Re: Do programmers enjoy video tutorial or written tutorial ?

From:
Andrew Thompson <andrewthommo@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Wed, 5 Aug 2009 22:27:26 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<106d613d-cb31-4413-8721-a084f79107f8@p36g2000prn.googlegroups.com>
On Aug 6, 8:40 am, Daniel Pitts
<newsgroup.spamfil...@virtualinfinity.net> wrote:

Most of this has been said before, so I am just here to
'agree' with the views already expressed.

....

A video tutorial is all but useless for non-novice programmers.


++

..The
written word is far more efficient at imparting information. The most
valuable learning tool a programmer can use is a complete example that
can be played with, altered, and explained.


My build files of the JWS API do that, and have become
quite popular (in a very limited field).

Now, to veer into a rant of my own..
<rant>
Who but 'script kiddies' could benefit from a video
tutorial? About the only thing I could imagine was
well explained in a video tutorial is (for example)
using the Netbeans GUI Editor (which most experienced
programmers would not bother using at all).

But even then, I would want the textual (with a couple
of pictures, where relevant) description.

Even better is wrapping up the entire help/tutorial
in JavaHelp, so the student can easily do searches
within the documentation.
</rant>

OTOH to all this, I suspect video tutorials will
become more popular (than they are now) over time.

The 'younger people' have a less finely attuned sense
of appreciating just how many bytes are involved in
downloading a video. The popularity of streamed video
& music, as well as the mostly wasted bandwidth of
YouTube (wasted in the sense the content is not saved,
just viewed & discarded) supports that most web surfers
these days would not think twice about downloading N
Meg of video, just to learn how to hard-boil an egg.

There might also be a slight 'younger people prefer
moving pictures' aspect to it, but I cannot see that
applying too much to people who are actually capable
of programming (as opposed to the myriads that might
try).

--
Andrew T.
pscode.org // which will *never* supply videos tutorials

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