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.
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I don’t see the intersection set of people who use neovim and people who watch influencers would be somewhat big. It’s probably closer to an empty set. Neovim users are a subset of Vim users, which is already kinda niche to be influenced by some Youtuber.
A lot of tutorials are video when they used to be text. This makes it harder to reference specific parts. It also makes it harder to copy code out of the tutorial, though you can argue that’s an advantage.
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.
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.
Most Linux nerds I know aren’t watching a lot of Twitch streams or Youtube videos. Maybe I’m old school. I talk to other people (in the rare case I’m in a group of nerds) and they’d say “You really should try Neovim”. Or I read about it in some feed, blog post, forum… Or I try all editors. Or I’m looking for a replacement and get to know there’s a better fork. Yeah and maybe a Podcast. I think that’d count as influencers. Other than that, I’d say video influencers don’t work that well with the kind of people I know.
CRYPT-- oh, you mean how the nice tutorial peeps have affected us.
Vimjoyer has increased the adoption rate for flakes on NixOS. And also NixOS use in general.
Mental Outlaw has probably contributed to new Gentoo users, quoth the meme, but Gentoo is still a dying breed compared to its heyday in the early naughts.
Fireship has made people – particularly CS students I believe – more comfortable with trying out new programming languages. (The “I’ll check out the Fireship video first” approach. But then again, ChatGPT has arguably had the same effect across undergraduates… that’s a digression)
Asahi Lina’s longform Rust dev work, while less of a network effect, has had its own substantial effects within the Asahi Linux “Linux on the M-series” sphere. I believe she also helped port a kind of anime mocap engine onto Linux, which could over the longterm boost the anime-nerd Linux-nerd center Venn diagram. But that’s speculation.
edit:
In a broader perspective, with the combination of SteamOS and large YouTubers trying out Linux, Linux desktop adoption will probably increase more than it has now. I doubt it will pass 10% though with Linux’s reputation (tech nerds, compile all day, games don’t run, command line – even though these are improving, it’s hard to kick)
- Linus Tech Tips - “Linux HATES Me - Daily Driver Challenge Pt.1”
- SomeOrdinaryGamers - “I Installed The Hardest System Known To Man…”
- not gonna lie I ignored this clickbait but he has “gamers” in his name so he’s probably a gamer
Personally I like consuming all the mediums of information as they all have different strengths. Peertube videos are easy to digest as you can watch passively and see software demos.
