2 months ago I used the YouTube Premium trial and I binge-watched heaps of tutorials, especially the channel called Tech With Tim. Unfortunately I caught covid in June, then got sick an additional 2-3 times in July (it’s winter here) and after all the infections I feel depressed and unmotivated. Something is wrong with my mind now. I bought a certain eastern european 18+ beverage and I booked a private sauna room for next week.
YouTube Premium is expensive, and it just got more expensive for U.S. customers. Regardless, if I’m going to watch heaps of tutorials, in reasonably high quality, I don’t really mind paying for 1 or 2 months. I find it impossible to enjoy with the advertising. If I watch a wojak meme 2 times a month then the ads are okay, but for heavy use it’s no good to me.
I used to dislike videos and prefer articles, but I think videos are more personalised and friendly. Articles don’t always explain things in a way that helps me, so now I prefer videos over textbooks and articles. In past years I’ve wasted money on books that I learned nothing from, or very little. YouTube is much cheaper and some of the videos help me to stay engaged. Even channels like The Linux Cast keep me interested in my long-term hobby (that guy is also on Odysee BTW)
It’s a shame that I got so sick and haven’t recovered my mood yet, but that’s too bad. I can’t force myself to read or study, if I don’t feel focussed. I’ve been reading 4 pages of Frank Herbert’s “Dune” every few months. I’ve been reading it for 2 years and I haven’t finished it (very close). It’s a pretty boring novel anyway haha.
Some of the videos on YouTube are really good. If you want to learn c++ or Python there are great resources for it. Plus, if you want to learn OOP, or “mistakes that new programmers always make” then that’s useful too.
Don’t bang your head against a wall and smash your keyboard in frustration. Learn from people who are past that stage and save yourself the pain! You owe it to yourself!
My next step this year is to sell my car and buy an e-scooter. My money is going down fast, and I’ll need to find some temporary employment before I get back to programming. I had planned to buy the tutorial code from Steve at Parallel Realities, but that’s been set back by my paranoia about priorities and seeing my bank account slowly deplete. Plus my rent is increasing by a considerable amount in November. This is just a bad time for me to get stuff done. Illness and no money. Once I get rid of my car it will save me about $100 a month just from fuel and insurance alone. It doesn’t even offset my rent increase, which is $30 per week more.
When I get around to it, I’ll buy the Parallel Realities code from Itch.io
Steve writes it with C lang and SDL2 which I really admire. Way more interesting to me than frontend. I want to stay with fundamentals and avoid IDEs and web stuff. I watched some Free Code Camp tutorials (how to make tic tac toe) and it was like heresy to me - you can have multiple windows open, and when you place down a nought or a cross, it updates in all the other windows. Like wtf is this sourcery.
C language only plz xD
I hate to recommend YouTube but at least the videos don’t seize up when streaming. I’ve had a mixed experience with Odysee.