Every now and then I find a video tutorial for some computer thing very helpful—specifically, the kind where someone does something beginning to end with a screencast—simply because every single damn text tutorial was skipping one or more steps or pieces of context that I guess they thought were too obvious to mention. This is usually for set-up or config stuff, though. For programming I agree that videos are almost universally painful to watch and low-value. I can't begin to understand people who head straight for YouTube when picking up e.g. a new programming language or library(!).

However, for cooking technique and building/home-repair/car-repair, videos are a game changer. Simply amazing. Actually, that goes for sports stuff, too. I find reading about all those things nearly worthless, and watching someone do it while explaining, a much better use of my time.

I 100% agree that for repairing stuff and sports related topics that videos help a lot. When I used to work on my car it was helpful to see how things were typically done and then when I read the repair manual it filled in the gaps of knowledge because I knew the way it is usually done. When I was doing a lot of power lifting it was really helpful to learn from video how to do lifts safely and correctly. Then as I went from lifting to cycling and eventually to endurance running it provided me a way of learning good form by watching a real human explain and demonstrate instead of just imitating what I see in real life.

Sometimes though technological tutorials/videos end up being this 80% junk to 20% treasure ratio for me. However, that 20% is stuff I have watched very intently and actually learned something.

For me it depends on my mood. If I am in a rush and I quickly need to find how to do something, it can be hard to find Youtubers who are concise. But other times I want to hear everything there is to know about the process.

As a good example, across the PC building space, there are two Youtubers who actually refer to each other both Gamers Nexus and JayzTwoCents. In Jayz videos he knows he provides a summary so will refer you to GN for more in-depth detailed content.

I believe it's a generational thing. We, in our late thirties, didn't have so much video content, we studied from books, learned from written content. Younger generations adapted to use videos as a learning aid, sometimes as the main learning platform. We won't ever be able to understand how they work. Their brain just adapted to this kind of learning medium.

For me video talking about code is slow, unsearchable, unskimmable. I cannot easily go back to more difficult parts and reread (watch) them at my own pace. I cannot use them as a quick reference. Even my photographic memory doesn't work with videos, there's just something more powerful with black on white words and formulas.

Also completely agree about youtuber credibility. Being easy going, with good lighting, nice looks and neat surroundings makes them sound authoritative on the subject they talk about, especially to the newcomer ears, without any real backing.

I'm in my early 20's, grew up watching YouTube, and still find textual documents superior for learning in almost all cases (with the exceptions being concise and intrinsically-animated things, like a lot of 3b1b's videos).

I don't think that there's nearly as much adaptation as there is just people getting used to watching video content and liking it more. That is, greater enjoyment, but not greater comprehension.

I suspect that nearly everyone who thinks that they "learn better from videos" just enjoys the videos more (which affects how well they perceive their own learning efficiency - humans are notoriously bad at self-assessment especially in the cognitive realm) and/or has attention issues that are mitigated by the more engaging nature of a video.

Early 30s here. Possibly to your point and completely anecdotally, I generally have a much harder time learning via text than I do from a more kinetic learning environment or watching a video... but I wish it was the other way around. All of the benefits described above for why text is better I totally agree and I get generally frustrated trying to find the relevant part of the video but for whatever reason seeing the thing I am trying to learn visually demonstrated is immensely more powerful that reading it.

I actually have a pet hypothesis that it has something to do with imagination. I'd be curious if anyone has studied the effects of visual media on imagination and how it impacts kids ability to take written content and understanding it versus the same with visual content. I have a suspicion that before the prevalence of visual media it was even more critical to have an active imagination to be able to synthesis written content and that we've lost a bit of that in younger generations as we've moved toward a reliance on visual learning. I have nothing to back any of this up of course just something i've thought about when reflecting on myself.

I've recently tried to get back into making art. I had a very active imagination as a child and would draw for hours on end. Now the inspiration isn't there and I have a hard time just visualizing scenes or landscapes.

Thank you for sharing that!

Imagination is a "mental muscle" that must atrophy with disuse.

Off-topic, yet relevant (for you):

When I upvoted your comment, your karma crossed 500, so you should now see up/downvote buttons in hn :)

I have just added video tutorials to all my R workshops and have had a _huge_ boost in satisfaction among students (mostly < 30). I can't understand it — the videos are slow, inexpertly produced and have nothing that is not in the text. The students love it though and there is no way I'll be able to run the sister course next semester without also adding videos.

I'm around 20 and I prefer text over videos. I find videos too long, sometimes exaggerated. Even if I have to watch a video, that has some "content" I'd increase the playback speed to have it done faster. In my opinion, visual instructions give in a lot of unnecessary information than textual instructions. This makes it harder to imagine when watching a video than reading a, say blog.

Easier to multi-task maybe? Its really easy to do other things while listening to a video and then jumping into the parts that sound interesting as compared to reading where its necessarily a very active experience.

Perhaps your students read slow or very inefficiently. Since their reading skills are poor and they value their time very highly they can easily budget their time against a video with a defined length vs reading a text that could take more time due to said reading skills. Also, with features like adjusting playback and skipping over parts they understand faster without having to worry (ie: they can't just skip a paragraph or page of text because something might be mixed in with the stuff they understand).

24 years old here, I think videos are great for an overview of a topic, but that's it. Most of the time when I'm relatively comfortable with a subject I want either an "how to" or a "reference", and for these I think written content is way better.

> For me video talking about code is slow, unsearchable, unskimmable. I cannot easily go back to more difficult parts and reread (watch) them at my own pace. I cannot use them as a quick reference. Even my photographic memory doesn't work with videos, there's just something more powerful with black on white words and formulas.

You also can't copy/paste code, and if your vision isn't perfect/the code isn't zoomed enough, you have to use a whole screen for the video.

Gen Z programmer here. Can confirm that video content is by far the best way I learn new information and skills. I think having grown up with the modern internet has shaped my brain in a way that makes it so video feels more natural than it might for folks even 10 years older than me. It's definitely fascinating to look at the effects the internet is having on society over longer time periods.

Are you sure it's not just that video content "feels" like you are leaerning even when you aren't? This is a documented phenomenon that underlies "infotainment".

I'm sure. The work I do on a daily basis is comprised of at least half skills i learned from videos, and that percentage is even higher for my hobbies.

It just seems so slow to me. Here's another 15 minute video of what could be a three minute blog post. Be sure like comment subscribe!

As always, ‘it depends’. I know he’s not YT strictly speaking but I love learning from Wes Bos. But the first time I watched him I was like holy shit boy, slow down! I thought it was terrible.

Then I learned some more, which got me to the stage where I knew what the hell he was on about, and now I love him. Information at its maximum density.

It's always better if they speak a bit too fast, since you can pause at any time to digest what was said.

I watch most videos at triple speed or above. Takes some getting used to, but my brain got accustomed to it over time and now I can watch 3-4 times more youtube than everyone else in the same amount of time!

Even when you do that you can't beat skimming and finding exactly what you need in a text. In a video it's clunky to scrub around and hope you hit the relevant info you need.

I'm also middle aged and I've started to kind of like video tutorials for totally new subjects. There's often little things that the web tutorials miss that I catch when watching. That said having both is optimal, in my opinion.

For things I'm already familiar with, usually calling the man page is enough.

I'm in my mid-30s. Certainly didn't grow up with video content. I have a shelf full of books which I've learnt a lot from. But I've also learnt an enormous amount from videos. They are good for different things.

Take food, for example. I have books that go into great detail about how to make bread. Each ingredient (of which there are only four) are discussed in detail. The history of bread and its influence on culture is covered. But when it comes to kneading dough, nothing beats watching someone do it. Even the best book in the world can't replace that.

I learn a lot from watching others work. When I watch videos I'm learning more from what they don't talk about than what they do talk about. I think it requires being selective. There are some videos of really talented and skilled people out there who might not be great communicators. These are treasure. On the other hand, there are shiny videos with attractive presenters filled with trivial fluff you could have gleaned from one page of a text book. Like with anything, you just have to learn what's worth your time and what isn't.

But its a learning medium that's fundamentally terrible. Seriously, pull a transcript of any 15 minute youtube video. It will take you a few minutes to read. Why waste your limited time to extract the same exact information waiting for someone to gesticulate on a video, young or old? It's like sitting through a college lecture where the professor dryly reads directly out of the textbook and you wonder why you are even paying tuition.

I do exactly this. Pull the transcript, search for the key terms, jump to that spot in the video if it requires the visual aid.

It depends on the type of activity for me. For maths or computing, I prefer a text by far, video is too slow and doesn't allow me to go to the essential. For jazz guitar and bike repairs, video is where I learn the most.

Remembering lectures, I used to sit in them, watch and take notes. It was only after when reading back through the notes and looking into the problem area I could hear and make out what I didn't really catch first time.

So videos with slides, and notes, and tutorials/practice all can help. It does for me anyway.

Always text over video. When people say they prefer video, they don't know better, haven't actually been learning anything or are extremely lazy.

For example, to do a gradient in Gimp, you should know a few shortcode keys. Now how do I look up which key to use again? Load the video and keep fiddling with the player until I hit the right moment where he explains this little detail? It's extremely annoying to look up anything in a video.

You also waste a shitload of time because you can't just skim through all the stuff you already know.

Video tutorials are only popular because Google boosts Youtube videos over text in search. The creators don't care that it's a bad medium for you, because it's an excellent medium for them. Way more revenue to gain from a Youtube video then some blogpost

For things like fixing a car part or home repair video is much better than text. There's nothing like watching someone do it, quickly seeing the exact location of things and how they should be moved.

This isn't true. Once you know cars enough, the same thing applies to car repair.

I just need the torque specs for the bolts, I don't need or want to watch a whole video.

Most people aren't car experts

Most people aren't software engineers, either.

Always text over video? I disagree. Things like Khan Academy work much better than reading a textbook for a lot of people.

Also, video guitar tutorials (Justin Sandercoe's are great) are wonderful because it gives you something to play along to.

Agree. I was exclusively talking about programming / computer things tutorials. And from my memory, Khan Acadamy always has so much more then just video and text, which is even better! Very short videos help too.

This has got to be the worst example you could have used: clearly video is better for this, right? You are talking about a sequence of steps in a GUI... sure, the least important one of those steps might have a keyboard shortcut, but that would be something you'd find later (and I don't think anyone is suggesting replacing a quick reference card with a video) and isn't a "learning" step. A textual description of this is going to be extremely awkward, attempting to describe dialog panels and icons and explain the semantics of color choosers... even the process of actually using a gradient tool is something that involves angles and lines and mouse placement: it isn't some abstract transform or fill, it is something that has a required direction semantic.

I am 40, I learned to program using physical book instruction manuals, I absolutely love reading things, and yet it just feels so obvious that if I want to learn how to use a gradient tool I would want a video. If I couldn't get a video I would want an animation. If I couldn't get an animation I would want a flip book of screen shots. If I couldn't get a flip book of screen shots I would tolerate some illustrated prose... but if you couldn't even get me the illustrations I am frankly at an age where I simultaneously know that life is short and yet there is virtue in patience and so I would work on something else until I could find a video (or another human to show it to me in person, which would probably be the best option) rather than waste my time trying to interpret someone describing a purely graphical concept using text.

I think it is an "AND" vs. "OR" thing. Your examples are great for those use cases, but there are others where having the long form is really good.

For example, Jon Gjengset's Rust series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O0Nt9qY_vo

You are right, a tutorial is even better if it has text AND a video :) laracasts does this extremely well.

This is true for certain kinds of tasks, particularly programming or anything very instruction-oriented. However, for practical tasks, like installing a bathroom faucet, a short and succint video is gold. Now that YouTube has chapter labels, it's even better.

That said, YouTube is clearly going downhill for a host of other reasons, but hands-on tutorials remain one of its best forms of content.

I recently watched some good videos on making sushi, wouldn't watch any programming ones though.

I’m old too (43) and I enjoy short videos that get to the point as well. If a video is too long or takes too long I’ll just skip ahead and until I hear them talking about specifics.

There was a point a few years ago where there was this sudden shift to longer videos on YouTube. I think part of it was greater engagement is seen on such videos, leading to more ad time. As a result though, the actual quality of the content is down but I would say the “showmanship” is up. In a longer video, you have to be good at delivery and keeping people interested, so it starts to favor entertaining speakers. So now people watch videos for a large part because they want to “hang out” with the presenter. Also, Twitch is essentially just hanging out with someone. Anyway, now I’m just rambling like an old man.

Youtube changed their advertising rules such that videos of less than 10 minutes didn't get ads so everyone padded their videos to be at least 10 minutes long.

They also prioritize watch time as a metric (and a payout stream for Youtube Red)

Agree. If a video on how to tighten a bolt or change gas in a mower is 36 mins long then that's a total waste. I don't want to hear somebody's rambling life story if I'm trying to directly find info. Short and sharp videos get more view from me. I agree also that Twitch is a waste of time. Never understood the utility of watching somebody doing some task.

There's definitely a ton of low quality videos doing things that might be better presented in text, the worst examples being videos of text. They're easy to make and YT makes it easy to monetize them so people make them without caring how practical it is, and people watch them for various reason.

I've utilized a few myself (42, I think), and it's usually because it's the first thing I found and I'm a complete beginner, so anything will help point me in some reasonable direction. I've even specifically watch "programming a microcontroller" and "making a gradient in Gimp" videos. I have very little experience in those things and, even if the presenter is just going through the steps, there's visual hints that help me navigate the intimidating interfaces those things come with. If I need text for future reference, I can usually find it in a matter of seconds. Maybe even easier than before if I've learned a few new keywords from the video.

As far as the "more authoritative" thing, that can only be solved in the viewers mind. Learning to control that bias is good for life in general anyway.

I’m in the same boat as you but I just don’t consume YouTube at all. Sure I’ve looked up repair things or a tutorial if it’s less than 10 minutes. I have to have something specific to watch I don’t just keep watching related videos. Watch a movie trailer I wanted to see, then peace out. Maybe it’s partially an age thing or perhaps just some people get that dopamine release easier from YouTube. I will say the exception is that I have spent time watching videos of people building things as long as it doesn’t have narration or hot takes from the people. I guess in general I can’t get behind any of the standard issue YouTuber speak and mannerisms, it’s all very similar (at least that’s how I feel with the popular videos).

Once I got a job as a software dev I quickly started preferring text based tutorials and docs. As a student I would always hunt down the “best” tutorial video for a given topic.

Video tutorials for great for introductions to new subjects of study (at least for me) — they can help provide a good intuition for complicated subjects. At the very least, there are plenty of lectures one can watch and follow along with a textbook. It’s never a replacement for reading a great manual for getting into the details or real one-on-one training or real documentation, but [good quality] video is still a great supplemental tool for learning.

> Also, the video, at least to me, makes the person doing the tutorial to be seen as "more authoritative" than through text, even if you can tell the person talking has little experience with microcontrollers (or whatever, if you have experience in the field).

And with the dislike count gone we've lost the only way to tell at a glance if a tutorial is worth spending time on. Good luck finding a thoughtful critique in the comments.

I think for me it depends. Video's are better if I'm completely out of my depth or its a big project or its something thats new to me. Text can skim over small but important details, videos usually don't (obviously they can edited out, but thats an active process of removing it, rather than a passive process of just not adding it). But if its something I know a decent amount about, I'll always go with text.

Where it gets a bit more interesting is that middle ground. Usually I prefer text in theory, but a lot of the articles written about it are filled with as much fluff as videos, but then you also have cookie popups, ads, location and notification requests, ect... which can make videos sometimes faster, sometimes slower.

I'm in my mid 20's so I don't know if its a generational thing, I might be just an outlier but I couldn't say for sure.

What's annoying are those tutorials like on OpenCV that just repeat the steps outlined in the manual.

We're going to apply a mask to find the red cup, ball, etc...

I made a personal chrome extension that hides the YT content you first see to stop hijacking my original intent of coming to YT.

I still like YT though, watching Ben Heck's videos or random Japanese fishing/cooking shows.

Video tutorials are great for when the thing being interacted with is a user interface. They suck when they are just narration. People talk too slow.

They become great again when the video is stuffed with visual information and you kick the speed up to 1.5x.

I say this as some one who hates video being the default information channel.

Although to be fair I don't think it's just you getting old. Maybe the number of examples you need to see to classify something new goes down as you get older, but it's not like there aren't an endless stream of videos that could be short paragraphs of explanatory text (or 30 second clips instead of ten minutes of 'hey it's ya booooi SaladStreams here to hit YOU with the latest windows 10 tips!!!')

Have you seen Ben Eater's videos?

I love his videos, but not because they efficiently present tutorial content. He's an amazing teacher because he demonstrates an attitude/approach to learning that would be difficult to convey through text.

Wow, this guy makes me a bit sad, because I did a 4 year Elec Eng degree and the guy that taught semi conductors was so bad. Almost everyone failed the exam because they had no idea what he was talking about (lots of the other modules were good). I (re)learnt more from watching a few of these videos than I did in a semester at university.

I looked at my department website, it's 25+ years since I started uni and the 2 lecturers I had the most trouble learning from are still there. One is had of department! He was a good guy, I just didn't "get it", but the other one was awful at teaching. He did have amazing credentials from Stanford and another top tier uni in the States before coming over to the UK. Teaching was never a priority at that uni!

Are there any websites/services that curate the best videos on specific school topics? With broader coverage than Khan Academy?

Searching on YouTube find thousands of matches, and I am exhausted after 20 minutes of previewing search results.

I feel the same logically. I’ll be 35 in a couple weeks and I’m also an avid text fan, but lately I’ve noticed that I shift to video searches for things a lot faster. I thought about it a little, and I think that maybe I’ve started doing that because text search is a mess today. SEO has won on text search, but it takes a lot of effort to produce a good video. I can often find a good video for some things faster than I can hunt down a good text overview or tutorial. Then of course, I’m often more interested in the text included in the description because it will point to what I need in more detail.

People learn in different ways.

This has been shown to be not true many times over.

Different subjects need to be taught in different ways, but there are optimal ways to present information that works for everyone.

No one is a "visual learner", there are topics that are best presented in a visual format.

Where’s this list of the so called optimal ways to present information that works for everyone?

No, it's not about the "optimal way", it's about the oft-cited the factoid "90% of people are haptic learners, 30% are visual learners, 15% are auditory learners, 25% are text-based learners". Somebody did an experiment and found out 90% of subjects remembered something later when they had to learn to do it, but only 25% remembered when they had to read it. (All numbers made up, does not matter in the context of this comment)

Of course, this completely misrepresents the experiment! After learning to do something, you are 90% likely to retain it for a certain duration, after you read about it, you are only 25% likely to retain it, so in aggregate you only retain 25% of what you read.

The idea was never to find people who are "visual learning type" or the "non-learning-by-doing type".

That's what became of this idea in education through the game of telephone that mangles experimental results on their way from developmental psychology and cognitive science into education departments, and then into future high school teachers during undergrad lectures. Even my own high school teachers in Germany talked about learning types as if there was such a thing.

Sorry if I was unclear. There is no singular optimal way of teaching. But for every subject, there is an optimal way to teach it. And usually that optimal way is a combination of visuals, auditory, reading, etc.

Way too often, someone achieves understanding when information happens to be presented in an optimal way for that information and they instead believe that the way was optimized for them rather than for the information.

Then they get stuck on "I need to watch videos to truly understand it".

Ok, where’s the list of the optimal way to teach every subject?

Anecdotal counterargument: I am a visual learner. For almost all topics I learn about, watching a video is by far the most effective, fastest, and most impactful way for me to grasp and remember new concepts. A very large part of my education in math, science, machine learning, music theory, filmmaking, screenwriting, visual effects, history, and chemistry was video lectures/essays/content.

I agree that the famous "three/four types of learners, everyone belongs to one of them" factoid isn't true, but disagree that "No one is a 'visual learner.'" I am a visual learner.

This is a self report of a self assessment. So the most unreliable form of reporting coupled with the most unreliable form of assessment.

I believe you believe all of that, but I don't believe it is true. Even in your case.

Video is great for many things, but step by step instructions/tutorials ain't one of them.

I disagree. It is great because you can actually see where the steps are performed. It's sometimes faster than reading a bullet point than finding out where on the screen it is.

And I did NOT grow up on videos, I just think they're neat.

Of course, there are times when I dislike them too. It's not always black and white.

> you can actually see where the steps are performed. It's sometimes faster than reading a bullet point than finding out where on the screen it is

If and only if the steps are performed in the correct order without any fluffs. In one particularly bad example that I saw someone was showing how to use an updated feature in Photoshop. The sequence went something like

* the instructor showed the old way of doing things

* they then did 'undo' a few times to get back to the point where the new feature was different

* they started showing the new way

* they then realised they'd made a mistake earlier on - missing out a step in the new sequence

* they did undo a few times

* they did the step they'd omitted

* they then carried on from that point

I had to watch several times to work out the actual sequence of correct operations. To my mind they should have re-recorded from the beginning rather than show their disrespect for the viewers.

The easiest form of media to create is unedited video.

The hardest is edited video

It’s funny that unedited, poorly rehearsed “presenting style” has in a way taken on a life of its own. Speaking to a director off-camera, quick jump cuts of multiple takes, drawing attention to flubbing of lines, are all sort of techniques used in YouTube videos to show “authenticity” to the viewer (ie, I’m just a regular person making these videos).

I was listening to a podcast recently and noticed they left in some banter before an interview started. The banter added nothing to the discussion since they weren’t even talking about the topic yet. Its sole purpose was to make the chat feel informal and, in my opinion, “more real”.

Meanwhile radio shows were taking out individual ums and errs, even in the analog era.

This. Although I have discovered why the jump cut is so popular! Actually, even inexpert jump-cutting does improve things though, so worth doing.

Extensive use of jump-cuts lets you edit single-camera monologues as if they were text. Much easier & cheaper than doing re-shoots, using multiple cameras, et c.

I can personally attest that this style was extremely off-putting to us oldsters (millennial here—yeah, we're getting old) until we'd had a few years to get used to it. It's not something you see in traditional video media unless a mistake happens, or you're watching some kind of weird art thing.

There are very badly written articles as well though.

Yeah, but I can also usually tell an article is bad in a 15 second skim. Videos aren't always so generous.

YouTube is the best place for instruction because everything in text now is just marketing. YouTube gives creators a way to profit from genuinely useful content, even if it’s not the best medium for it.

I'm in my late 20's and practically grew up with YouTube. I can't stand watching tutorial videos for anything technical. The content is not searchable and not even close to as fast as text.

For mechanical stuff (dis/reasembling equipment) it makes some sense, because diagrams are never as good as an HD video at showing where that screw hole is or how to pop off a clip. At the same time, I can't watch most of those videos at less than 1.5x!

Often, the first google hit on "how to do X" is a video when, as you say, a bulleted list would be easier to follow. Maybe ads are better monetized on video so the incentive is only to create that content?

I'm older than you and I definitely prefer text for programming related tutorials but I'll jump straight to videos for more practical things.

Reading a recipe is fine for a lot of cooking, but some things like "How to spatchcock a chicken" benefit greatly from a video demonstration.

Similarly I took up knitting a while ago, and watching videos was the only way I could learn the techniques, trying to do it from written instructions was impossible.

for many things i prefer <2 min videos over text. I.e. how to create a graph in excel. Video would go like click here, here and then here. Article would go like first press ctrl+L then next to this, below that, your version may be different, click the button, then you will see xyz, on bottom right select this, .......

It's not only you. I feel the same. Whenever I stumble upon a video for a programming related tutorial ( mostly AWS ), I want a text copy by the side so that I can get what I want and move on.

Maybe Youtube should give ability to "seek to" on its autogenerated subtitles in the sidebar. I would find it useful at least.

text is for learning, video is for entertainment, the problem is that people are confused about what they are doing

Yet I've found video lectures and documentaries enlightening as well as a method to teach me something I did not know.

I'd also think that fiction novels are more entertaining than 'educational'.

This statement is reductive - either medium can be for learning or entertainment, it’s a matter of content and audience.

This is one of the reasons Tiktok growth is exploding. Like Twitter, it forces creators to apply some editing and think about what really needs to be in their video. Contrast this to YouTube which incentivizes stretching a 15 second idea into a 10 minute waste of time.

I am a teen and I feel about it exactly like you, so it's not you getting old.

I'm 19 and I agree with you. For most things, text content is the best way to learn.

really annoying, pretty sure because they incentivize watch time