I find it weird that the internet generation: the people that prefer emails over meetings, texts over phone calls, are the ones producing tutorials and lessons in video only format.
We all know that we prefer text because it's adaptive to your own speed of consumption; is searchable; is archivable.
So why is that being tossed away for tutorials? I get that for some video is better, but video only? It's such a poor format "I remember this said something I want to reference" scrub around
@mattwilcox I think your usage of "generation" is too broad here. I feel there is a trend for younger digital natives to be more drawn towards video, whereas those of us who got hooked on text-first technology tend to still prefer that.
@TimPurdum There are whole businesses that do it. Laracasts. Craftquest. Any number of "webinar" type courses or offerings on Udacity etc. They're not made by 20-somethings.
@mattwilcox ok, you're talking about producing content. I'm talking about consuming content, which I believe has shifted with age groups, and actually explains what you're seeing.
@mattwilcox For most things I detest video as an educational medium. I want text. So much easier to scan, go back to something earlier with a degree of precision that isn’t possible with video.
Then there’s the storage space and bandwidth required for video vs. text.
Text is easier to produce. No staging required, reshooting a portion if there are errors, microphone and camera quality are irrelevant.
@mattwilcox my favorite video tutorials are when there’s zero talking. Like I’m just supposed to watch the damn thing five times to figure out what and why something was done.
It's simple: the tutorial makers use video for their own benefit, not for the user's consumption. It's considerably easier to fire up OBS, run through performative steps, yammer off some basic explanations, and move on to the next monetizable video. Couple that with the unfathomable audience size and reach available on YouTube or what have you, and you have the inescapable gravity of the video tutorial.
"Ah yeah, that's the code I want to try..." manually copy it out
What is it about video that's preferable for some people? I can understand it helps to see the actual effect or result of some concepts, but I'd rather see that dropped into a text based post as a video clip, than have the entire thing as (from a search and copy/paste perspective) a black box.
@mattwilcox Yeah I find this baffling as well tbh! I feel like you and me, whatever our generation is - we prefer text all in. But the generation below likes facetime, videos, tiktok... I dunno!
@sarajw I'm glad I'm not the only one. I get the appeal of video in general; it is more passive - you are having information projected at you instead of you actively using effort to consume it. But that only works well for certain use cases, IMO. And, specifically poorly for computer related things like programming.
@sarajw It's simple... Monetisation. Why give away a solution in text form for free, when you can create a 10 minute video with the answer to a question near the end after pre and mid roll unskippable adverts? @mattwilcox
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