Ask HN: What is your favorite YouTube channel to learn advanced programming? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your favorite YouTube channel to learn advanced programming?

147 pointsakudha30 comments

There are lots of channels that teach beginner level stuff. What about advanced programming concepts?

Not a channel, but talks by David Beazley on Python topics are gems. High insight density. The presentation are often 60+ pages, and you can spend hours playing with each concept in every 'slide'. His talks are rabbit holes.

Raymond Hettinger tweets snippets of code that are delicious. His talks are really useful, too. Specifically, the one entitled 'Beyond PEP8' which focuses you on the impact you can have by zooming out of details and concentrate on good design.

This is something I've been using. I write code that uses a yet to be API, and ask myself and colleagues if it makes sense for them to use it.

For example, I'm writing a Python wrapper for MinIO's admin command line interfaces 'mc' and 'minio' which the Python client lacks. Put up the docs first at https://big-mama-tech.gitlab.io/bmc and asked colleagues and the MinIO folks if it's acceptable/useful before really going for parity.

I once saw him described as:

"The Jimmy Hendrix of Python", I thought it was really funny and accurate

The way it goes is the following:

"I'm going to watch a David Beazley video on generators". Start playing the video. He shows the first slide and explains a few things. I read the code in the slide, then go to a terminal and launch a Python interpreter, and write the code without looking at the screen, to cement the concept more than if I simply had copied it or, God forbid, just watched the video.

Here's the problem: every slide shows some weird behavior or using something I use daily in a way I didn't know it could be used, and I do read the Python language reference for fun. Next thing you know, I spent one hour on the first slide playing with the concept, and writing snippets to show how I could use it to solve problems I had faced before. The presentation is 60+ slides or the talk is 3 hours. More often than not live coding the whole thing.

He's a sorcerer and must be stopped.

*Jimi

I like to watch talks by programming language designers. Some that readily come to mind are Rich Hickey, Joe Armstrong (RIP), and Stefan Karpinski.

Some of my favorites are:

- Simple Made Easy (Hickey): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oytL881p-nQ

- The Mess We're In (Armstrong): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4

- The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Multiple Dispatch (Karpinski): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc9HwsxE1OY

Depends on how you define advanced, but check out:

* Low Level JavaScript https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC56l7uZA209tlPTVOJiJ8Tw

* David Beazley: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbNpPBMvCHr-TeJkkezog7Q

* Jacob Sorber: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwd5VFu4KoJNjkWJZMFJGHQ

* Computer Science: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSX3MR0gnKDxyXAyljWzm0Q2

* Computerphile

I also like a bunch of streams (Jon Gjengset for example), and some with few but extremely thorough videos (like Leeren for vim).

Jacob Sorber is great, thank you! It seems he doesn't have so many views because his videos are mostly just 4-5 minutes, "surely not long enough to do anything serious"...but they're so brilliantly done, marvels of clarity and concision.

The Category Theory series by Bartosz Milewski is great, it really opens for a new way of thinking about programming in general.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbgaMIhjbmEnaH_LTkxLI...

Hussein Nasser uploads frequent high quality content about backend engineering. I wouldn't call it advanced but he covers a wide range of technologies and concepts.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HusseinNasser-software-engineering

Ben Eater’s 6502 programming videos are great.

https://www.youtube.com/c/BenEater

And his 8-bit breadboard computer, complete with RAM, ALU, CPU, Clock, microcode and assembler language.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2...

https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewKelley

Andrew is making a systems programming language; Zig. But he also does dwell on other general systems programming issues that are language agnostic

Creating screencasts about advanced programming has been my mission since discovering and falling in love with the (no-longer-active) Destroy All Software series.

On my channel (Semicolon&Sons), the focus is on:

- concepts with a tech shelf-life of approximately "one career" (e.g. unix, SQL, system design) rather than on fad frameworks (e.g. whatever JS framework is popular today)

- production codebases (real users, real money, real legacy) rather than toy examples. I base my screencasts off lessons I've learned running my software product over 10+ years.

- tradeoffs rather than overconfidence in trending principles

- I also add in a softer, more business-oriented twist, based on my own background as an independent software entrepreneur: my screencasts have a strong focus on what it takes to market a piece a software, to help the users who'll benefit from your software actually discover it and take a chance with it. This translates into videos on SEO, Analytics, AdWords etc.

My YouTube channel is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC17mJJnvzAa_e9qQqLIfIeQ

I have double as many videos, along with show-notes, on the accompanying website: https://www.semicolonandsons.com/

Jon Gjengset has the best Rust channel for intermediate/advanced learners hands down. Also a co-author/creator of “Missing Semester” fame. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_iD0xppBwwsrM9DegC5cQQ

It's a different kind of watching, but you can find saved streams from geohotz / comma.ai. Those contain things like learning about blockchain contracts and finding a security bug in one of them in a very informal 8h live stream. Or building a toy computer vision project from scratch for a recorded dashboard footage. https://youtu.be/7Hlb8YX2-W8

It's an experience... Try watching at higher speed when it gets boring.

Jordan Harrod. She teaches AI algorithms. She's a 3rd year PhD student and her Twitter stream mentions she's "working on brain-machine interfaces and machine learning for anesthesia". I don't know any of that, I just think her Youtube channel is very promising.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1H1NWNTG2Xi3pt85ykVSHA

The ACM SIGPLAN channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwG9512Wm7jSS6Iqshz4Dpg uploads videos of technical talks in major programming lamguage research conferences. Undoubtedly this is the channel I learned most 'advanced programming skills' from.

I have found fun fun function really great for some tricky concepts like transducers. Although the concepts explored in the majority of the videos are not that advanced. The focus on soft skills is also a cool thing IMHO. https://www.youtube.com/c/funfunfunction

goto; conferences

https://www.youtube.com/c/GotoConferences

Good talks on a variety of topics.

Javidx9 if you are into game programming. His videos are perfect: clear, concise and packed with techniques.

TechLead on YouTube. The most advanced programming concepts you’ll find on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/c/TechLead

You can find out all about how to be an ex-Facebook, ex-Google Tech Lead (as a Millionaire).

one of the worst channels. the guy just humble brags about how he's an ex-FAANG and gives obvious sounding "advice".

TheCherno - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheChernoProject/videos

It's run by an ex EA software developer. However, his videos are mostly about C++ and game engine development. I'm not a game developer but I found his explanations of advanced C++ topics quite good.

I've found the DefogTech channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiz26UeGvcTy4_M3Zhgk7FQ quite good at explaining some more advanced concepts. It's very java centric though.

Simons Institute video archive. More theory than programming but lots of SOTA concepts

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

C++ tips, news and live programming:

https://www.youtube.com/c/JasonTurner-lefticus

Absolutely love his content.

cppcon https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHTh1InhhwT6VxYHtoWIvOu...

ndc https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL03Lrmd9CiGeteXRzmn27mn...

What do you guys suggest regarding functional programming

Strange Loop conference has a channel and I’ve enjoyed many, many presentations on various topics.

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