Are You Still Watching?

I had some spare time this week after work to look into learning new tech I've been meaning to for a while. As I was looking through the familiar sites we've all used before for a course to tackle, at first I was excited, but this quickly turned to dread when I realized there's nothing I'd rather do less than sit through an 8-hour video course.

I don't think I'm alone here, throughout the pandemic consumption through video exploded, Zoom being the prime example. Since then however I've found myself purposely staying away from this type of content bar maybe YouTube.

Are video courses still worth it for the creator? Were they ever?

For someone who's looking to learn something new, what are the alternatives? I'm a big fan of books, the obvious alternative. I destroy them, notes and scribbles on pages from start to finish, and I see a big return on this learning approach.

Then of course you've got AI, which I'm trying to utilize a bit more often for certain tasks but for learning something new it gives a great initial overview to get your bearings, and where to head next. I've actually been pretty impressed with this approach lately, even getting familiar with small Go frameworks such as Bubble Tea was easy enough.

Maybe it's where I was searching, but a video course is almost a last resort at this stage.