Ask HN: What is your favorite YouTube channel for developers?

1081 points by justanton ↗ HN
What are the good channels for developers on YouTube to learn about e.g., programming techniques or best-practices?

179 comments

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computerphile isn't really for developers. It's for non-developers to get a glimpse into the world of developers. Everything they explain there is extremely elementary. However, I quite enjoy Bradey's other channels (numberphile, and sixty symbols) as I am not a professional in physics or math.
>computerphile isn't really for developers. It's for non-developers to get a glimpse into the world of developers. Everything they explain there is extremely elementary.

This is true for the most part but there are some videos which are interesting still, like the interviews with Brian Kernighan.

Below are said videos in the order they were published. I don't remember but I think parts of one video might be duplicate from one of the other videos.

These videos are for historical perspective, not for learning, so depending on what you are looking for these might or might not be for you. I think most users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Unix family operating systems will enjoy watching them.

The Factory of Ideas: Working at Bell Labs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFK6RG47bww

"C" Programming Language: Brian Kernighan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de2Hsvxaf8M

UNIX Special: Profs Kernighan & Brailsford - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT_J6xc-Az0

Unix Pipeline (Brian Kernighan) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKzonnwoR2I

For Unity apps I like "Makin' Stuff Look Good": https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEklP9iLcpExB8vp_fWQseg
Just thought I'd also mention that he likes to do "case studies" where he reverse engineers effects from different games in Unity using mostly Cg shader code (Ice from Spelunky, Golden Cards from Hearthstone, Bomb explosions from Zelda, etc.)
Fun Fun Function is often entertaining. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO1cgjhGzsSYb1rsB4bFe4Q
I second that - I'm mostly a book kind of guy, but he is entertaining, informative and funny.
+1 for FunFun Function, even though it's mostly about javascript or web development he talks about general development issues in a very charismatic way
These are not in any particular order and I do not watch every single video on their feeds, just the ones that are relevant or seem interesting.

ChromeDevelopers: https://www.youtube.com/user/ChromeDevelopers

LevelUpTuts: https://www.youtube.com/user/LevelUpTuts

Strange Loop: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_QIfHvN9auy2CoOdSfMWDw

Computerphile: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9-y-6csu5WGm29I7JiwpnA

funfunfunction: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO1cgjhGzsSYb1rsB4bFe4Q

Wes Bos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoebwHSTvwalADTJhps0emA

funfunfunction is great! MPJ's attitude and personality is the best part because he tries to keep you from getting overwhelmed and/or burnt out.
I feel bad about fff because I really can't stand MPJ's humor or style of presentation but I know he's a great teacher. One day I'll get over it, but for now I'm just glad he's there to help!
Honestly, the appeal to me of FFF (hands down my favourite programming youtube channel) is his quirky sense of humour. Each to his own. The more quirky someone is the more polarising to their fan-base they are, I suppose.
Looking at his channel (thumbnails, header etc) makes me think of the usual clickbaity channels on YT.
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Computerphile is magnificent!
I do like computerphile, but as a professional developer, vastly too simplified for me. I do send it to none technical friends, as it cuts out the unnecessary details to get the point across in a ELI5 way.
+1 for funfunfunction. MPJ is great!
https://www.youtube.com/bisqwit is by far my favorite and I've spent many hours watching him.

He does things like create a Doom-style engine from scratch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQYsFshbkYw .. create a NES emulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y71lli8MS8s .. work back from a C++17 example to show why new C++ standards are needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrwwa68JXNk .. and even building a Tetris clone in GW-BASIC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDnypVoQcPw .. Right now, he's doing a series on cracking 80s videogame passwords: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzLzYGEbdY5nEFQsxzFan...

Sirajology - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWN3xxRkmTPmbKwht9FuE5A - is another interesting one. He moves a bit too quickly for me, but does things like explain machine learning in 5 minutes or how to generate music with systems like Tensorflow.

> why new C++ standards are needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrwwa68JXNk

This video is totally retarded. His intentions (making a vector class with a method that has return types dependent on the size of the vector) are misguided from the start. Maybe there is really no better way to do that in C++98/11/14 than his workarounds, but you just wouldn't do that anyway. Total C++ template hell. Not good advice for developers.

I love that Sirojology moves so fast. It's easier to pause and resume than trying to skip over irrelevant bits like is necessary with most tutorials.
I love Bisqwit. The software development content is great, but also his overall personality and philosophy really come through in the videos and resonate with me personally. The level of craftsmanship in his videos is far beyond the typical powerpoint slides mixed with live editing. It would take paragraphs to list all the reasons why, just watch them.
I love his videos too, though the fact that he quit working as a developer and got a job as a bus driver makes me worry that our industry is driving away thoughtful, creative craftspeople like him.

It could be that his situation is unique to him, and doesn't generalize at all. But it also seems plausible that the trend toward practices like sprints, stories, and open plan offices that aren't conducive to the kind of deep work that people like Bisqwit do.

It's also entirely possible that the churn and burn approach to development is what is most profitable in most situations, and that deep workers might find themselves relegated to certain niches.

None of that is meant as a knock on agile development, or any other development practices, of course. But I think it's worth stopping to think about what we give up when we dive headlong into the Agile, open office type of workflow. It would be interesting of more teams had the courage to try practices that are definitely not waterfall, but also not Scrum (which is what most shops that call themselves Agile are practicing). Something that values relatively short iterations, but also values the kinds of creativity and deep work that can't easily be broken up into sprints and stories.

Good news - he's just taken another job as a developer :-) He briefly mentioned it in a recent video.

But yeah, his work environment didn't sound great before, and I think he assumed everywhere is a variant of that. Maybe that's true in Finland, but the guy is clearly skilled enough to work at any place he'd choose.

I just found out about him, and his videos look very interesting, but the way he talks (the timings/accent/stresses) make me completely unable to focus on the content because I keep focusing on the speech. Does anyone else get that?
He made English subtitles for his videos for this reason -- even the ones in English.
Oh, no, he's perfectly intelligible, it's just that the specific accent/tone variations he uses are a bit peculiar, so I fixate on them.
Opposite for me but I am a nordic ESL speaker myself.
I think my problem is how he pronounces the "r". It sounds a bit off-place with the rest of the accent being rather Finnish.
it is amazing to me that this guy earned 20k euros in finland as a developer and went on to be a bus driver where he earned more. He also talked about how he got fired for not handing in weekly reports..Someone with his skills should be able to work anywhere and make a really good living. Anyway, youtube seems like a good way for him to express himself, i hope he will find success.
Bisqwit is awesome. He's the also first person that I thought of when I saw the thread title. His videos are really in-depth technically and they're all interesting projects.
never heard of Bisqwit but checking the channel out now and I see some Star Control 2 videos and that got my attention! That's one of my favorite games ever
Glad my channel has helped you guys. I quit my job at Twilio to do this full-time. I'm on a warpath to educate and inspire the shit out of everyone. Human readable link: https://www.youtube.com/c/sirajology (I am Siraj, hi everyone)
I've run across several of your videos and was surprised by how few views they had, considering the high production quality and engaging style. I guess these things take time. Keep it up and I have no doubt you'll reach critical mass.
Love your channel! You are doing a great job, keep it up!
Siraj, just watched a few of your video and it's awesome. Can you go a bit slow though? It's way too fast. I am guessing you are of Indian origin, my indian friends are very fast for me as well :-)
Protip: YouTube has a speed setting. Just click the little cogwheel thing and it should be there. I usually use it to bump up slow talks a bit, but I'm assuming it works just as well to slow things down.
Me too. I almost always speed up the video (due to my impatience) on Youtube. I usually find many videos too slow . The downside is that I can't do that in real life, where I want to increase the speed of the speakers at a live conference.

I don't think Siraj's video is too fast. It seems just right for me.

Cool! Been a fan ever since you started posting to the HN FB group!
>HN FB group!

Link pls?

Siraj,

The way you taught complex topics like DeepLearning, Machine Learning etc made these topics hilarious. Thanks man

Hi Siraj, cool stuff man. Could you cover the topics (DL, AI) in a bit more detail ?
I do not like your intro and I think your hair is stupid.
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
Awesome channel!! I like the speed of it, keep them coming :)
Your channel is cool. The videos are short and crisp and gives a basic understanding for totally new topics like machine learning for me in a very short time. Good job.
At my codeschool (jaaga.in/study) last night we all hung out enjoying your videos. Thanks !
Youtube.com/thenewboston something very soothing about his videos and humor
+1 -- This is where I learned to code actually. He has some really nice -long- courses for quite a few languages. When I first started I went through his VB.NET videos -- it's 200 videos, and it starts with something as simple as variables, but by the end you're doing real projects like calculators and simple video games.
I love thenewboston... He is great for introduction to a variety of technologies.
Bucky! It has been many years since I saw that name. Made me smile, it is where all my real programming started. I would love to send him something out of gratification.
I'm going to use this opportunity to list some relatively unknown yet excellent software dev related channels that I've come across over the years.

* Derek Banas (https://www.youtube.com/user/derekbanas): staggering amount of content on a huge variety of programming topics; tutorial-style; this guy is so productive it scares me sometimes :(

* Mark Lewis (https://www.youtube.com/user/DrMarkCLewis): CS professor; lots of videos on general CS, functional programming; focus on Scala

* VoidRealms (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYP0nk48grsMwO3iL8YaAKA): excellent C++-focused content, great Qt series

* mathematicalmonk (https://www.youtube.com/user/mathematicalmonk): great ML and probability videos

* mycodeschool (https://www.youtube.com/user/mycodeschool): general CS, algorithms, data structures

* HandmadeHero (https://www.youtube.com/user/handmadeheroarchive): excellent series by Casey Muratori that explains a huge number of topics related to game dev, gfx programming; has a really long series of videos documenting how he's building an indie game from the ground up i.e. custom engine

I will update once I think of others :)

Derek has helped me more than once. He was instrumental in wrapping my head around design patterns (and combined with the gang-of-four's and head first I feel like I really learned).
I had no idea that Mark Lewis was on YouTube! He was one of my favorite professors at Trinity and I'm grateful to know he's still at it and reaching others outside of San Antonio.
Yes! Came here to say Derek Banas. Dude is amazing. Genius level, incredible teacher, the guy was made for this. Came out of lurking just to post this.
I don't think they have dedicated pages, but searching for the classics Dan Friedman and Gerald Sussman is guaranteed brain tease. The minikanren relational interpreter is still high in my top videos ever, and Sussman watch engineering talk was packed with surprises.
https://www.youtube.com/user/handmadeheroarchive/featured

https://handmadehero.org/

Coding a game engine from scratch, but don't think it's just about games. The techniques covered range from beginner to highly advanced and programmers in any field, at any skill level, can learn a lot. For example, check out the live editing/reloading for C code in Week 5. https://hero.handmade.network/episodes

I'm just going through this right now, and it's pretty amazing. I really like how he develops this prototype, and just writes the code which actually solves the problem first, then breaks it up to try and reduce repetition only after he sees how it looks uncompressed.
Yep - that was a bit of an eye opener for me. He is a super smart guy but if you saw a snapshot of this game source your first reaction would be to suggest a series of (micro) improvements... He explains this style you mentioned here: https://mollyrocket.com/casey/stream_0019.html
BriefTube.com is a TLDR; for Youtube educational videos. Instantly get the gist of what is being said and when.

*I'm the proud developer of BriefTube

Oh wow! I had the very same idea a few weeks back! Your demos don't seem to be working for me though -- they start for a few seconds and then just stop.
oh, thanks for the heads up. I'll fix the glitch.
I do Python mostly. For Python there are conferences called PyCon. Type that into youtube search, and you'll find many channels. These are usually grouped per year and/or location. Watch videos there. The videos are not really for beginners, but for intermediate/advanced skill levels.
Can't believe this hasn't been mentioned yet, so I'm gonna throw it out there. Gary Bernhardt of Destroy All Software.

Access to the videos costs $29/month but is well worth it IMO. He covers a very wide range of topics from beginner to advanced. To sum things up in a few words -- his content is focused on a general understanding of computer science and puts concepts, abstractions, and methodologies before any specific program, tool, or programming language.

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog

Look at the episode titles for a better idea of what I'm getting at, there's literally something for everyone.

He's also started streaming on twitch occasionally.

https://www.twitch.tv/gary_bernhardt/videos/all

Are they available on YouTube?
I don't believe so. The author self distributes them through his website. Access to all of the videos for a flat monthly fee.
Hence why they haven't been mentioned. So, does each "Season" require a subscription? That's how that page makes it look. Even if not, a subscription model for static content is a horrible deal.
> So, does each "Season" require a subscription?

Nope, all content is available for the one subscription fee.

> Even if not, a subscription model for static content is a horrible deal.

I think it depends on the quality of the content. Not that I'd advocate it, but I don't think there is anything stopping you from paying a one month subscription fee and ripping all of the content from the site either.

I tend to think of it as a donation similar to tipping someone on Twitch. If I'm getting value out of it, which I am, I want him to keep creating content. And I can stop donating whenever I want.

Considering he's been doing it for more (?) than six years, it looks like it has turned out well. It's very high quality.
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I was preparing for interviews and came across Tushar Roy's channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZLJf_R2sWyUtXSKiKlyvAw

I really like the way he provides most simplistic explanations to the algorithm problems. Really helpful if you are preparing for an interview.

If you like physics and want some really good explanations to simple questions, you can check Derek Mueller's channel(Veritasium) on youtube. He is a physicist and has some really good videos. I especially like his video on " Most radioactive places on earth" and a separate video on Chernobyl. Also, check his video on Uranium : Twisting the dragon's tail : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO57Zm-WNmg