Personally I don’t watch videos on software (except for skimming tutorials) since I prefer to learn about topics with written tutorials or Reddit. Software influencers have been on the rise for the past several years, everything from grifters claiming they can help you start an SWE career, to ones that make tutorials and showcases on software.
I’m more interested in hearing about the later. I came across found this discussion: What can we learn from Neovim’s rise in popularity? : emacs, with comments claiming that Youtubers like ThePrimeagen have helped a lot with making Neovim popular. I crossposted it to r/neovim and many so far many users there said that they found Neovim through ThePrimeagen’s videos.
I’d also argue it makes it harder to use, period: something that takes me 10 seconds to read somehow ends up being a 5 minute video, of which 90% is fluff that’s not related to the problem.
I’ve yet to land on a tutorial video that gets to the point and doesn’t feel the need to waste a ton of time introducing themselves, a paragraph about what we’re doing, asking me to subscribe, talking about their sponsor and so on.
I lament the death of the text-based tutorial and strongly dislike the youtube format video.
Your first paragraph is why I am violently allergic to video tutorials. I always dread when I cannot find any articles and there is only a video.
Also it’s easier to skip through text, than it is to skip through video. I can read way faster than people talk, and most of the time I at least kinda know what I’m looking for. E.g. I often skip the question part on SO and see if the code in the answer looks like what I’m looking for, or maybe it’s something I already tried and didn’t work.