[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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Videos are not documentation.
They can be used to demonstrate examples of how to do a particular task, but as other commenters have mentioned, documentation involves listing classes, functions, parameters, etc and clearly explaining what they all do, in a searchable manner. Text is searchable, video is not.