The first step towards being great at anything is being shitty at that thing.
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2025
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Programming
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I get people that make tutorials for "content" even if they suck at their job, but I CANNOT get over video tutorials where someone gets completely lost and doesn't cut it out of the video.
Anyways we'll go here-oh there's an error. Uhm. Maybe we can do this? That didn't work. Maybe that? Hang on, maybe it's in preferences? Oh, it's in tools, no, wait, oh I just wrote the name wrong
Would it kill you to edit that out and stop wasting my time?!
I think those are more interesting. I like seeing the process.
At the same time, that is part of the developer experience, so the tutorial is still accurate
I think there's a key distinction to be made between a "tutorial" and a "vlog." Some videos you watch to learn things, and other videos you watch to be entertained by the struggle.
(Admittedly, for the latter the examples I have in my head are all makers/artists, not programmers, and I'm not sure I'd be as entertained watching somebody fuck up a software config as I am watching them panic as their epoxy resin pour goes wrong.)
Also… the actual good stuff has a good chance of not being free, or not being on YouTube—it’s just the reality of our world.
When you look for YouTube videos of random people, you can get anything, from good programmers to horrible ones. You can’t really require quality from strangers posting stuff for fun.
The good stuff is usually hidden in low view hell (or in text form, stuck on personal blogs nobody reads). Getting an audience is mostly a property of marketing, not quality. There's not a lot of natural overlap between those that can teach well and those that can market well.
When you solve the issue, take a pause and then walk back the problem and how to fix it.
If it's a "forgot where something was", take a pause then start with "sorry bout that, it's this...".
Own the mistake, learn from it, let others learn from it. But dont waste everyone's time
To me in most cases it's the opposite. I don't watch video tutorials to solve a specific problem (sorry, Roal Van de Paar!), but to get into something. And therefore I prefer to see the problem solving in between and the workflow for that activity. If it really tends to waste my time, I just skip forward.
So only good tutorials/ guides are allowed?
How does one get from shitty to good if they can't try to begin with?
Does this apply to other things, like coding, as well?
Back in my day, there were no guides; except for books that had to be bought or borrowed, one learned by hacking code until it worked or, better yet, had a helpful person in the same room give tips.
After the internet came into being, there started to be guides, at first many were ok. Then people realized they could write slop and make money or get internet points or credit. So now here we are, today, with many horrible tutorials, some middling, some good ones, about to be buried by AI
So only good tutorials/ guides are allowed from people that know what they are doing and aren’t just Sunday programmers and everyone else should stop littering the internet?
Yes.
but you do not think we should bully those who just try to make ad money on teaching things they don’t know a frick about do you?
We absolutely should.
How dare you?
Text > video
FFS, today when you look for something on start page or any search engine you get YouTube links or AI shit from non related websites.
- Video game solution? Check my 30 min video.
- Tech problems? YouTube and AI telling you to update drivers and reboot, on a website named sport-something.
- Error 26894? Fucking YouTube video again (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
At the time you could put Reddit on your search but we all know that won’t be a solution anymore, plus, because of people like me most of Reddit results are now a chain of deleted - deleted - deleted messages 😄
You can't even search the entirety of reddit from browser bar if you aren't using google search engine 💀 iirc that was actually the jolt that made me spent 10k on entrenching in apple ecosystem within a week at the time and to this day I cannot force myself to install google maps so when I want to find something using phone I end up struggling with browser version and broken css like a moron. Moreover some sites plainly just don't work on anything that isn't chromium
I work on the apple ecosystem too, but it came from my tests of making an hackinstosh on an old Lenovo.
It then discovered that I could use the same tools with the same shell language, doing the same tiling WM etc etc, all of that on an always working OS that I didn’t need to debug when shit got wrong (I was using Arch, BTW).
From then on I always work on 2nd hand refurbished macs. My daily desk tool in an m2 Mac mini and this thing is amazing. Linux is now only present on my server and gaming PC.
But maps are on organic maps, not apple 😉
I also have a M2 Mac Mini. It’s my favorite computer among all I ever had so far. Being able to run Windows ARM on a VM and install anything I want if I ever need it is priceless. And I still keep Ubuntu and Arch installed on a VM just to play with them sometimes.
Today I had the pleasure of trying to search for how to shift a chartjs array and finally had to try and watch a "tutorial video" where they allegedly discussed it.
Cut to me clicking around just trying to find the screenshot where they are actually doing the thing that I want to do, and then they proceed to fuck up its usage three times with much scrolling back and forth through their example code that they didn't show in full anywhere and rapidly clicking between windows while they got their shit together.
I just wanted to see like, three lines of code.
Maybe I should have just asked chatgpt.
The most infuriating is it's probably intentional. You did spend more time on their video now didn't you?
I loaded the video, paused, jump jump jump jump jumped through the timeline looking at the thumbnail images, about 5 seconds of actual playback while I watched them mess it up, more minor adjustments in the timeline, paused for 15 seconds at the thing I actually wanted, closed the video.
Good luck getting any kind of decent metrics out of that.
I can skim documents at 800 words a minute, they are mostly nicely arranged and indexed/sectioned. Compare that to videos where half the words are "um, so", and it's no wonder I prefer text.
And if you want to look at some lines before you can use your eyes to literally just look there. Instead of fiddling with the stupid -10 seconds button.
Sometimes I prefer video... But usually not.
E.g. this channel has fantastic videos: https://youtube.com/@therustybits
Tutorials are largely pretty shit:
Sad thing is, you only realise once you learn a fair bit. All these "lifestyle" programmers I used to follow that were literally making out they were the next Carmack, just re-wording Wikipedia or the intro docs. From someone who is only a couple of years into their job as a React copy and paste engineer. Now if I see an intro where they're making coffee and lofi is playing I click off, give me a 420p video with a distorted mic and constant electrical humming.
Then you have the Udemy courses where you can just chuck in the recent patch notes and say the course is updated to 2025 even though you're referencing dead tech in the tutorial then an hour later up pops a PowerPoint please disregard the section about API's for dot matrix printers.
All these code gurus with code quality of chatgpt 🤢 yet fancy lighting setups and VFX intros. Still, sometimes you can find a real gem in the wild on some humble but informative website.
Monads are like burritos?
Erm ackshually a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors
what happened? need more info
I just wrote a blog post and it was shit but at least I know what to do better next time.
Who doesn't love impossible to follow variable names?