Technology

Documentation is different from demonstration. Text (with graph or animation interspersed to unpack unintuitive terms) wins for documentation. Video could be good for demo if presented in a no-nonsense manner.

The best I’ve seen include a transcript, even better when it is clickable and updated the position of the video. Pure video isn’t great, lots of wasted time. Pure text is better, but also takes a lot of attention and focus. For very in depth information text can’t be beat though, unless they are making a ton of separate videos which also gets cumbersome.

I rarely watch videos except maybe car repair, i can extract info from text exponentially faster.

Both formats have their place.

In my opinion written documents should be the primary source, and can be enhanced by using video to show details that are difficult to explain succinctly on paper. A picture really can be worth a thousand words.

The only goal of technical documentation in video format is to monetize it on YT. It's a lesser format in every way and people create it only to get some $ out of their work. It's good for the creators (it's easier for them to monetize), bad for users. Let's just create a startup where you will be able to monetize technical documentation. Like only fans but for programmers.

For me personally it's easier to watch a video than to read a blog post or whatever these days. That's mostly because I can listen/watch while doing chores. However, if I need to use it later there's just no way I can find it or find what was in it. I like the format of Theprimeagen in particular when he goes over blog posts, I can always refer to that when I want to. So I'd say:

• videos as a replacement for written media: no
• videos as an addition to written media: yes

I think Supabase does this well. The documentation is there, videos are more specific and lengthy

I really hate video, prefer reading. But by reading the material to a camera, people get paid by youtube, and then set up a patreon for buying access to the material they read. Everybody loses, hooray:-(

I’m dyslexic so videos are the best starting point for me. However, I don’t like all the lazy copycat tutorials out there on YouTube. A good comprehensive video course, or a quick informative video are essential for my process.

Unless it’s showing something very specific that handle be handled in inline screenshots I’m not watching it. It’s bad enough there’s project managers putting specs into loom and such. Docs should be easily searchable and fast to reference. Ain’t nobody got time to watch a video.

It sounds like adding subtitles (or at least a transcript underneath) to your videos would solve a few of your problems.

I'm not sure what you would be planning on hosting your videos on but at my work we use Microsoft Stream to host recordings (cost reasons) and it let's you search through the subtitles of videos as well as set chapter markers too, both of which I believe are also supported by public facing sites like YouTube too.

Of course, "why write a transcript when you could just write a document," and, fair. But if you've got a script for your video might as well make it into subtitles right? And besides some people, including myself, appreciate a video over written documentation so I can see the thought processes behind things rather than having to abstract it from screenshot or descriptions. I don't mind written documentation but when presented with the choice I'll go for the video