since I won't be budging on this. It's a rabbit hole for both you and me to keep going at this, as I've seen enough of this pattern. Consider me a neural net on this front (end).
I'm not interested in writing a testimonial for Remix, merely commenting on the absurdity of calling a project of this scale as nothing more than a grift to sell educational content. There's no reference to these paid courses anywhere on the landing page, there's no callout for paid courses in the main navigation. The only mention of tutorials at all is buried in the community section which leads to: https://remix.guide/ which seems to be unaffiliated with the Remix team, and has no section advertising paid courses anywhere. You're talking about a framework that has been acquired and subsequently used in production by a global company in Shopify - clearly there is something to the framework beyond being a vehicle for tutorial sales.
Again, I want to be clear: This is NOT an endorsement of Remix. Your line of thinking seems to be conspiratorial and not grounded in reality. You mention repeatedly about pricing and the end goal of funneling noobs toward course purchases... One would assume that in conspiring to sell courses the team behind Remix might actually advertise that they have courses for sale on their website.
I have to be honest as a third party that a. doesn't work with remix, b. doesn't know anyone who works on remix, c. doesn't know you - it seems like you have a personal vendetta.
No personal vendetta. We sit here and punch the mysterious air as to why things are the way they are. I thought maybe we'd punch up at something that is plausibly a culprit. I'll admit it may be punching down, since this is just one dude. But then again, it's one dude who influenced a lot of people ...
We can't just keep sitting here and blaming developers for being
1) New
2) Dumb
3) FOMO
4) Dumb
5) Unqualified
You understand? It's worth looking at what content they are consuming and where the mindshare is being promoted from. It's worth asking who is selling them the idea of these frameworks.
> We can't just keep sitting here and blaming developers for being New / Dumb …
Well, as a cohort, I think the ratio of inept programmers to skilled programmers stays mostly constant regardless of stuff like this. Like, if programming is hard to learn, fewer people will try and learn it. But also the skill bar goes up - so people spend more time as inept developers before they’re skilled. Likewise if programming gets easier to learn, we get a swell of fresh faces eager to become frontend developers. And the ratio stays more or less the same. It’s kinda like a sales funnel, or a hiring funnel. You always have more leads in your funnel than conversions. (And if you don’t, you’re in trouble!)
We live in an anti gatekeeper era. Content is free, but nobody protects you from wasting your time watching edutainment. The downside of that is real - lots of people waste countless hours larping as students. But the upside is real too. It’s easier than ever to learn anything.
>Grift implies an intentional value extraction without providing anything.
Is it without providing anything, or a value extraction greater than what one is providing?
If the former, it makes the definition very each to check, but it almost makes it very easy to avoid grifting by providing even the most minimal value, and leads use to needing a new word for providing some value but extracting more than provided (perhaps intention should be included). If that is the case, might I suggest "jrift"?
I can tell you that your response is at least relevant for me because I happen to be working with Remix right now, not because of any influencers but just because I happen to be working on a Shopify project. I've seen lots of frameworks come and go and evolve, so I'm not surprised that this one changes a lot, but I always enjoy getting opinions from people with experience. Whether or not I'll end up resenting it in the future, I don't know, but at least I'll have been warned.
The fact that there's influencers for everything nowadays made me realize I'm old.
It's super useful that everyone is sharing their opinions and expertise to get that sweet 5 minutes of fame - I just learned how to tile my bathroom after watching a slew of TikToks on the subject, some with millions of views.
That people like video formats isn't really surprising to me since it's everywhere, but I still don't fully understand the appeal. Even if you were raised on video content and started coding that way, at some point you have to reference text documentation, right? At that point, I would think you would just stick to the text and not go back to the video, but maybe it's just more entertaining the other way.