>, 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.
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.