The Best Youtube Channels for Developers

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@ mattkander Matt Kander Dev, Motion Designer, YouTuber

Youtube has been the best source of development content during my short stint as a dev. The below, is a finely curated list of fantastically passionate creators, offering up gold for the price of a 5 second advertisement.

Primary focus: All things Javascript

Signature: “Goooooood Monday Morning”

Recommended videos: Worst Hello World app ever, Composition over Inheritance.

MPJ from FunFunFunction, is a glorious, wonderful oddity in the world of programming content creators. With a background in theater and programming, this former Spotify developer delivers highly engaging, personal and informative content. His videos are quirky, surprisingly funny and equal parts entertainment and education. The content ranges from in depth technical explanations of map, reduce and restructuring, to more high level concepts like composition vs inheritance and burnout. I entirely endorse his videos, so much so I became a patron of his last week. If you’re going to check out any video on this list, i’d highly recommend the worst Hello App ever ft React, Redux and so *shudder*, so much more.

Primary focus: P5js and Javascript

Signature: “Why not use p5js?”

Recommended videos: Pathfinding, Neural networks, Twitter bot

Daniel Schiffman, in a few words is utterly endearing. His tutorial on how to make a twitter bot was my first foray into connecting to an API, it was so easy and so well explained I ended up binge watching hours of his videos. He has some extremely interesting stuff on neural networks, path-finding algorithms as well as simple, easily digestible projects. One of the things I like most with Daniel is that he explains everything thoroughly with no expectation of prior knowledge (unless otherwise stated). A number of tutorials will gloss over or assume prior knowledge, leaving you with several tabs open trying to fill in the gaps. Daniel does an excellent job of ensuring the only resource you need to complete his task, is in his video. For those looking at starting out with Javascript, The Coding train should be your first port of call.

Primary Focus: All things React, Node and Javascript

Signature: Doo Doo Doo Dah Dum

Recommended videos: 30 days of Javascript, The Redux Series

Wes Bos is someone I owe entirely too much in terms of my career development. His React, Redux, Es5 and Es6 courses have helped me very quickly plug gaps in my front end knowledge. While a portion of his content is paid, he has some superb free videos on Youtube including his excellent Redux course and the infamous 30 days of Javascript challenge. I’ve never enjoyed learning so much, than when I was participating in the 30 day JS challenge. He provides you with the styling and static elements, while you follow along with his videos to build a JS Drum kit, animated CSS clock and much, much more. I’ve bought many of his online courses, all have yielded fantastic value.

Primary Focus: Everything Development.

Signature: “Hey what’s up, this is Scott.”

Recommended videos: Sketch and React

Wesbos’s partner in crime. I’m not entirely sure who’s Batman and who’s Robin but both are excellent sources of front end expertise (and break dancing). Scott has an overwhelming wealth of superb content, almost 1000 videos ranging from VS code tutorials, React, React Native, Meteor, Drupal, Magneto…. I’ll stop there. The videos are split into easily digestible blocks, and more focused on practical, functional application. Perfect for that moment when you have to learn Drupal 8 in a week and need some guided hands on experience. Thoroughly recommended.

As an aside, Scott and Wes also host my favorite tech podcast- “Syntax, tasty treats for Web Developers.” It has some sizable gold nuggets of information, with recent topics covering Accepting Money on the internet, How to slam dunk freelancing and CSS preprocessors & structuring CSS. Their dynamic is fantastic, stories entertaining and advice solid. 10/10 would recommend again.

Primary Focus: Computer Science. Bits and bytes to beyond.

Signature: 0011010000110010

Recommended videos: How not to store passwords, XSS, How Youtube works.

If you’re after for something a bit more computer sciency, perhaps something that delves into the real nitty gritty of some specific topics- Computerphile is your channel. The inherent strength of this channel is in the leveraging of working professionals and deep academics to explain complex topics. It lends a unique flavor and dynamic to the videos as each one has a different presenter. The content ranges from Why C is so influential, an explanation of pointers, to a 15 minute video explaining the Wanacry virus or the role of Matrixes in computer graphics. Overall a fantastic resource for those wanting to expand on some highly technical concepts.

Primary Focus: Technology explained for everyone

Signature: *fumble-clunk*…. “Goddamit Linus.”

Recommended videos: How does ATM skimming work, What is Anti-Aliasing, What happens if you delete System32

From the gods that are Linus Media Group, I present Tech Quickie. This channel is dedicated to explaining every day technologies for the everyday laymen. The videos are incredibly well polished, the production quality is second to none, and the content is primed in such a way that you gain value from every video. While this isn’t explicitly aimed at developers, some general concepts like ‘How Netflix works”, Raid explained, or what is Linux are very useful. Pick and choose what interests you, no matter what you pick, it will be quality.

So there we have it! My top Youtube channels for the technologically inclined. If you liked this article, be sure to smash that like button, and if you think I missed anyone, tweet @mattkjer or leave a comment below! Alternatively, check out how I handled my Software development internship in video form :D

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