Ask HN: Who are your favorite tech youtubers | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who are your favorite tech youtubers

33 pointsmr_o4745 comments

Would love to hear since we all love to watch youtube when it comes to learning new stuff

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Nir Lichtman - Sub 10 min videos on mostly C and Assembly programming

Low Level Learning - Sub 10 min videos with a leaning towards the security aspect of code

Ben Eater - Making a computer from scratch

Fireship - 100 seconds of X to help me keep up with whatever tech stack my colleagues are proposing this week

IppSec - Security and Hacking

Jacob Sorber - Various programming topics, mostly around C

javidx9 - Game programming topics, most writing old-school game engines

Low Byte Productions - Long form videos (1+ hours) on low level topics

Nathan Baggs - Hacks old games to get them working again

The Coding Train - Various fun programming topics mostly around visualization and graphics, done in the format of a kids program

TJ DeVries - Teaches you how to exit vim, and other vim stuff

typecraft - Neovim and tmux tutorials, plugins, configurations etc

Some of my favorites are:

Acerola, GPU and shader programming: https://www.youtube.com/@Acerola_t

Sebastian Lague, various mostly visual algorithms for games: https://www.youtube.com/@SebastianLague

Freya Holmér, beautiful game dev related math: https://www.youtube.com/@acegikmo

pannenkoek2012, how Mario 64 limitations create the most interesting bugs: https://www.youtube.com/@pannenkoek2012

Jon Gjengset, some of the most in-depth rust content: https://www.youtube.com/@jonhoo

AngeTheGreat, physics engine game dev including sound simulation: https://www.youtube.com/@AngeTheGreat

fasterthanlime, diverse, mostly rust content: https://www.youtube.com/@fasterthanlime

Bisqwit, retro programming: https://www.youtube.com/@Bisqwit

CodeParade, higher dimensional and fractal game dev: https://www.youtube.com/@CodeParade

suckerpinch, code that should not be though of, let alone executed: https://www.youtube.com/@tom7

SimonDev, game dev, performance focused, video quality varies: https://www.youtube.com/@simondev758

And many mentioned by SilverCode

Acerola and Sebastian Lague are two of my favorites too, good taste!

None.

Youtubers tend to fall into a few buckets.

1. Watch me build Minecraft in five minutes (all game devlogs, etc).

2. Watch me read an article and talk about it for 30 minutes (t3.gg, primeagen, etc).

3. Watch me build my dream game, part three (last uploaded three years ago).

4. Watch my shorts with fast jump cuts, large text and no substance.

Have to agree with this. YouTube is ok for entertainment but haven't found anything actually educational coming from tech content creators, on either YouTube or Twitch.

Off the top of my head, Andreas Kling and Casey Muratori don't fall into any of those buckets. There are probably more examples as well.

Yes, you'll always have some that don't fit the mold. Off the top of my head:

bisqwit

pwnfunction

cherno

However, it's like picking through a dung pile looking for the needle, or something like that. You're better off reading some books, the news, experimenting on your own, etc.

You left out one of the biggest categories: "tech reviews" that are basically 30-minute infomercials in 4K.

I hate the new trend where they make ridiculous faces on the thumbnails. I know they’re doing it because it must be increasing engagement, but it’s so annoying.

This has been a trend for like 10 years already. Yes, it annoys me too but they apparently have the numbers to prove it gets more engagement, which is even more annoying.

I wonder if it's more engagement due to impressions or people actually click on dumb looking faces more often.

If you're able to install extensions, this one[0] removes the clickbaity thumbnails and titles using crowdsourced data. It's from the same developer of SponsorBlock

[0]: https://dearrow.ajay.app/

New trend? This is YT's original sin: allowing uploaders to use any image as a thumbnail, instead of picking a frame from the video.

Custom thumbnails weren't a feature on YouTube until maybe 2010 or so. Before that, they had to be a frame from the video, and originally you couldn't even choose which frame. So I wouldn't exactly call it an "original sin".

It’s less a trend and more that yt rewards it. Not sure if that is actively rewarded by algo or just organic but I recall when it started some YouTubers being reluctant but did it anyway because it worked. Think some even semi A B tested it

I have been blocking all images on youtube via uBlock Origin for the past 5 years, it's been great.

Youtube channel "bigclivedotcom" does teardowns of consumer electronic crap from AliBaba, Amazon etc. with a soothing British accent and wit.

Dave's Garage is pretty interesting. He worked at Microsoft and wrote things like the Task Manager and Zip folders. He tells old stories and gives the inside scoop on how some of those things came to be.

I second this: Dave Plumber / Dave's Garage, love his content.

None, I feel like all of them are experts in marketing, not experts in tech.

Louis Rossmann is alright though I like him even though I don't watch him anymore.

John Hammond - Cyber security/ethical hacking. He explains what he's doing well enough for even someone like me, with very little cybersec knowledge, to follow along and understand.

Someone else also commented Nathan Baggs, also a great explainer of what he's doing (and he hacks some fantastic old school games too).

More on the entertainment side than educational (but if you understand engineering/coding you would highly appreciate the work that goes into some of these videos)

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

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

https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRober

https://youtube.com/c/theHacksmith

@LOOKMUMNOCOMPUTER - experiments with circuit bending, synths, and other instruments

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCafxR2HWJRmMfSdyZXvZMTw

Outstanding, not only because they are great teachers but, above all, because I percieve them as incredibly likeable personalities:

1. Kevin Powell (Kevin Powell) - CSS

2. Daniel Schiffmann (The Coding Train) - Creative Coding

Quite a few of mine are already mentioned but if you're into retro-computers or restoration, I find Usagi Electric to be an incredible wealth of knowledge: https://www.youtube.com/@UsagiElectric

Also enjoy https://www.youtube.com/@Computerphile for more in depth videos

I gotta mention styropyro[0] even though he doesn't deal with computers at all - his channel is all about crazy overpowered lasers and sometimes some crazy chemistry.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/@styropyro

One of my favorites is Optimum: https://www.youtube.com/@optimumtech. Lots of gnarly PC builds. I cloned his negative pressure Ghost S1 SFFPC build (but with a deshrouded Sapphire RX 5700 XT+ and Ryzen 3700x) and I absolutely love it.

Network Chuck

Jeff Geerling

Ippsec

Linus Tech Tips

Louis Rossman kinda.

3d printing nerd

cnc kitchen

makers muse

zack freedman

tech ingredients

marques brownlee

adam savage tested

There's probably a bunch more, but honestly kind of watching more gun related stuff lately. Garand thumb, kentucky ballistics, etc.

Casey Muratori and Will Byrd, though I'm not that big on tech youtubers. Strange Loop was also pretty great and I can't believe I have to say 'was' there, but so it goes.

Me! I actually quite enjoy watching my own videos (some of them anyway…)

https://www.youtube.com/atomic14

I vote for Ben Eater and for a number of others 8-bit guys.

Asianometry for the background and history of industry; with a particular focus on semiconductors.

ThePrimeTime is an entertaining and interesting coder.

Recently discovered ThePrimeagen videos on youtube https://www.youtube.com/@ThePrimeTimeagen

From my existing subscriptions:

- Just Another CTO https://www.youtube.com/@justanothercto

- Techno Tim https://www.youtube.com/@TechnoTim

- Wolfgang's Channel https://www.youtube.com/@WolfgangsChannel

- TechWorld with Nana https://www.youtube.com/@TechWorldwithNana

Also craft computing - similar to techno Tim

The Tech Lead

I discovered “Developer Voices” recently https://youtube.com/@DeveloperVoices.

It’s more a podcast style channel, with a different guest on each episode with experience in a different area of tech/computer science they discuss.

No memes, no clickbait, no how to be a tech lead just mixed varied interesting computer science content/topics.

Agree with the other posters though, generally tech channels are junk full of charlatans.

Mental Outlaw for sure.

Technology Connections

have to add tsoding to the already mentioned channels

Bisqwit

Cathode Ray Dude

If you like tech, and like learning, I would suggest investing time with more information-dense media than video.

What do you mean information dense media.

Like blogs

books: stuff that's been around longer than 5 years

papers: 5-2 years

slides: 2 years-cutting edge

a few blogs are about as good as slides (basically when they're serving the same purpose: technical communication with peers)

YMMV, but I aim for things that people spent a long time thinking about to prepare, in order that I may learn from them in a much shorter time:

Good books probably take 4-12 months (wall clock) to prepare, but I can digest them in days to weeks. (theoretical CS and maths take longer to digest; I'm guessing they're proportionally more difficult to write. a physics anecdote: Halliday and Resnick reportedly took 5 years to prepare their 1st edition.)

I'm not sure I've run into anyone who's consistently written more than 6 good papers a year, so call them 1-2 months to prepare; digestible in 1-2 days.

Slides or the better blogs may take days to prepare, yet are digestible in fractions of an hour.

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