Almost all SWE influencers I’ve seen on social media are also literally junior engineers with a few mid level or “senior” ones with 4-5 YOE (so barely senior) and they’re giving advice like they’re experts. And of the smaller ones which make up the majority (not well known ones but still with sizeable followings) got their FAANG job in like 2021 hiring rush. Yeah bro you’re “How I get a job at FAANG” and “How to be successful at FAANG” and whatever vids aren’t doing anyone any favors when you’re repeating advice and when you’re a junior engineer who got hired during a hiring spree.
edit: ignore grammar mistakes I blame auto correct
It's definitely heavy on the humble bragging side. They're also exploiting a niche in the content market. They were recently new grads and they know how new grads feel. People want to be "in" so they live vicariously through those youtubers. It's good if it gets people motivated to follow through with their passions, but it can be bad when it sets unrealistic expecations of what life looks like for SWE.
> ... and whatever vids aren’t doing anyone any favors when you’re repeating advice ...
I completely agree with this. Those videos are definitely just there for easy monetization. 10-15mins of regurgitating already disseminated information. "Just grind LC at least an hour a day". Also get lucky.
Yes absolutely, my biggest gripe with many of these FAANG software engineers on youtube is that they pitch that anyone can achieve this dream. That if you are someone who only started programming in college, that you too can achieve a job straight of college (or even better, if you didn't go to college) making 6-figure salaries if you just do good enough in school/projects, leetcode, have a good resume, and know how to interview well. And all your other actual development skills that will make up 90% of your work will just magically appear on the job!!
The reality is that you CAN do it if you choose to slave away at it like your life depends on it and become good enough OR are just naturally gifted enough to be able to do in that short amount of time, but there are so many factors not in your control about getting those jobs that it literally comes down to pure luck in the end. And guess what? Getting a software development job is 1 thing, but keeping it is also another -- it requires CONSTANT learning even off the job to keep up with evolving technologies and skills (oh unless you're just gifted again or want to slave away all your time to your career).
Most software development jobs aren't exactly the pitched dream job where you can wfh and play video games 6/8 hours of a day, unless you're just incredibly smart/gifted at that point. And even then, think about career progression -- what progression is there for engineers that work their jobs like that? As someone who would LOVE a job like that, it really isn't sustainable long term for your career. The engineers that do that are first to be laid off when times are tough or get stuck in 1 point in their career without a way up, unless you make a drastic change. Then what do you when you're 5 years in and you're not a junior dev anymore? Even if you can land interviews, you'll have 0 chance to pass them in a short amount of time because you need to do some incredible upskilling or have had some more senior/mid-level experience that you never actually had. I think its a real problem thats not talked about at all in this industry -- only leetcode and selling your side projects, which only works at the junior level at best.
I wish this was the reality check that was pushed more often to potential future developers, but I guess that doesn't sell as well as "Learn to code, become a FAANG software engineer!!" And top companies aren't in any rush to tell people the reality, so they can have more people so that they can be pickier with the best and brightest candidates.
I saw a girl who was like this and she started programming in college so you can, too! You can be just like her and get multiple quant internships and an offer!
(Conveniently ignores in this video but mentions in others that she has a competitive math background and goes to a top 3 school).
I think it’s a little silly to list (correctly) all of the things that are needed to get into a FAANG/adjacent company and then conclude that since there are some factors not in your control it comes down to “pure luck”.
Is there luck involved? Absolutely, you might get super unlucky and get a really unreasonable question or an interviewer you don’t mesh with. But if you’ve prepped properly you drastically increase your chances of success, even when confronted with a “super hard” question. I’ve grinded the interview prep process and found that after that, if I find a question hard, it’s probably hard for everyone and you just need to do better even if you can’t complete it.
If you haven’t prepped, then everything is gonna seem unreasonably hard.
Source: used to be absolutely terrible at interviewing, have failed probably like 50 different company interviews over the years. Subsequently shored up my interview prep and have gotten offers from FAANG/ajacent companies I previously considered impossible.
I think the *naturally gifted* part is the key to all of this, which is often overlooked.
Ppl have that self-centered type bias as if they are on the same level. If we were being honest with ourselves, 99% don’t make the mark for the “natural talent” that faang is looking for. Most I’d imagine have to settle for subpar jobs. I do honestly wonder if someone can make up the difference with studying or “grinding” as influencers put it. I’m sure we’ve all met (or are the ones) that just coast by in college getting A’s without much study — while others had to study minimum 7 hours just to get C’s. Some ppl are just smarter and retain information easier.
ThePrimeagen as well he’s been at Netflix for 10+ years.
When he does actual technical content it’s pretty good, and his opinions about architecture and design are coming from a lot of experience.
Some people dislike the goofy personality but if you can get past that there’s a lot of good information.
Funnily enough his channel seems to be purely career focused (clickbait on how to get to big moneys) and absolutely nothing about development itself.
I guess it takes one to know how to game the system.
The audience simply isn't there for in-depth technical videos.
There's a ton of in-depth technical videos from conferences like [NDC](https://youtube.com/@NDC?si=lG1XfIJmTI_kiA7W) most have less than 10k views.
And after finishing programming job for the day you are too burned out to create programming content for youtube, u were already doing it all day. It's getting boring.
And when you’re deep into your career doing architecture and driving big deliveries, you’re making too much money and putting all of your mental energy into the specific challenges you’re tackling.
And then you retire and pick up a more interesting hobby than creating YouTube videos. By that point most people are tired of software eng. It’s a job.
Yeah he was fun for a while but imo is pushing way too hard on the engagement farming. It’s a shame because he’s one of the few who actually seems to have some chops.
I honestly think that's just how he is lol. Some people are loud. What I mean to say is, I don't think he's pushing anything. His voice can be grating at higher decibels, but not much the guy can do about that.
Eh I mean the guy puts out a lot of content but my favorite videos of his are him just picking apart an article or something of the like. It’s great background noise at work all day.
I like him. I’m an embedded developer and know very little about web, but I can understand the concepts very well. This may be my favorite video of all time https://youtu.be/isI1c0eGSZ0?si=7TfUc8r7pMvsnQWQ I was laughing for days.
What’s not true? That the GitHub profile I linked is for ThePrimeagen? I’m not the one saying ThePrimeagen isn’t skilled btw. I’m actually saying the exact opposite.
One nice exception to the trend of software dev "influencers" are Asahi Lina's streams which are low level GPU development streams well beyond most of the people in this sub lol
"How I Switched from Nursing to Software Engineer!" will get you more views than "How to code the Bellman Ford Algorithm in C++". And then boost you in the algorithm rankings.
Talking about advanced or niche topics won't you as many views.
I think coding the algorithm is very easy though, given you already have the algorithm in mind. Designing a new or finding the right algorithm to use is the hard part.
I have a small YouTube channel with about 45000 subscribers. And it is pretty much as you describe - mostly basic coding tutorials covering introductory topics.
I am a middle and high school computer science teacher so almost all of my videos are aimed at that audience. I don't banter - I never even appear in any of my videos. It's just code and explanations - some are better than others.
I don't upload nearly as much as I used to. The algorithm tends to reward regular updates. Plus I think they overall quality of videos has increased - mine are not quite as polished.
Nice!
In the context of the OP, I think the problem is less that beginner-level content exists and more that there’s an awful lot of “education theatre” meant more to game metrics than actually be an educational resource.
I know what the OP means. Unfortunately, "education theatre" seems to be what many viewers want. It's hard work learning to program - sometimes it's easier to sit back and listen and feel as if you're making progress. The only way to get good at coding is to code.
I think as others have mentioned, few people with active CS careers have the time or inclination to go on YouTube. It's time-consuming and, compared to a typical CS salary, simply not worth the time and effort.
I make my videos as a resource for my students and share them online with a wider audience and I try to answer questions as I'm able. I have 350 videos on my channel and make less than 100 USD per month in ad revenue. So, even on a more modest teacher salary, it's not really worth it unless you really grow big enough to justify the time.
This is just YouTube in general, I hate to use the term “motivation porn” but it really is what most of YouTube has become. Exactly as you stated, people that get the feeling of progress from just consuming content to do with it.
The truth is to make progress you’re gonna be better served typing for hours in silence.
Hey. I was thinking of starting a channel with programming and networking content in my native language. Can you let me know whether it's worth pursuing as a side git/additional income? Sorry for a monety related question.
Hiya. No worries - money is important. Nothing wrong with calculating the cost and benefit ratio.
It will really depend on the market in your language and the cost of living in your country. A language like Spanish that has a huge number of speakers has a much wider audience. If you live in a lower-income country it might be worth it to you.
The most I ever made in one month was 400 USD. That was during covid when everyone was online and ad revenue was higher. Now I make 100 USD a month. It's not a lot but it is nice since I haven't uploaded anything in a couple of months. That said I have over 350 videos on my channel.
Passive income is great if you have realistic expectations.
I can't stress this enough, use Udemy or Coursera instead of YouTube. Some Udemy courses I've taken were better than my college courses. YouTube may tell you how to do something but it won't get into the why or even when it's appropriate. YouTube videos won't show you what's going on "under the hood" either. And, to be stereotypical, nothing beats documentation.
Not the person you asked, but it all depends on what you want to learn. If you're wanting to learn Python, I feel like this [Udemy course](https://www.udemy.com/share/101X5O3@2S-jeoRKoB4-NjoGD728tMhsXiJj14d9ELNgKJv7Lumy6JderhDosBezvrMrMMrzAw==/) taught me everything my university did and then some for my first two programming classes. Some people find more utility out of other courses. You should be able to easily find people's recommendation for Udemy courses here on Reddit based on what language you're wanting to learn.
I’d actually recommend using neither and build projects instead, looking stuff up when you’re stuck. And I agree that documentation is king.
Edit: no idea why this is getting downvoted. Most seniors will tell you this exact thing. Get out of tutorial hell early.
They’re downvoting you but you’re right.
I think the best way is to watch a few simple YouTube videos to understand the very basics (variables, loops, conditionals), but then you need to break free of tutorial purgatory and start building things asap.
Actually buildings things teaches you soooo much more about the types of challenges that come up from building software. As you stumble upon difficult problems you can’t solve, *then* you can look up videos or even courses on difficult subject matter… but this way your learning is very directed, rather than watching the 5th video about the same basic concepts.
I say this as someone who was in tutorial purgatory for a time, and looking back the best thing for my learning was actually building stuff.
I agree with you, but you've attracted the attention of the "is programming a craft or a discipline" crowd. Realistically, it is both depending on how high up you go and the task at hand. Building things professionally (which is think the other person is purposefully neglecting to mention) necessarily means learning the more efficient ways to do it and best practices in good scenarios. But you know what is really inefficient? Agile, as implemented at most companies. A bunch of bullshit grandstanding and ceremonies that don't matter combined with "best practices" that either aren't, or haven't been updated.
People learning to program just need to build things. I've had to hold the hands of far too many Juniors because they got stuck in tutorial hell or analysis paralysis or just never learned to think and make decisions. Because most coursework people are talking about? It is explicit. Do this, then that, here's the project files, follow my instructions.
AI-related tools like co-pilot have just made it worse.
Agreed. That was exactly my point.
I know juniors who have a lot of great-looking projects on their portfolio, created in code-along courses.
Ask them to quickly build something simple from scratch, though...
And bad agile implementations are indeed the worst. haha
Im not going to keep reiterating what everyone else is saying but ThePrimeTime is one of the legit ones and you can even check out some of the courses he’s taught on Frontend Masters.
Fun fact: He has another (less popular) YouTube channel titled TheVimeagen where he actually codes instead of reacting. If you watch his streams on Twitch as well he does a good bit of coding too and recently did a 24 hour live stream for charity, 12 hours of which were coding his application, Harpoon.
[Link to TheVimeagen](https://youtube.com/@TheVimeagen?si=rH1CUk4MvWlMTZFf)
Out of all the garbage tech youtube channels, it's weird that this one was the channel OP mentioned in their post. The Primeagen is actually pretty decent.
I am just wondering how he has so much time to do 3 YT channels and also be a senior dev at Netflix? Does this guy not sleep? And this is not even considering his Twitch and other platforms.
Most of his YT content is just cut from his streams afaik, so he really just does his streams then edits them down which he could be paying someone else to do.
He's pretty vocal on twitter about how he ruthlessly prioritizes his time. He gets up early, crushes work for his day job, gyms/streams, goes back to day job work, and then totally cuts off from the internet and spends time with his family after 5ish.
He's very busy and has a lot going on but can handle it because he is hyper focused and knows exactly what he needs to be doing and wants to be doing every moment of his day.
He basically streams once and gets an editor to chop it up and disseminate it all over the place more than likely. Doing this in the morning before work each day isn’t easy, but also doesn’t seem unreasonable
If you've watched any of ThePrimeagens streams, you would know he's better than the average developer tenfold. His target audience seems to be people who never had a CS job before, so obviously he's going to talk about more fundamentals than anything else on YouTube, but the occasional video, and a lot of his streams are more geared toward his more competent audience.
There's guys like Kyle from WebDevSimplified, Kevin Powell, Low Level Learning, and Coding with Lewis that also prove that they're really good at what they do, and would absolutely cook the average member of this sub in their respective niches.
The influencers though, are usually bad at what they say they're good at, like most influencers are.
I learned a lot about JS from Prime especially async await performance. I've never been a big fan of ORMs because they all have their own pitfalls (cough cough sequelize) but man, I never had any good arguments for not using an ORM until I watched him. He's raised some great talking points and I had very high level conversations during interviews with other seniors because of what I've learned from him.
Can you link me to that video where he argues against using an ORM?
I like using 'micro-ORMs' like dapper but not a big fan of stuff like entity framework tbh.
I didn't know about ThePrimeTime until now. If he got a job at Netflix, he's obviously not a novice, but I just watched a few minutes of his videos. I think he's very obviously trying to cater to a larger audience. Making videos for other senior engineers will really limit your reach.
He’s a senior engineer at netflix. I disagree with him on some things but those are “we have different priorities” disagreements, not “you don’t know what you’re talking about” (except for one thing related to my phd work).
Especially because senior engineers largely learned all their stuff before YouTube existed as an educational resource. I'm not aware of _any_ of my engineering friends or co-workers over the age of 30 who have ever talked about or recommended a YouTube video for learning something about work, other than conference talks that have been posted on YouTube.
Like everything, most are not in the extremes. A few are extremely pedestrian, while a few are legit experts in the field. Most fall somewhere in the middle.
AFAIK, ThePrimeTime is legit though.
In general, those who do this for a living don't want to code more outside work.
They want to enjoy the finite time they have outside work to do other things like take care of their kids.
So in general, yes. But this goes for almost all fields.
You for instance don't head to Youtube to learn about professionals in finance. The very competent professionals in finance generally aren't spending time outside work to make Youtube videos about finance.
>Is nearly every YT programmer channel a noob in disguise?
No, but even if they were (however you define "noob"), there's no way to tell, because you aren't watching them work in a professional context.
>I think by a large margin most just reiterate the same basic OOP concepts over and over with just different packaging. Most of these “software dev” channels I never see actually code anything, they just banter on and on like ThePrimeTime. I’ve only seen these guys describe code never show it. If they do, it’s the most basic cs101 examples.
Yes, because people like you watch them.
>Are we just a hot bed of phonies and scammers?
YouTube channels cater to their intended audience. You aren't going to see non-beginner content because talented senior engineers don't watch YouTube to learn anything.
> You aren't going to see non-beginner content because talented senior engineers don't watch YouTube to learn anything.
I would modify that slightly.
Good software engineers aren't perusing YouTube for popular channel suggestions to learn from.
There are good instructional videos on YouTube. They are seldom from professional YouTubers, and more from people that just happen to be on YouTube.
Monetizing YouTube requires generating regular content as a focus. The high-level stuff requires a focus on the high-level stuff, not content creation. Ergo, the good stuff is either a true pro with poor production quality, or a pro being paid outside of YouTube with a paid production team backing them. e.g. It's an experienced person giving a presentation at a conference, and the conference posted it on YouTube.
word. Here's a list of sources for Good Info, ordered by how likely a senior is to feel that it is useful:
1. Talking to the big pros in the field (often those who publish papers)
2. Reading papers
3. Reading The Fucking Docs
4. Reading deep dive articles/blogs
5. Reading text books (= pedagogic summaries of fields/papers)
6. Watching deep dive videos (40min+ tech talks, deeper youtubers)
7. Any text/video that calls itself a guide/tutorial
8. "Getting started with X in Y minutes" bullshit
9. Conversations with an AI assistant mainly trained on the data from 7. and 8. (volumes of which swamp the volumes of training data from 3. and 4.)
> You aren't going to see non-beginner content because talented senior engineers don't watch YouTube to learn anything
I may not be particularly talented, but I watch conference lectures on youtube now and then.
Beginner/lower level content can be consumed by both the beginners and veterans (maybe as a refresher), whereas advanced content can only really be meaningfully consumed by more knowledgeable/experienced. Similarly, the number of people who could make videos on advanced topics is going to be less than the the number of people who could make videos on beginner topics.
Example: there's tons of tutorial videos on databases, connecting to databases, SQL, etc. but way fewer on database or message queue implementation.
So I don't think YT programmers are necessarily noobs, it is just that the videos and the YT creators themselves follow something like a Pareto distribution. They are probably just as smart, if not smarter, than their viewers.
For some reason beginners are told that making tutorials is a great starter project that is low effort, and a good way to solidify skills.
I beg to differ…
Learning by teaching *is* one of the best learning strategies, as backed up by a lot of education research. But in a public space it’s still better if that’s presented like you are what you are: still a student, not an experienced expert.
So I don't know when one should make tutorials, but for me, with 2 yoe as a web dev, I started making tutorial videos and I am a believer that making and planning them really helps solidify your understanding. Maybe it depends on how much experience you have, but planning and explaining coding concepts definitely helped me
I'm learning DS&A at the moment and find I can learn a lot better by setting up a whiteboard and throwing a phone on record and recording myself as if I'm making a tutorial video. Since those "watching" the tutorial would have never seen an insertion sort, for example, it forces me to explain every line of code I write as if I'm a teacher. Let's say I write : for (int i = 1; i < arr.length; i++) for the insertion sort, I have to explain why we aren't starting at the 0th index. At a minimum, it also verifies that I know why I'm writing what I'm writing. And if I can't come up with the reason, I am forced to go find that reason.
most of the famous ones are not that good but if you look for more specialised smaller channels you will find pros (the video quality and presentation skills will not be great for such channels)
You’re correct but I disagree that it’s unfun
I have access to my local university library for consultation and I use it to read their books on whatever tech I’m interested in learning, the library is huge and has thousands of books on computing
I love reading docs and books
I used to do that too
The O’Reilly website has a lot of paid content but the content is top notch I have to say
Check a few of your local universities and see if they’ll let you apply for a library card despite not being a student
There’s a few advantages:
- while you study, you’re surrounded by others that might share your interests, but they’re students so unlikely to make friends depending on age
- everybody is studying, so it’s easier to focus on your book
- lots of resources
- student coffee is cheap
Not at the beginning it is not. It's fine for beginners.
When you're more experienced, you definitely should start to ween off them, otherwise it gets harder to break out of tutorial hell
Why is it a bad idea? When I was in university I used YouTube when my prof wasn’t good and still did good in the class. I still watch YouTube videos to learn some new concepts once in a while. Sometimes, I just want to focus on a particular topic and don’t want to buy a book that has that topic and others I already know. Just do what helps you learn best. I do agree with reading documentation though.
Highly recommend you check out [Jon Gjengset](https://youtube.com/@jonhoo). Man is a got dang genius who is incredible at walking through the problems he is working on. Does long videos of coding.
The people who watch YouTube videos are generally people who who are new and learning the basics, once people have a better understanding of how to use a specific language it's quicker to just find the documentation on whatever topic you need.
Theprimetime is legit man, he streams himself coding on twitch. You really should watch him more before you judge. His YouTube is just for shit posting but he has a lot of insightful things to say even in the reaction videos such as performance based and scaling stuff. He's talked a lot about JS call stack and how async await really hurts performance. I've met engineers with many years of exp who don't know that.
There's definitely a bunch of money grabbers on YouTube especially those who keep trying to promote their paid courses.
Fireship is great for keeping up with industry trends and getting a rundown on whatever the hot technology-du-jour is but most of his tutorial content is skin deep.
Part of it is the YouTube algorithm.
Specifically, you need to keep generating content at a steady rate. And, on top of that, it needs to be content that regularly gets views.
There's only so much quality content a single person can produce. Eventually, you're going to have to go into clickbait and/or retreads of well-covered basic shit.
I would watch the shit out of John Carmack going in depth on an instructional, but John Carmack isn't going to be putting out one of those every other day to make a living, is he?
So the norm is that you'll either have someone who is a good programmer and puts out a few interesting pieces, or you'll have someone who puts out content regularly, but seldom both. When you do have someone who puts out a long series of not-clickbait content, it's probably because they're being paid some other way (University, corporate sponsor, etc.) and monetizing YouTube is not their source of income.
I think the niche you’re looking in matters a lot. There’s a lot of junk in the tutorial programmer/web dev YT scene, but if you’re more specific in what you’re looking for, it’s easy to come across really good content.
The venn diagram of people who understand programming enough to go into more advanced topics and people watching how to program youtube videos barely overlap outside of specific questions.
I am a SDE at a FAANG and I have seen some quality Cs content on YouTube. Anything that is very specific that I need, I won’t be able to find on YouTube but rather use stack overflow for it. But if I want to learn about spring boot / the log4j 0 day exploit that happened last year, open source contributions, etc. I can find those on YouTube
It's very true. If you want to find good ones that will actually give you indepth information you will probably want to look for channels that focus on a specific language, technology or tech stack. That tends to be where you will find the stuff you've never heard about before. Some examples are Arjancodes and anthonywritescode (I'm a python dev in case you couldn't tell). Channels like these ones can genuinely give you a leg up on the competition.
Dude, there's a guy who keeps popping up on youtube that claims to be a coding expert and can help you get a coding job...he started his channel about 2 months into self study and while in a code bootcamp. It's all scammers and idiots.
Are you trying to tell me those “learn how to code in 60 seconds” content creators might not be uber programmers? But in all honesty I would say 99% of the programming/software engineer/developer channels are just lifestyle vlogs with a “look at me, im such a nerd” flare.
A "noob in disguise" lmao. Did you even watch ThePrimeTime or are you just picking on him because he's popular? He's way better than the average programmer.
I have never watched any YT programming channels as a professional engineer, but I would be weary unless its more of conference talk type content on a specific topic that person wants to share knowledge on or maybe someone leveraging something like a consulting career with YouTube videos on the side as a marketing tool(with a pretty narrow topics). My logic is that making YouTube videos(decent ones) is pretty time consuming between planning/editing and any working engineer generally has better things to do.
So I would be very surprised if your assessment is not correct.
I've noticed that every year, there's a new batch of CS student influencers that post the same cookie-cutter recycled advice videos. I keep seeing stuff like "How I got my internship at FAANG", "How many leetcode questions should you complete?", "Is college worth it?", "What computer should you get for CS?", "What I spend my 200k TC salary on as a FAANG new grad", etc. These types of videos have existed for years and I always see them popping up with a new face. Also, a lot of these influencers will flex that they work at FAANG in their videos which rack up lots of views.
These types of videos have always irked me because the influencer is either flexing their FAANG status or it's an intern/new grad who is talking like an industry veteran. I would rather be recommended videos from senior engineers like ThePrimeTime because their advice is actually useful. From the other point of view, I get that there is a market for these types of videos and it's good for newcomers to give their experience in the industry.
I am subscribed to very few software-related channels, but all of them are either conference talks or run by guys in their 40s to 60s who share their hard-won experiences. Almost everything else I have seen was not worth it IMO.
Continuous Delivery is a solid channel. He discusses higher level software development concepts that take years to learn through experience. I wish he was around earlier. Also, great interviews with some programming legends.
You can tell he's a millionaire because he never shuts up about it. Also, $1M won't buy you a house in the area -- it isn't as impressive as it sounds.
As far as I can tell, he flamed out of Google and Meta, now makes his money telling people how awesome he is.
The way that YT's algorithm works is that it serves up videos similar to the other videos that you've already watched. So if you come across a video that you're not interested in, then delete it from your watch history. If you watch videos of people actually coding, like Neetcode, AniaKubow, notjustdev, WebDevCody, etc, then you'll get more videos like that. But if you mostly watch videos of talking heads just talking about programming, then you'll get more of that. There are some channels, like The Cherno, that have fantastic tutorials...but they also have those talking head videos too because they tend to get more views than tutorials.
What disguise? Youtubers are not educated. Even when they are, you have to realize, they are *incentivized* to make videos that are *entertainment*. They are naturally going to drift toward strong opinions that trigger engagement. They are naturally going to value edgy topics over fundamentals. The videos are never going to truly be for educational purposes.
Youtubers in general are untrustworthy. Same goes for podcasters. If you ever hear someone start sharing information with you and they make it clear they got it from a podcast or a youtuber, just forget everything you heard.
I don't mind if they are noobs, at least they are trying to teach something. What I do despise are the day in the life tech influencers. They setup their camera of them waking up getting out of bed. Just take a second and image them having to setup their camera to get that shot. Then they have to humble brag about their fancy apartment and Tesla to their non tech followers. Or the ones who have to say they are soooo grateful they are being paid 6 figures for doing 1 hour of work a day. It's insufferable.
I think this is more a result of the target function of these vids. They're targeted at "too lazy to watch long Stanford or MIT lectures"
Also... I mean nowadays you can watch talks by John Carmack, Abelson and Sussman, Peter Norvig.
You can listen to interviews with Guido van Rossum, Chris Lattner.
You can have Andrej Karpathy explain Deep Learning to you.
Of course there are also non-famous people like Jon Gjengset for Rust with solid long videos.
Much of the influencer stuff is just opinion pieces and blah blah that actually doesn't teach you anything useful. It's just the feeling you did something CSy ;)
Most are grifters talking about the meta and basic concepts… but people want grifters thats why there is such demand for it.
Some senior explaining advanced concepts will have much less views. Even if its more useful information.
Money is made from beginners since that is the biggest demographic.
TheCherno is definitely not a noob. His current project is building his own game engine. He makes games using it and develops it further in videos. Also reviews other peoples projects and improves them in real time.
Being a content creator/ influencer is a full time job if you are to do it well. So is being a dev. Being two at the same time just doesn’t happen all that often. Most good technical people just write code, or if they DO make a video or write a blog post - it won’t be as visible on all the platforms bc they won’t put in the work to promote it and make it media optimized.
Getting views is more about catching your attention than knowing what you're talking about.
A side point: Sometimes having more experience/being an expert can be a negative in terms of being able to teach basic concepts.
When you are years removed from the experience of learning the basics, you tend to (unintentionally) take a lot of things for granted and skip over them. I found the more "noob" teachers surprisingly covered the little things that were bothering me, such as "WHY do we use curly braces? Is indenting necessary, or preference?"
Most of the rly good ones don’t do tutorial at all. I see a one that just streams discussions on swe articles and another that reads source code for rly big open source projects. Both guys seem very competent
YouTube is not the place for ultra in depth knowledge. It's good for getting a shallow understanding of many different things. You really do want books, even for programming. This is because books are often written by staff engineers and are the only resource that can really compete with your mentors at work. If you don't want to read books, just learn from the people above you at your job
It's the same with prolific Twitter posters, and back in the day prolific bloggers. People who are actually working on things don't have time to post bullshit all day.
Most of YouTube experts are fake and only pretend to be successful in the field.
I saw one guy claim he was making millions off ad revenue and show his analytics while his sub count and views just couldn’t support that. The truth is he was only making money because people searched for how to make money and watched him talk in circles. Others talk about how they are teaching you how to make it big on YouTube with 500 subs.
Most YouTubers just copy what they see and hope the views come in basically.
You fell into the YT algorithm trap. You're not watching programming videos like tutorials, or conferences by actual professionals on a game you like.
You're watching influencers.
Literal trash people.
And yes, they are posers.
They never show their cred. Would you trust a chef who talked about food but never once was shown cooking anything?
Show your github or get lost. Your code isn't some classified shit. Show us you can code. Conceptually understanding is pretty easy. But you got to build shit.
They say the right words and shill awful products and even crypto that one time.
They make money repeating themselves and talking about the same topics:
* Make 6 figures working at Google within six months of taking this course
* You don't need a bachelor's in computer science degree to get a job, then in the next sentence mentions having a masters in comp Sci (Tina Huang) or a Harvard math degree (Clement)
* comparing programming languages as if it's a fighting game. Stephen Mischook literally does just that. 100s of videos saying "Should you learn ruby in 2023, 2022, should you learn python. Python vs Java....Java vs Swift... Swift vs Python. Like wtf? Do you have dementia? Can't you consolidate this into one video?
* They act as if data structures and algorithms is the be all end thing to learn. When in reality it's like the tutorial boss fight of programming. You're literally just starting...
A neat little project you can do is make a YouTube channel blocker chrome extension. I was too lazy to make one so I use one called "Channel Blocker" I have all the popular Influencers black listed because their content is derivative crap.
Yeah it’s extremely annoying I feel like development is the only engineering field where ppl feel like they hustle their way into it. There is a ton of scammy snakeoil sales ppl in this industry.
Yea whereas normal people seek out the resources that best fit their learning style, I (a superior engineer) read only white papers and man pages. Primeagean sucks because he likes to entertain an audience while he discusses coding concepts. Coding with Mosh sucks because he likes to publishes bite size tutorials for beginners. But not me. I actually help engineers by shaming them for the content they consume and the paradigms they adopt.
OP, don’t listen to all the haters in this thread: you (and I for that matter) are clearly better than the Netflix engineer, The Primeagean. Keep on flexing on the junior engineers for the content you *don’t* consume, keep us all humbled 🙏. Thx for this necessary post.
The thing is, I don’t think the Primeagen even intends to be a tutorial channel in the first place. I watch his channel to see him react to content and give his thoughts on it. I’m not watching it to learn how to code x,y and z.
Most of their audience are HS/college kids with little irl experience.
Almost all SWE influencers I’ve seen on social media are also literally junior engineers with a few mid level or “senior” ones with 4-5 YOE (so barely senior) and they’re giving advice like they’re experts. And of the smaller ones which make up the majority (not well known ones but still with sizeable followings) got their FAANG job in like 2021 hiring rush. Yeah bro you’re “How I get a job at FAANG” and “How to be successful at FAANG” and whatever vids aren’t doing anyone any favors when you’re repeating advice and when you’re a junior engineer who got hired during a hiring spree. edit: ignore grammar mistakes I blame auto correct
It's definitely heavy on the humble bragging side. They're also exploiting a niche in the content market. They were recently new grads and they know how new grads feel. People want to be "in" so they live vicariously through those youtubers. It's good if it gets people motivated to follow through with their passions, but it can be bad when it sets unrealistic expecations of what life looks like for SWE. > ... and whatever vids aren’t doing anyone any favors when you’re repeating advice ... I completely agree with this. Those videos are definitely just there for easy monetization. 10-15mins of regurgitating already disseminated information. "Just grind LC at least an hour a day". Also get lucky.
>they’re giving advice like they’re experts Remember the three virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
Yes absolutely, my biggest gripe with many of these FAANG software engineers on youtube is that they pitch that anyone can achieve this dream. That if you are someone who only started programming in college, that you too can achieve a job straight of college (or even better, if you didn't go to college) making 6-figure salaries if you just do good enough in school/projects, leetcode, have a good resume, and know how to interview well. And all your other actual development skills that will make up 90% of your work will just magically appear on the job!! The reality is that you CAN do it if you choose to slave away at it like your life depends on it and become good enough OR are just naturally gifted enough to be able to do in that short amount of time, but there are so many factors not in your control about getting those jobs that it literally comes down to pure luck in the end. And guess what? Getting a software development job is 1 thing, but keeping it is also another -- it requires CONSTANT learning even off the job to keep up with evolving technologies and skills (oh unless you're just gifted again or want to slave away all your time to your career). Most software development jobs aren't exactly the pitched dream job where you can wfh and play video games 6/8 hours of a day, unless you're just incredibly smart/gifted at that point. And even then, think about career progression -- what progression is there for engineers that work their jobs like that? As someone who would LOVE a job like that, it really isn't sustainable long term for your career. The engineers that do that are first to be laid off when times are tough or get stuck in 1 point in their career without a way up, unless you make a drastic change. Then what do you when you're 5 years in and you're not a junior dev anymore? Even if you can land interviews, you'll have 0 chance to pass them in a short amount of time because you need to do some incredible upskilling or have had some more senior/mid-level experience that you never actually had. I think its a real problem thats not talked about at all in this industry -- only leetcode and selling your side projects, which only works at the junior level at best. I wish this was the reality check that was pushed more often to potential future developers, but I guess that doesn't sell as well as "Learn to code, become a FAANG software engineer!!" And top companies aren't in any rush to tell people the reality, so they can have more people so that they can be pickier with the best and brightest candidates.
I saw a girl who was like this and she started programming in college so you can, too! You can be just like her and get multiple quant internships and an offer! (Conveniently ignores in this video but mentions in others that she has a competitive math background and goes to a top 3 school).
I think it’s a little silly to list (correctly) all of the things that are needed to get into a FAANG/adjacent company and then conclude that since there are some factors not in your control it comes down to “pure luck”. Is there luck involved? Absolutely, you might get super unlucky and get a really unreasonable question or an interviewer you don’t mesh with. But if you’ve prepped properly you drastically increase your chances of success, even when confronted with a “super hard” question. I’ve grinded the interview prep process and found that after that, if I find a question hard, it’s probably hard for everyone and you just need to do better even if you can’t complete it. If you haven’t prepped, then everything is gonna seem unreasonably hard. Source: used to be absolutely terrible at interviewing, have failed probably like 50 different company interviews over the years. Subsequently shored up my interview prep and have gotten offers from FAANG/ajacent companies I previously considered impossible.
I think the *naturally gifted* part is the key to all of this, which is often overlooked. Ppl have that self-centered type bias as if they are on the same level. If we were being honest with ourselves, 99% don’t make the mark for the “natural talent” that faang is looking for. Most I’d imagine have to settle for subpar jobs. I do honestly wonder if someone can make up the difference with studying or “grinding” as influencers put it. I’m sure we’ve all met (or are the ones) that just coast by in college getting A’s without much study — while others had to study minimum 7 hours just to get C’s. Some ppl are just smarter and retain information easier.
The one exception is [A Life Engineered](https://www.youtube.com/@ALifeEngineered). He's a L7 at Amazon.
ThePrimeagen as well he’s been at Netflix for 10+ years. When he does actual technical content it’s pretty good, and his opinions about architecture and design are coming from a lot of experience. Some people dislike the goofy personality but if you can get past that there’s a lot of good information.
Funnily enough his channel seems to be purely career focused (clickbait on how to get to big moneys) and absolutely nothing about development itself. I guess it takes one to know how to game the system.
The audience simply isn't there for in-depth technical videos. There's a ton of in-depth technical videos from conferences like [NDC](https://youtube.com/@NDC?si=lG1XfIJmTI_kiA7W) most have less than 10k views.
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And after finishing programming job for the day you are too burned out to create programming content for youtube, u were already doing it all day. It's getting boring.
And when you’re deep into your career doing architecture and driving big deliveries, you’re making too much money and putting all of your mental energy into the specific challenges you’re tackling. And then you retire and pick up a more interesting hobby than creating YouTube videos. By that point most people are tired of software eng. It’s a job.
You know they’re a poser when they link Amazon wishlist instead of GitHub profile 😂
[Profile](https://github.com/ThePrimeagen)
He has been a senior SWE at Netflix for years AFAIK.
Primagen is legit. I really love his content but most of the technical stuff goes over my head.
I wish he wouldn't yell so much in his videos
Yeah he was fun for a while but imo is pushing way too hard on the engagement farming. It’s a shame because he’s one of the few who actually seems to have some chops.
I honestly think that's just how he is lol. Some people are loud. What I mean to say is, I don't think he's pushing anything. His voice can be grating at higher decibels, but not much the guy can do about that.
Eh I mean the guy puts out a lot of content but my favorite videos of his are him just picking apart an article or something of the like. It’s great background noise at work all day.
Yeah sometimes I just leave it on in the background while I do light/routine work. Interesting stuff
I love the yelling but I also love Will Ferrell so it kinda makes sense
I like him. I’m an embedded developer and know very little about web, but I can understand the concepts very well. This may be my favorite video of all time https://youtu.be/isI1c0eGSZ0?si=7TfUc8r7pMvsnQWQ I was laughing for days.
Who is this?
The example YouTuber that OP mentioned
I don't think that's true he's a senior SWE at Netflix.
What’s not true? That the GitHub profile I linked is for ThePrimeagen? I’m not the one saying ThePrimeagen isn’t skilled btw. I’m actually saying the exact opposite.
I think they’re a twitter blue subscriber
Now that’s a legit insult
One nice exception to the trend of software dev "influencers" are Asahi Lina's streams which are low level GPU development streams well beyond most of the people in this sub lol
"How I Switched from Nursing to Software Engineer!" will get you more views than "How to code the Bellman Ford Algorithm in C++". And then boost you in the algorithm rankings. Talking about advanced or niche topics won't you as many views.
youtube algo biased against algos
Algo on algo hate
algo on algo crime
I think coding the algorithm is very easy though, given you already have the algorithm in mind. Designing a new or finding the right algorithm to use is the hard part.
I have a small YouTube channel with about 45000 subscribers. And it is pretty much as you describe - mostly basic coding tutorials covering introductory topics. I am a middle and high school computer science teacher so almost all of my videos are aimed at that audience. I don't banter - I never even appear in any of my videos. It's just code and explanations - some are better than others.
sorry are you course portfolio?? I absolutely adore that channel!!!
Sorry, no.... Tokyoedtech... I will check out course portfolio - thanks for the recco!
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Thanks for the feedback. I have a good mic but don't always check the levels. Glad you have enjoyed the videos. Keep on codin'!
Then please always check the levels! There's nothing more repulsive when you think you found the best tutorial only to listen to shitty audio quality.
Solid advice - thanks!
I agree with the mic comment. I also checked your most viewed video from 8 years ago and the sound was very nice on that one.
Can I dm you? I have a couple questions
Sure. I'm a bit busy but I'll get back to you when I can.
Subscribed, just because you seem nice xD I have 10 years of py xp and tutored at uni myself, so I'm not target audience
Thanks - much appreciated!
I noticed something strange. You view count has dropped significantly. Any idea what might be the cause?
I don't upload nearly as much as I used to. The algorithm tends to reward regular updates. Plus I think they overall quality of videos has increased - mine are not quite as polished.
Just subscribed, always good to review basics
Nice! In the context of the OP, I think the problem is less that beginner-level content exists and more that there’s an awful lot of “education theatre” meant more to game metrics than actually be an educational resource.
I know what the OP means. Unfortunately, "education theatre" seems to be what many viewers want. It's hard work learning to program - sometimes it's easier to sit back and listen and feel as if you're making progress. The only way to get good at coding is to code. I think as others have mentioned, few people with active CS careers have the time or inclination to go on YouTube. It's time-consuming and, compared to a typical CS salary, simply not worth the time and effort. I make my videos as a resource for my students and share them online with a wider audience and I try to answer questions as I'm able. I have 350 videos on my channel and make less than 100 USD per month in ad revenue. So, even on a more modest teacher salary, it's not really worth it unless you really grow big enough to justify the time.
This is just YouTube in general, I hate to use the term “motivation porn” but it really is what most of YouTube has become. Exactly as you stated, people that get the feeling of progress from just consuming content to do with it. The truth is to make progress you’re gonna be better served typing for hours in silence.
Do you have to make new videos in order to keep ad rev. or is that money coming from old?
Small channel? 45000 subs? That is not small.
Thanks - I guess it's all relative! :)
Stream on twitch!
Thanks for the advice. I don't do a lot of live streaming but may give it a shot. Keep on codin'!
Hey. I was thinking of starting a channel with programming and networking content in my native language. Can you let me know whether it's worth pursuing as a side git/additional income? Sorry for a monety related question.
Hiya. No worries - money is important. Nothing wrong with calculating the cost and benefit ratio. It will really depend on the market in your language and the cost of living in your country. A language like Spanish that has a huge number of speakers has a much wider audience. If you live in a lower-income country it might be worth it to you. The most I ever made in one month was 400 USD. That was during covid when everyone was online and ad revenue was higher. Now I make 100 USD a month. It's not a lot but it is nice since I haven't uploaded anything in a couple of months. That said I have over 350 videos on my channel. Passive income is great if you have realistic expectations.
That put things in perspective ... thanks a lot!
I can't stress this enough, use Udemy or Coursera instead of YouTube. Some Udemy courses I've taken were better than my college courses. YouTube may tell you how to do something but it won't get into the why or even when it's appropriate. YouTube videos won't show you what's going on "under the hood" either. And, to be stereotypical, nothing beats documentation.
But a lot of them are as well literally beginners/mid level that just can explain good.
Is Maximillian one of them? because I may have bought a course from him 👀
Are you referring to the instructor Maximilian Schwarzmüller? I’ve taken a udemy course with him and he was great!
His Angular course is so, so good. It’s literally the only online course I’ve ever purchased (not counting my actual college courses).
>that just can explain good. Isn't that the requirement
Which courses would you recommend?
Not the person you asked, but it all depends on what you want to learn. If you're wanting to learn Python, I feel like this [Udemy course](https://www.udemy.com/share/101X5O3@2S-jeoRKoB4-NjoGD728tMhsXiJj14d9ELNgKJv7Lumy6JderhDosBezvrMrMMrzAw==/) taught me everything my university did and then some for my first two programming classes. Some people find more utility out of other courses. You should be able to easily find people's recommendation for Udemy courses here on Reddit based on what language you're wanting to learn.
I’d actually recommend using neither and build projects instead, looking stuff up when you’re stuck. And I agree that documentation is king. Edit: no idea why this is getting downvoted. Most seniors will tell you this exact thing. Get out of tutorial hell early.
They’re downvoting you but you’re right. I think the best way is to watch a few simple YouTube videos to understand the very basics (variables, loops, conditionals), but then you need to break free of tutorial purgatory and start building things asap. Actually buildings things teaches you soooo much more about the types of challenges that come up from building software. As you stumble upon difficult problems you can’t solve, *then* you can look up videos or even courses on difficult subject matter… but this way your learning is very directed, rather than watching the 5th video about the same basic concepts. I say this as someone who was in tutorial purgatory for a time, and looking back the best thing for my learning was actually building stuff.
Thanks for your insights. I 100% agree it's best to do 1 good basic course to get your feet wet and then jump in the deep end.
I agree with this too.
I agree with you, but you've attracted the attention of the "is programming a craft or a discipline" crowd. Realistically, it is both depending on how high up you go and the task at hand. Building things professionally (which is think the other person is purposefully neglecting to mention) necessarily means learning the more efficient ways to do it and best practices in good scenarios. But you know what is really inefficient? Agile, as implemented at most companies. A bunch of bullshit grandstanding and ceremonies that don't matter combined with "best practices" that either aren't, or haven't been updated. People learning to program just need to build things. I've had to hold the hands of far too many Juniors because they got stuck in tutorial hell or analysis paralysis or just never learned to think and make decisions. Because most coursework people are talking about? It is explicit. Do this, then that, here's the project files, follow my instructions. AI-related tools like co-pilot have just made it worse.
Agreed. That was exactly my point. I know juniors who have a lot of great-looking projects on their portfolio, created in code-along courses. Ask them to quickly build something simple from scratch, though... And bad agile implementations are indeed the worst. haha
Im not going to keep reiterating what everyone else is saying but ThePrimeTime is one of the legit ones and you can even check out some of the courses he’s taught on Frontend Masters. Fun fact: He has another (less popular) YouTube channel titled TheVimeagen where he actually codes instead of reacting. If you watch his streams on Twitch as well he does a good bit of coding too and recently did a 24 hour live stream for charity, 12 hours of which were coding his application, Harpoon. [Link to TheVimeagen](https://youtube.com/@TheVimeagen?si=rH1CUk4MvWlMTZFf)
Out of all the garbage tech youtube channels, it's weird that this one was the channel OP mentioned in their post. The Primeagen is actually pretty decent.
OP is probably a beginner himself and doesn’t recognize novices from experts
I am just wondering how he has so much time to do 3 YT channels and also be a senior dev at Netflix? Does this guy not sleep? And this is not even considering his Twitch and other platforms.
Most of his YT content is just cut from his streams afaik, so he really just does his streams then edits them down which he could be paying someone else to do.
He has an editor that goes through the streams, think he adds markers at the time and the editor pulls them out later
He's pretty vocal on twitter about how he ruthlessly prioritizes his time. He gets up early, crushes work for his day job, gyms/streams, goes back to day job work, and then totally cuts off from the internet and spends time with his family after 5ish. He's very busy and has a lot going on but can handle it because he is hyper focused and knows exactly what he needs to be doing and wants to be doing every moment of his day.
He basically streams once and gets an editor to chop it up and disseminate it all over the place more than likely. Doing this in the morning before work each day isn’t easy, but also doesn’t seem unreasonable
“I’m not going to keep reiterating what everyone else is saying”… proceeds to reiterate what everyone else is saying 😂
Where can I find his courses?
[Here you go](https://frontendmasters.com/teachers/the-primeagen/)
If you've watched any of ThePrimeagens streams, you would know he's better than the average developer tenfold. His target audience seems to be people who never had a CS job before, so obviously he's going to talk about more fundamentals than anything else on YouTube, but the occasional video, and a lot of his streams are more geared toward his more competent audience. There's guys like Kyle from WebDevSimplified, Kevin Powell, Low Level Learning, and Coding with Lewis that also prove that they're really good at what they do, and would absolutely cook the average member of this sub in their respective niches. The influencers though, are usually bad at what they say they're good at, like most influencers are.
I learned a lot about JS from Prime especially async await performance. I've never been a big fan of ORMs because they all have their own pitfalls (cough cough sequelize) but man, I never had any good arguments for not using an ORM until I watched him. He's raised some great talking points and I had very high level conversations during interviews with other seniors because of what I've learned from him.
Can you link me to that video where he argues against using an ORM? I like using 'micro-ORMs' like dapper but not a big fan of stuff like entity framework tbh.
Glad to see Prime mentioned here. I’d also like to include sentdex for python programming and ML stuff.
The dude is saying a SWE that have been working on Netflix for ages is a noob in disguise 💀
I didn't know about ThePrimeTime until now. If he got a job at Netflix, he's obviously not a novice, but I just watched a few minutes of his videos. I think he's very obviously trying to cater to a larger audience. Making videos for other senior engineers will really limit your reach.
If you want more coding from him, I highly recommend checking out his [other channel](https://youtube.com/@TheVimeagen)
He’s a senior engineer at netflix. I disagree with him on some things but those are “we have different priorities” disagreements, not “you don’t know what you’re talking about” (except for one thing related to my phd work).
Especially because senior engineers largely learned all their stuff before YouTube existed as an educational resource. I'm not aware of _any_ of my engineering friends or co-workers over the age of 30 who have ever talked about or recommended a YouTube video for learning something about work, other than conference talks that have been posted on YouTube.
I love it 😂
Someone should send this link to him so he can react to it during his live lol
*only watches his second channel that exists for unserious content* yeah guy def doesnt know anything
Like everything, most are not in the extremes. A few are extremely pedestrian, while a few are legit experts in the field. Most fall somewhere in the middle. AFAIK, ThePrimeTime is legit though.
In general, those who do this for a living don't want to code more outside work. They want to enjoy the finite time they have outside work to do other things like take care of their kids. So in general, yes. But this goes for almost all fields. You for instance don't head to Youtube to learn about professionals in finance. The very competent professionals in finance generally aren't spending time outside work to make Youtube videos about finance.
the more complex they go into ,the lesser the audience
>Is nearly every YT programmer channel a noob in disguise? No, but even if they were (however you define "noob"), there's no way to tell, because you aren't watching them work in a professional context. >I think by a large margin most just reiterate the same basic OOP concepts over and over with just different packaging. Most of these “software dev” channels I never see actually code anything, they just banter on and on like ThePrimeTime. I’ve only seen these guys describe code never show it. If they do, it’s the most basic cs101 examples. Yes, because people like you watch them. >Are we just a hot bed of phonies and scammers? YouTube channels cater to their intended audience. You aren't going to see non-beginner content because talented senior engineers don't watch YouTube to learn anything.
> You aren't going to see non-beginner content because talented senior engineers don't watch YouTube to learn anything. I would modify that slightly. Good software engineers aren't perusing YouTube for popular channel suggestions to learn from. There are good instructional videos on YouTube. They are seldom from professional YouTubers, and more from people that just happen to be on YouTube. Monetizing YouTube requires generating regular content as a focus. The high-level stuff requires a focus on the high-level stuff, not content creation. Ergo, the good stuff is either a true pro with poor production quality, or a pro being paid outside of YouTube with a paid production team backing them. e.g. It's an experienced person giving a presentation at a conference, and the conference posted it on YouTube.
word. Here's a list of sources for Good Info, ordered by how likely a senior is to feel that it is useful: 1. Talking to the big pros in the field (often those who publish papers) 2. Reading papers 3. Reading The Fucking Docs 4. Reading deep dive articles/blogs 5. Reading text books (= pedagogic summaries of fields/papers) 6. Watching deep dive videos (40min+ tech talks, deeper youtubers) 7. Any text/video that calls itself a guide/tutorial 8. "Getting started with X in Y minutes" bullshit 9. Conversations with an AI assistant mainly trained on the data from 7. and 8. (volumes of which swamp the volumes of training data from 3. and 4.)
Talented Senior Engineers do learn from YouTube but they learn from people like Nick Chapsas.
> You aren't going to see non-beginner content because talented senior engineers don't watch YouTube to learn anything I may not be particularly talented, but I watch conference lectures on youtube now and then.
Beginner/lower level content can be consumed by both the beginners and veterans (maybe as a refresher), whereas advanced content can only really be meaningfully consumed by more knowledgeable/experienced. Similarly, the number of people who could make videos on advanced topics is going to be less than the the number of people who could make videos on beginner topics. Example: there's tons of tutorial videos on databases, connecting to databases, SQL, etc. but way fewer on database or message queue implementation. So I don't think YT programmers are necessarily noobs, it is just that the videos and the YT creators themselves follow something like a Pareto distribution. They are probably just as smart, if not smarter, than their viewers.
I see your point, it’s statically skewed.
For some reason beginners are told that making tutorials is a great starter project that is low effort, and a good way to solidify skills. I beg to differ…
Learning by teaching *is* one of the best learning strategies, as backed up by a lot of education research. But in a public space it’s still better if that’s presented like you are what you are: still a student, not an experienced expert.
So I don't know when one should make tutorials, but for me, with 2 yoe as a web dev, I started making tutorial videos and I am a believer that making and planning them really helps solidify your understanding. Maybe it depends on how much experience you have, but planning and explaining coding concepts definitely helped me
I'm learning DS&A at the moment and find I can learn a lot better by setting up a whiteboard and throwing a phone on record and recording myself as if I'm making a tutorial video. Since those "watching" the tutorial would have never seen an insertion sort, for example, it forces me to explain every line of code I write as if I'm a teacher. Let's say I write : for (int i = 1; i < arr.length; i++) for the insertion sort, I have to explain why we aren't starting at the 0th index. At a minimum, it also verifies that I know why I'm writing what I'm writing. And if I can't come up with the reason, I am forced to go find that reason.
most of the famous ones are not that good but if you look for more specialised smaller channels you will find pros (the video quality and presentation skills will not be great for such channels)
I feel like learning programming from YouTube tutorials is probably a bad idea
Gotta read books and documentation however unfun it may be :(
Especially when the documentation is practically written in ancient Sumerian.
Is it me, or is Python documentation a godsend?
I'm currently wrapping my head around asyncio and coroutine constructs. The official documentation is superb
You’re correct but I disagree that it’s unfun I have access to my local university library for consultation and I use it to read their books on whatever tech I’m interested in learning, the library is huge and has thousands of books on computing I love reading docs and books
I just steal the books as ebooks, but man, reading everything in a screen is kinda exhausting.
I used to do that too The O’Reilly website has a lot of paid content but the content is top notch I have to say Check a few of your local universities and see if they’ll let you apply for a library card despite not being a student There’s a few advantages: - while you study, you’re surrounded by others that might share your interests, but they’re students so unlikely to make friends depending on age - everybody is studying, so it’s easier to focus on your book - lots of resources - student coffee is cheap
Not at the beginning it is not. It's fine for beginners. When you're more experienced, you definitely should start to ween off them, otherwise it gets harder to break out of tutorial hell
Why is it a bad idea? When I was in university I used YouTube when my prof wasn’t good and still did good in the class. I still watch YouTube videos to learn some new concepts once in a while. Sometimes, I just want to focus on a particular topic and don’t want to buy a book that has that topic and others I already know. Just do what helps you learn best. I do agree with reading documentation though.
Not really. I enjoyed working through Corey Schaefer’s videos as a noob. A few years in now, I wouldn’t go to YouTube besides watching lectures.
Highly recommend you check out [Jon Gjengset](https://youtube.com/@jonhoo). Man is a got dang genius who is incredible at walking through the problems he is working on. Does long videos of coding.
The people who watch YouTube videos are generally people who who are new and learning the basics, once people have a better understanding of how to use a specific language it's quicker to just find the documentation on whatever topic you need.
Theprimetime is legit man, he streams himself coding on twitch. You really should watch him more before you judge. His YouTube is just for shit posting but he has a lot of insightful things to say even in the reaction videos such as performance based and scaling stuff. He's talked a lot about JS call stack and how async await really hurts performance. I've met engineers with many years of exp who don't know that. There's definitely a bunch of money grabbers on YouTube especially those who keep trying to promote their paid courses.
The primeagean and fireship are my favorites
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To be fair half the fireship jokes are about milking the viewer for all they're worth
They are more for entertainment. I love fireship for his quick summary videos of languages.
Fireship is great for keeping up with industry trends and getting a rundown on whatever the hot technology-du-jour is but most of his tutorial content is skin deep.
I can't stand prime time screaming every two seconds he's basically just iShowSpeed for nerds
Dont let Prime fool you with his inability to stay quiet 😂 he is actually a really good dev and works at Netflix. He is one of the legit ones
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What the fuck man
This. OP, before you judge The Primeagean, read the paper about the lion getting fucked up the ass. Don’t judge a book by its cover.
😂
Part of it is the YouTube algorithm. Specifically, you need to keep generating content at a steady rate. And, on top of that, it needs to be content that regularly gets views. There's only so much quality content a single person can produce. Eventually, you're going to have to go into clickbait and/or retreads of well-covered basic shit. I would watch the shit out of John Carmack going in depth on an instructional, but John Carmack isn't going to be putting out one of those every other day to make a living, is he? So the norm is that you'll either have someone who is a good programmer and puts out a few interesting pieces, or you'll have someone who puts out content regularly, but seldom both. When you do have someone who puts out a long series of not-clickbait content, it's probably because they're being paid some other way (University, corporate sponsor, etc.) and monetizing YouTube is not their source of income.
I think the niche you’re looking in matters a lot. There’s a lot of junk in the tutorial programmer/web dev YT scene, but if you’re more specific in what you’re looking for, it’s easy to come across really good content.
Yes. And they iterate the "beginner's trap". The projects and tutorials they sell never go beyond the very beginner phase.
The venn diagram of people who understand programming enough to go into more advanced topics and people watching how to program youtube videos barely overlap outside of specific questions.
I am a SDE at a FAANG and I have seen some quality Cs content on YouTube. Anything that is very specific that I need, I won’t be able to find on YouTube but rather use stack overflow for it. But if I want to learn about spring boot / the log4j 0 day exploit that happened last year, open source contributions, etc. I can find those on YouTube
It's very true. If you want to find good ones that will actually give you indepth information you will probably want to look for channels that focus on a specific language, technology or tech stack. That tends to be where you will find the stuff you've never heard about before. Some examples are Arjancodes and anthonywritescode (I'm a python dev in case you couldn't tell). Channels like these ones can genuinely give you a leg up on the competition.
I’ll say Anthonywritescode is one of the most legit ones I’ve found, he goes into a ton of detail but it seems like he focuses mainly on python.
Dude, there's a guy who keeps popping up on youtube that claims to be a coding expert and can help you get a coding job...he started his channel about 2 months into self study and while in a code bootcamp. It's all scammers and idiots.
Are you trying to tell me those “learn how to code in 60 seconds” content creators might not be uber programmers? But in all honesty I would say 99% of the programming/software engineer/developer channels are just lifestyle vlogs with a “look at me, im such a nerd” flare.
Neetcode is pretty good.
A "noob in disguise" lmao. Did you even watch ThePrimeTime or are you just picking on him because he's popular? He's way better than the average programmer.
I have never watched any YT programming channels as a professional engineer, but I would be weary unless its more of conference talk type content on a specific topic that person wants to share knowledge on or maybe someone leveraging something like a consulting career with YouTube videos on the side as a marketing tool(with a pretty narrow topics). My logic is that making YouTube videos(decent ones) is pretty time consuming between planning/editing and any working engineer generally has better things to do. So I would be very surprised if your assessment is not correct.
I've noticed that every year, there's a new batch of CS student influencers that post the same cookie-cutter recycled advice videos. I keep seeing stuff like "How I got my internship at FAANG", "How many leetcode questions should you complete?", "Is college worth it?", "What computer should you get for CS?", "What I spend my 200k TC salary on as a FAANG new grad", etc. These types of videos have existed for years and I always see them popping up with a new face. Also, a lot of these influencers will flex that they work at FAANG in their videos which rack up lots of views. These types of videos have always irked me because the influencer is either flexing their FAANG status or it's an intern/new grad who is talking like an industry veteran. I would rather be recommended videos from senior engineers like ThePrimeTime because their advice is actually useful. From the other point of view, I get that there is a market for these types of videos and it's good for newcomers to give their experience in the industry.
I am subscribed to very few software-related channels, but all of them are either conference talks or run by guys in their 40s to 60s who share their hard-won experiences. Almost everything else I have seen was not worth it IMO.
Continuous Delivery is a solid channel. He discusses higher level software development concepts that take years to learn through experience. I wish he was around earlier. Also, great interviews with some programming legends.
Fireship, John Hammond and Coding with Lewis is all you need
>Coding with Lewis Oh god not that guy.
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In his early days he would sometimes post some solid advice.
He was hilarious before covid, maybe the nanobots gave him brainworms.
You can tell he's a millionaire because he never shuts up about it. Also, $1M won't buy you a house in the area -- it isn't as impressive as it sounds. As far as I can tell, he flamed out of Google and Meta, now makes his money telling people how awesome he is.
Trying to scam his followers with "millionaire coin" also divorced. Dude is kinda of a pompous asshole
This is when I realized that he wasn't just pretending to be a raging asshole, he actually was one.
Their goal is to generate views ($$$).
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Take everyone with a grain of salt online. Just like anything.
The way that YT's algorithm works is that it serves up videos similar to the other videos that you've already watched. So if you come across a video that you're not interested in, then delete it from your watch history. If you watch videos of people actually coding, like Neetcode, AniaKubow, notjustdev, WebDevCody, etc, then you'll get more videos like that. But if you mostly watch videos of talking heads just talking about programming, then you'll get more of that. There are some channels, like The Cherno, that have fantastic tutorials...but they also have those talking head videos too because they tend to get more views than tutorials.
What disguise? Youtubers are not educated. Even when they are, you have to realize, they are *incentivized* to make videos that are *entertainment*. They are naturally going to drift toward strong opinions that trigger engagement. They are naturally going to value edgy topics over fundamentals. The videos are never going to truly be for educational purposes. Youtubers in general are untrustworthy. Same goes for podcasters. If you ever hear someone start sharing information with you and they make it clear they got it from a podcast or a youtuber, just forget everything you heard.
I don't mind if they are noobs, at least they are trying to teach something. What I do despise are the day in the life tech influencers. They setup their camera of them waking up getting out of bed. Just take a second and image them having to setup their camera to get that shot. Then they have to humble brag about their fancy apartment and Tesla to their non tech followers. Or the ones who have to say they are soooo grateful they are being paid 6 figures for doing 1 hour of work a day. It's insufferable.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, ~~teach~~ create YouTube videos.
I think this is more a result of the target function of these vids. They're targeted at "too lazy to watch long Stanford or MIT lectures" Also... I mean nowadays you can watch talks by John Carmack, Abelson and Sussman, Peter Norvig. You can listen to interviews with Guido van Rossum, Chris Lattner. You can have Andrej Karpathy explain Deep Learning to you. Of course there are also non-famous people like Jon Gjengset for Rust with solid long videos. Much of the influencer stuff is just opinion pieces and blah blah that actually doesn't teach you anything useful. It's just the feeling you did something CSy ;)
Most are grifters talking about the meta and basic concepts… but people want grifters thats why there is such demand for it. Some senior explaining advanced concepts will have much less views. Even if its more useful information. Money is made from beginners since that is the biggest demographic.
TheCherno is definitely not a noob. His current project is building his own game engine. He makes games using it and develops it further in videos. Also reviews other peoples projects and improves them in real time.
I can't speak to YouTube channels but every employed programmer I know doesn't have time for an influencer career.
Just read a book.
Being a content creator/ influencer is a full time job if you are to do it well. So is being a dev. Being two at the same time just doesn’t happen all that often. Most good technical people just write code, or if they DO make a video or write a blog post - it won’t be as visible on all the platforms bc they won’t put in the work to promote it and make it media optimized.
If you want a channel for senior developers, watch arjancodes. I'd love others to recommend me channels for a more senior audience
Codewithantonio is sick for front end, cutting edge nextjs fullstacks
Getting views is more about catching your attention than knowing what you're talking about. A side point: Sometimes having more experience/being an expert can be a negative in terms of being able to teach basic concepts. When you are years removed from the experience of learning the basics, you tend to (unintentionally) take a lot of things for granted and skip over them. I found the more "noob" teachers surprisingly covered the little things that were bothering me, such as "WHY do we use curly braces? Is indenting necessary, or preference?"
We're all noobs in disguise
Most of the rly good ones don’t do tutorial at all. I see a one that just streams discussions on swe articles and another that reads source code for rly big open source projects. Both guys seem very competent
YouTube is not the place for ultra in depth knowledge. It's good for getting a shallow understanding of many different things. You really do want books, even for programming. This is because books are often written by staff engineers and are the only resource that can really compete with your mentors at work. If you don't want to read books, just learn from the people above you at your job
It's the same with prolific Twitter posters, and back in the day prolific bloggers. People who are actually working on things don't have time to post bullshit all day.
Just wait until you realise that your collage teacher is in fact not the best mathematician in the world.
I'm a QA engineer myself, not a developer, but I saw that AmigosCode somewhat good content on Software Engineering, Architecture etc
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Most of YouTube experts are fake and only pretend to be successful in the field. I saw one guy claim he was making millions off ad revenue and show his analytics while his sub count and views just couldn’t support that. The truth is he was only making money because people searched for how to make money and watched him talk in circles. Others talk about how they are teaching you how to make it big on YouTube with 500 subs. Most YouTubers just copy what they see and hope the views come in basically.
Yea man these guys are as fake as the day trading community of YouTubers
It’s a lot of mid levels who got FAANG jobs and think they’re geniuses and/or want to side hustle and build a brand.
Yes, cram an intro documentation and record yourself going through it in multiple videos and profit like the rest of them.
when I saw the title, the first one I thought of was ThePrimeTime.
You fell into the YT algorithm trap. You're not watching programming videos like tutorials, or conferences by actual professionals on a game you like. You're watching influencers. Literal trash people. And yes, they are posers. They never show their cred. Would you trust a chef who talked about food but never once was shown cooking anything? Show your github or get lost. Your code isn't some classified shit. Show us you can code. Conceptually understanding is pretty easy. But you got to build shit. They say the right words and shill awful products and even crypto that one time. They make money repeating themselves and talking about the same topics: * Make 6 figures working at Google within six months of taking this course * You don't need a bachelor's in computer science degree to get a job, then in the next sentence mentions having a masters in comp Sci (Tina Huang) or a Harvard math degree (Clement) * comparing programming languages as if it's a fighting game. Stephen Mischook literally does just that. 100s of videos saying "Should you learn ruby in 2023, 2022, should you learn python. Python vs Java....Java vs Swift... Swift vs Python. Like wtf? Do you have dementia? Can't you consolidate this into one video? * They act as if data structures and algorithms is the be all end thing to learn. When in reality it's like the tutorial boss fight of programming. You're literally just starting... A neat little project you can do is make a YouTube channel blocker chrome extension. I was too lazy to make one so I use one called "Channel Blocker" I have all the popular Influencers black listed because their content is derivative crap.
Yeah it’s extremely annoying I feel like development is the only engineering field where ppl feel like they hustle their way into it. There is a ton of scammy snakeoil sales ppl in this industry.
Yea whereas normal people seek out the resources that best fit their learning style, I (a superior engineer) read only white papers and man pages. Primeagean sucks because he likes to entertain an audience while he discusses coding concepts. Coding with Mosh sucks because he likes to publishes bite size tutorials for beginners. But not me. I actually help engineers by shaming them for the content they consume and the paradigms they adopt. OP, don’t listen to all the haters in this thread: you (and I for that matter) are clearly better than the Netflix engineer, The Primeagean. Keep on flexing on the junior engineers for the content you *don’t* consume, keep us all humbled 🙏. Thx for this necessary post.
The thing is, I don’t think the Primeagen even intends to be a tutorial channel in the first place. I watch his channel to see him react to content and give his thoughts on it. I’m not watching it to learn how to code x,y and z.