[DISCUSS] Pros/cons of videos for technical documentation?
[DISCUSS] Pros/cons of videos for technical documentation?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/3560540
You probably have already noticed that nowadays it's becoming fashionable online to share technical material via videos (eg YouTube.)
I somehow can understand the appeal of creating videos for sharing thoughts/news, esp b/c it takes way less time and focus compared to writing things (just hit the record button and go.)
But videos are. 👎 not index-able (at least locally)
👎 not searchable. 👎 not copy-paste friendly if at all. 👎 impossible to skim through.
👎 a major distraction from the train of thoughts.IMO, in most cases, the more effective and impactful medium of technical comms is the written form: a Mastodon toot, a blog post, a gist, a Pastebin entry or even a Facebook post!
What are your thoughts?
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It really depends on what's being taught imo. If it's something purely text-based like programming then sure, I absolutely would prefer reading an article to watching a video. For most tutorials though I think there's benefit in seeing things done visually step by step. Most tools are visual, so learning stuff like 3D modelling or video editing through text can be difficult, but seeing someone do it in front of me makes everything click since I can see exactly what he did and don't have to read between the steps.
even for visual programs, I absolutely despise the 10min videos for something that I only really care about 5 seconds of. If visual programs had the option of decent text tutorials (with screenshots) it’d be much easier to get into