Comment by mdip | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mdip | Hacker News Reader

Excellent write-up. I love these kinds of "I had this problem, these things on hand and an idea for how to solve it" followed by the story of every barrier and how it was overcome. It's becoming more and more rare with people preferring to go the YouTube route. I'm not knocking video-versions of these things, they have a lot of value (among them being "less friction to publish easily" for some folks[0]) but convenience of text is vastly superior for consumption as far as I'm concerned.

It takes a lot of time and energy to put these sorts of things together but they have value beyond the original topic (e.g. perhaps one of those barriers you encountered designing this is a barrier to other problems[1]).

[0] Sometimes that's perception, sometimes it's "I don't type very quickly/use a phone exclusively for my computing needs"

[1] Unexpectedly, your site produced a TLS error in Firefox on one of my laptops, so it's causing me to investigate a problem I didn't know I had :)

Thanks for being so kind. It indeed takes a lot of time and energy, but it is incredibly rewarding when you finally share it with the world and people find value in it (far more than I expected)

There are numerous times when I encountered a hurdle trying to fix something or set something up and was lucky enough to find a blog of someone else who encountered the very same hurdle and managed to solve it.

Without the efforts of these people I would have continued to waste time trying to figure something that was important to me at the time, but out of my knowledge sphere.

In a way you are giving people life when you share your knowledge.

Stop, you're making me blush!

On a more serious note, this is one of the main points that drove me to start such a blog. I've been the one learning from other people's posts for a long time. Now that I've reached a point where I can give back to the community, I'm really proud of the positive feedback I've got.

Moreover, while writing this took some time, I actually enjoyed going back over what I did and putting it in a way that I can share with the world. I can't stop thinking of ideas for future articles

Thanks for putting in the time to write this up. As someone who is writing a lot of procedural instructions for colleagues I can appreciate the time and effort it takes to write something down using full sentences, structure and flow.

I'd much rather type out the instructions than stage and edit video of myself doing it.

And I'd much, much rather read at my own pace than be forced to watch at someone else's pace.

Instructional videos are best watched at 2x speed.

until you get to the one actually tricky part and you need to pause it for sec so your brain can catch back up.

Use AI to dynamically time warp the video relative to the information density in the video. Fast through the boilerplate, easy to understand parts, slow through the hard parts.

Easy peasy.

"ChatGPT, please convert this interminable youtube video into a readable, instructional web page, ignoring all of the obnoxious adverts."

Unfortunately, the profitable use of AI will be to do the exact reverse...

"ChatGPT, generate a how-to video by ripping off the content from https://pierre-couy.dev/tinkering/2023/03/turning-rpi-into-e... - and don't forget to insert adverts for three different VPN providers in there too"

Not for me. Videos are the second-worst way for me to learn things (just audio is the worst). At 2x speed, I absorb nothing. Reading is the best way for me.

I envy you your superpower!

> I love these kinds of "I had this problem, these things on hand and an idea for how to solve it" followed by the story of every barrier and how it was overcome.

Agreed. Building within constraints (even strict, self-imposed constraints) is more fun and interesting.

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