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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

https://www.youtube.com/bisqwit is by far my favorite and I've spent many hours watching him.

He does things like create a Doom-style engine from scratch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQYsFshbkYw .. create a NES emulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y71lli8MS8s .. work back from a C++17 example to show why new C++ standards are needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrwwa68JXNk .. and even building a Tetris clone in GW-BASIC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDnypVoQcPw .. Right now, he's doing a series on cracking 80s videogame passwords: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzLzYGEbdY5nEFQsxzFan...

Sirajology - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWN3xxRkmTPmbKwht9FuE5A - is another interesting one. He moves a bit too quickly for me, but does things like explain machine learning in 5 minutes or how to generate music with systems like Tensorflow.

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Glad my channel has helped you guys. I quit my job at Twilio to do this full-time. I'm on a warpath to educate and inspire the shit out of everyone. Human readable link: https://www.youtube.com/c/sirajology (I am Siraj, hi everyone)

I've run across several of your videos and was surprised by how few views they had, considering the high production quality and engaging style. I guess these things take time. Keep it up and I have no doubt you'll reach critical mass.

Love your channel! You are doing a great job, keep it up!

Siraj, just watched a few of your video and it's awesome. Can you go a bit slow though? It's way too fast. I am guessing you are of Indian origin, my indian friends are very fast for me as well :-)

Protip: YouTube has a speed setting. Just click the little cogwheel thing and it should be there. I usually use it to bump up slow talks a bit, but I'm assuming it works just as well to slow things down.

Me too. I almost always speed up the video (due to my impatience) on Youtube. I usually find many videos too slow . The downside is that I can't do that in real life, where I want to increase the speed of the speakers at a live conference.

I don't think Siraj's video is too fast. It seems just right for me.

Cool! Been a fan ever since you started posting to the HN FB group!

>HN FB group!

Link pls?

There's a HN FB group?

Siraj,

The way you taught complex topics like DeepLearning, Machine Learning etc made these topics hilarious. Thanks man

Hi Siraj, cool stuff man. Could you cover the topics (DL, AI) in a bit more detail ?

Awesome channel!! I like the speed of it, keep them coming :)

Your channel is cool. The videos are short and crisp and gives a basic understanding for totally new topics like machine learning for me in a very short time. Good job.

At my codeschool (jaaga.in/study) last night we all hung out enjoying your videos. Thanks !

I love Bisqwit. The software development content is great, but also his overall personality and philosophy really come through in the videos and resonate with me personally. The level of craftsmanship in his videos is far beyond the typical powerpoint slides mixed with live editing. It would take paragraphs to list all the reasons why, just watch them.

I love his videos too, though the fact that he quit working as a developer and got a job as a bus driver makes me worry that our industry is driving away thoughtful, creative craftspeople like him.

It could be that his situation is unique to him, and doesn't generalize at all. But it also seems plausible that the trend toward practices like sprints, stories, and open plan offices that aren't conducive to the kind of deep work that people like Bisqwit do.

It's also entirely possible that the churn and burn approach to development is what is most profitable in most situations, and that deep workers might find themselves relegated to certain niches.

None of that is meant as a knock on agile development, or any other development practices, of course. But I think it's worth stopping to think about what we give up when we dive headlong into the Agile, open office type of workflow. It would be interesting of more teams had the courage to try practices that are definitely not waterfall, but also not Scrum (which is what most shops that call themselves Agile are practicing). Something that values relatively short iterations, but also values the kinds of creativity and deep work that can't easily be broken up into sprints and stories.

Good news - he's just taken another job as a developer :-) He briefly mentioned it in a recent video.

But yeah, his work environment didn't sound great before, and I think he assumed everywhere is a variant of that. Maybe that's true in Finland, but the guy is clearly skilled enough to work at any place he'd choose.

I just found out about him, and his videos look very interesting, but the way he talks (the timings/accent/stresses) make me completely unable to focus on the content because I keep focusing on the speech. Does anyone else get that?

He made English subtitles for his videos for this reason -- even the ones in English.

Oh, no, he's perfectly intelligible, it's just that the specific accent/tone variations he uses are a bit peculiar, so I fixate on them.

Opposite for me but I am a nordic ESL speaker myself.

I think my problem is how he pronounces the "r". It sounds a bit off-place with the rest of the accent being rather Finnish.

it is amazing to me that this guy earned 20k euros in finland as a developer and went on to be a bus driver where he earned more. He also talked about how he got fired for not handing in weekly reports..Someone with his skills should be able to work anywhere and make a really good living. Anyway, youtube seems like a good way for him to express himself, i hope he will find success.

I love that Sirojology moves so fast. It's easier to pause and resume than trying to skip over irrelevant bits like is necessary with most tutorials.

Bisqwit is awesome. He's the also first person that I thought of when I saw the thread title. His videos are really in-depth technically and they're all interesting projects.

Never heard about it - I only know about the guys somehow associated with the Handmade Hero project:

https://www.twitch.tv/martincohen

https://www.youtube.com/GingerGames

https://www.youtube.com/user/pervognsen

https://www.twitch.tv/nothings2

and a few more.

never heard of Bisqwit but checking the channel out now and I see some Star Control 2 videos and that got my attention! That's one of my favorite games ever

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