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Comment by jgh | Hacker News Reader

I like this technique, only thing I'll really disagree with is the usage of videos. I really hate videos as a medium for learning computer-related stuff. Just write down your explanation, maybe throw some images or gists in there, so I can go back without having to guess how far to go back if I need to.

Or if it's a "how-to" just make it a list. For example, I was trying to figure out how to do something in Windows the other day and all I could find were Youtube videos. Now I have to sit through someone's excessive intro for their channel with 382 subscribers and wait for them to get to the point.

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It depends on the video. Some video courses are truly excellent (Shout out to https://egghead.io/series/getting-started-with-redux ), others are close to useless (so many "intermediate/advanced" pluralsight courses where the first 30m-1hr is installing visual studio!)

I think videos are horrible for learning things like Math, CS, languages, psychology, economics, etc.

But they're great for learning how to use an IDE, graphic design, music, athletic movements, etc.

This is a good point I hadn't really thought about. For most tech stuff I've always got my head in a book, but when it came time to learn how to lift, my copy of Starting Strength only got me so far. It wasn't until I watched videos of others' lifting technique that I could really grasp some of the concepts.

That's a valid point. I guess this comes down to personal preferences.

I do use articles too, but I normally start out with videos. If it's too slow, YouTube fortunately has got the 1.5x speed option :)

I'm generally in the text-only camp, but do enjoy videos as a supplement.

Some text descriptions + pictures of how data structures function left my brain oozing out my nose, but an animation always clarified things for me.

I'd substitute tutorials for videos. I usually avoid videos for many of the same reasons as you. But I've also taken advantage of some excellent ones.

I think videos are really helpful for absolute beginners. Technical blog posts are usually really dizzying if you haven't the slightest clue what's going on

On the contrary I find videos to be incredibly valuable. Humans can far more easily bring across the emphasis where it is needed and can far more quickly articulate key points to understand as opposed to reading lots of material and not necessarily grasping the perhaps small amount of information that really matters.

Agree, watching videos accelerates learning of swimming, skating or playing of golf; taking videos to grab programming stuff? Maybe, when you jog or you loose sleep, you can use couple of those courses.

looks like you're the 1 person in the world who is able to follow poorly written numbered howto's on technologies you don't know without getting stuck when it skips a step without mentioning it or properly describing it. you should go be a patent clerk!

My trick for getting through people's videos is 1.5x playback speed. use it. yeah I agree people ramble on and on and on.

What can I say, you spend enough time in the MSDN documentation and you get used to filling in the blanks...

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