Actually the course on Egghead is terrible. The voice that is used to comment on the video is very badly recorded and I have no idea why they chose that voice for a serious video for adults.
Edit: Also fine to not have my opinion on this, but a lot of people shared my opinion, check the Egghead comment section. I would've loved to watch that video, with a more professional voice and walkthrough.
What's with this modern internet culture of calling everything "terrible" or "garbage" because it has some defects, even subjective ones?
I've watched this gradual change in the users of my own forum I started over 10 years ago. People with no skin in the game think so highly of their opinion that they use it to discredit and dismiss something as terrible garbage.
Seems related to the rise of self-entitlement culture: In this case, a free video series is terrible because you didn't like the voice.
The problem I have with his comment isn’t directly about the question of whether the video is “good” or “bad”. It’s with the fact that the comment seems partly designed to slap the face of the person he’s responding too, by starting it out with the world “actually”. He instantaneously implies that only his opinion is objectively correct, i.e. the “actual” truth, and that, therefore the poster he’s replying to is some idiot living in a fantasy world who obviously can’t discern actual quality. And all that was done to get that reprimand was express some appreciation for a free video which he learned something from. I must admit that I do wonder whether this kind of behavior, which I feel occurs far too often, is primarily a way a for person of low self-esteem to feel better about himself at someone else’s expense, from the safety of the internet. Or am I being too harsh here?
I don't think you're being too harsh. There's a weird sort of subtle trolling that goes on on online discussions to the point that I don't much engage in online communities. I don't think it's trolling in the sense that people don't consciously do it; they're just negative: "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE!!"
Internet discussion has become very toxic (well, perhaps it always has been). The other day I was on IRC and asked a question about Eclipse which was doing some quirky things that I didn't know how to disable and one of the people in the chat (not a huge open freenode chat but the chat of a smaller, private community) responded "Java is horrible" or something along those lines. I hadn't even mentioned that I was writing Java! What's funny is that I can't imagine anyone responding in this way were it an in-person conversation. You get much more "I don't care much for Java" or even "What are you using Eclipse for?"
I guess because if you're a nasty person AFK people will avoid you and you do face the risk of some social ostracization. However, with the internet, it's harder to prune these people from your social circle.
I kind of agree that people can be hostile or brutally honest online but just look at LinkedIn as what happens online when you can't say the truth for fear of someone disliking it.
Its an endless stream of corporate bullshit. At least my feed is just ridiculous. Nobody says the truth about anything.
I know... it really bothers me how everything becomes a binary evaluation. Something not to your taste isn't objectively terrible, it's just not to your taste. I think it's a symptom of youth and a lack of perspective - I was so much worse with that back when I was a teenager.
The internet has made it so easy to share negativity or whatever opinion you're able to belt out from the hip that people mistake that for the need to do it. "What, I can't have an opinion, now?" It's almost comical how toxic Youtube and Facebook comments are for this reason.
But I also think there's some element of human nature where you see someone having fun and feel the need to snipe them with something negative. I remember a lot of that from my childhood.
I'll never forget in Boy Scouts when we were climbing down some boulders and one of my mates decided to jump down each boulder instead of climbing down. He was soon sniped with "Quit trying to be cool, Jacob" which put him in line, climbing down like the rest of us.
Not to double down so hard on a fellow HNer, but it reminds me of that:
- Person A: "Here's a link to their free video course."
- Person B: "Those videos are terrible, Jacob. Edit: What, I have opinions, too."
Everyone things they're the next Steve Jobs - well-known for his binary view of the world (where something could only be the "greatest thing ever" or "(profanity)"). He had finely tuned design sensibilities, but his complete disregard for others is what made him a world-class jerk bordering on outright psychopathy.
This sort of personae is not something to aspire to, and the world really doesn't need more of this personae, but in a culture of mimicry, that's what is honored as people try to differentiate themselves from the bland masses. Cultural erosion.
It's because most people are trained by consumerism to think of anything with a human touch as flawed. The artist Tom Sachs talks a lot about this in his work. He can't make any of his art as perfect as an iPhone, but on the flipside, Apple can't make an iPhone as imperfect as any of his art (fingerprints, spray paint, a crack, etc.). I think it's important now, more than ever, to protect our imperfect things--they tell us that humans have been involved. Spirit is far more important than perfection, the former makes us smile while the latter makes us anxious.
In my opinion it's more related to the fact, that people are actually creating very good content, so if somebody pushes something that is way under that value, you recognize and move away from it. I've watched tutorials on functional programming that took themselves seriously and used a normal, human voice to bring their point across and sorry, I consider those a lot better than this.
But notice that you didn't link to any nor provide anything beyond "Actually the course on Egghead is terrible" when someone else added value to the world by linking to the free video courses.
Imagine if your approach, instead of knee-jerk negativity and dismissal, was to enumerate those videos you thought were better if your intention was actually to communicate that you've seen better ones. That would've been a great contribution.
The interplay between content and presentation is a symbiotic relationship where either side can drag down the whole. I loved the content of the Frisby egghead course, but have to admit that I had trouble finishing it because the presentation became tiresome for me. I also felt like I couldn't listen to it within earshot (or view) of anyone for fear of looking like a child watching cartoons.
There's no point in attacking the course based on this aspect of its presentation. If it were super polished but made a bunch of mistakes, that's when you need to shout loudly to anyone you care about "don't watch that course! It's full of mistakes!"
I _love_ the videos on the Professor Frisbee Egghead course.
I learned a lot from the course content and the classroom stop-motion animations were refreshing; it kept me watching with a smile on my face.
It's nice to have some personality and silliness in an online classroom environment; very little differentiates the various JS teaching sites other than their media players and subject matter coverage right now.
Daniel Shiffman's unique style also breaks the “person tonelessly narrating to occasional cursor movements over a screencap” standard that lots of online courses have settled into, and is similarly engaging as a result: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw
I completely understand that it could be more difficult for non-native speakers to understand. It's been sped up to match the cartoon style characters that he uses, and presumably for information density. I personally really enjoyed it, even if I did have to frequently pause the videos to recap something he had just said.
See, isn't it a negative point for you, that you have to stop and revert the video to an earlier point frequently because of this. As someone who has learned a lot through video guides (which are my favorite medium to learn, other than just reading the docs), I think that talking slowly through complex problems is the better way to go, even if that means, the video will be longer.
Tbh not really, I often stop to investigate stuff anyway. I personally prefer to have it at my pace and under my control than listen through someone laboriously explain something I know in great detail.
But this is the great thing about the internet - there's so much information on how to make more of it, you'll definitely be able to find videos which are more to your taste.
I recently watched Andrew Van Slaars series on the Maybe type: https://egghead.io/courses/safer-javascript-with-the-maybe-t... - that was much more traditional and slower paced, and still very good. Maybe give that a shot if you found the Frisby stuff too frenetic.
I'd much rather pause and rewind than have the opposite problem: bored at slow or repetitive presentation but not knowing if I can skip ahead and miss something new.
Fast paced places the viewer in control. Too slow pace is like keeping them prisoner or feeding them via drip line.
The course on Egghead is universally excellent and beyond reproach, any suggestion otherwise can be dismissed with prejudice.
May I suggest a perspective modification? I believe you can start your journey to recovery with a healthy doze of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUes6y2b--0, more of the same, twice a day, complete the course, or until the pressure in your loins subside.
Edit: Also fine to not have my opinion on this, but a lot of people shared my opinion, check the Egghead comment section. I would've loved to watch that video, with a more professional voice and walkthrough.