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I'm not interested in video content either. But in recent years I've found that some people respond much better to it. Anecdotally, it seems like every student

I'm not interested in video content either. But in recent years I've found that some people respond much better to it. Anecdotally, it seems like every student on /r/programmerhumor got through their CS degree with the help of algorithms videos on youtube. Despite having trouble understanding the accent, they found it much easier to learn from the video than the book. I prefer the book, even though I would have had no trouble understanding the accent in which these videos are apparently made. My partner is the same. Finds it difficult to concentrate on a textbook, but easy when it's people talking. I'm not wired this way, and I don't understand why others are wired differently from you and me, but I do accept that it works for them. The consensus Hacker News would have you think that plain text is the pinnacle of human communication because it's searchable, copy-able, skimmable etc. But many people feel differently. Cloudflare.tv is for them.

oblio 6y ago
It's somewhat simple: we have a lot of processing power dedicated to communicating with people. We also have a ROM + BIOS in our brains for caring about other people and liking to interact with them. Reading and writing are quite unnatural, in comparison.
michaelt 6y ago
> Despite having trouble understanding the accent, they found it much easier to learn from the video than the book. In my experience, a video and a textbook will often present content radically differently - even when they're both by the same person and for the same audience. You give a CS professor a blackboard to explain a binary tree and they'll explain it to the level of "and three is less than five, so we go left at this node" Ask the same professor to write a textbook, and they'll instead start writing ∑ and ∃ and defining what an integer is.
pmontra 6y ago
In my current experience blog > video > book. There were only books when I was a student. The only chance I got to study on videos were some MOOCs years ago but there were no books or blogs to compare them too. The experience was mostly ok but unfortunately I often had to pause the video to read formulas and sometimes go back to listen again to some explanations. Written text is much better for that. Furthermore one hour of video is one hour of time and it's not easy to get an idea of what is coming up in the next minutes. Text makes that easy.
karatestomp 6y ago
Having people read the symbols to me is much, much smoother than trying to decipher them myself. They read it to me in English. The writing is in super-compact squiggle-squiggle. I prefer English. [EDIT] for math-heavy content in particular, that is. In general I don't like video very much.

oblio 6y ago

It's somewhat simple: we have a lot of processing power dedicated to communicating with people. We also have a ROM + BIOS in our brains for caring about other people and liking to interact with them. Reading and writing are quite unnatural, in comparison.

michaelt 6y ago

> Despite having trouble understanding the accent, they found it much easier to learn from the video than the book. In my experience, a video and a textbook will often present content radically differently - even when they're both by the same person and for the same audience. You give a CS professor a blackboard to explain a binary tree and they'll explain it to the level of "and three is less than five, so we go left at this node" Ask the same professor to write a textbook, and they'll instead start writing ∑ and ∃ and defining what an integer is.

pmontra 6y ago

In my current experience blog > video > book. There were only books when I was a student. The only chance I got to study on videos were some MOOCs years ago but there were no books or blogs to compare them too. The experience was mostly ok but unfortunately I often had to pause the video to read formulas and sometimes go back to listen again to some explanations. Written text is much better for that. Furthermore one hour of video is one hour of time and it's not easy to get an idea of what is coming up in the next minutes. Text makes that easy.

karatestomp 6y ago

Having people read the symbols to me is much, much smoother than trying to decipher them myself. They read it to me in English. The writing is in super-compact squiggle-squiggle. I prefer English. [EDIT] for math-heavy content in particular, that is. In general I don't like video very much.