Going a bit on side venture here with this comment, but I’d so much prefer this to be well written up instead of a two and half hour video. And it’s so ubiquitous, watching videos over people reading, and I can’t help but think it’s extremely hurtful on a cultural/societal level.
Side sneer: Nah, video is great. Watching an hour-long video is a standard part of research for the working software engineer. Lots of content from conferences like Strange Loop, DEFCON / Black Hat, and CCC is only available as video, and was intended to be watched or accompanied by slides.
…But I may be biased, as I have no problem performing 2hr speedruns. Lately I’ve been running games with 3hr or 4hr routes, and I’ll readily agree that it’s not for everybody.
2.5 hours is a bit of a slog but Olson’s videos are sufficiently entertaining and well-edited to make it work. He cites videos enough to make it worthwhile to present as a video.
Also, speaking for myself, his videos tend not to be the sort of topics where I would want to reference specific parts later, where a text version would be better.
I do wish some of the cited tweets and forum posts were easier to read in the video.
When it’s docs, reference, or news, I’d always prefer text (and having non-autocraption transcripts is an accessibility requirement). But that’s not what Dan does; like many essayist youtubers, he’s providing entertaining, well-produced synthesis & analysis. Textual syntheses are available from other sources.
The video doesn’t currently have a bibliography but his older ones do so I assume it’s coming, & his transcript is high-quality, not auto-generated, if alas not downloadable as a text doc.
Side sneer: Nah, video is great. Watching an hour-long video is a standard part of research for the working software engineer. Lots of content from conferences like Strange Loop, DEFCON / Black Hat, and CCC is only available as video, and was intended to be watched or accompanied by slides.
…But I may be biased, as I have no problem performing 2hr speedruns. Lately I’ve been running games with 3hr or 4hr routes, and I’ll readily agree that it’s not for everybody.
@corbin @bitofhope
2.5 hours is a bit of a slog but Olson’s videos are sufficiently entertaining and well-edited to make it work. He cites videos enough to make it worthwhile to present as a video.
Also, speaking for myself, his videos tend not to be the sort of topics where I would want to reference specific parts later, where a text version would be better.
I do wish some of the cited tweets and forum posts were easier to read in the video.
When it’s docs, reference, or news, I’d always prefer text (and having non-autocraption transcripts is an accessibility requirement). But that’s not what Dan does; like many essayist youtubers, he’s providing entertaining, well-produced synthesis & analysis. Textual syntheses are available from other sources.
The video doesn’t currently have a bibliography but his older ones do so I assume it’s coming, & his transcript is high-quality, not auto-generated, if alas not downloadable as a text doc.