[verticalscaler]

True, can't think of much else this popular.

He started posting videos again recently with some regularity after a lull. Audience is in the low hundreds of thousands. I assume fewer than 100k actually finish videos and fewer still do anything with it.

Hobby electronics seems surprisingly small in this era.

[TillE]

Even if you're not much of a tinkerer, Ben Eater's videos are massively helpful if you want to truly understand how computers work. As long as you come in knowing the rudiments of digital electronics, just watching his stuff is a whole education in 8-bit computer design. You won't quite learn how modern computers work with their fancy caches and pipelines and such, but it's a really strong foundation to build on.

I've built stuff with microcontrollers (partially aided by techniques learned here), but that was very purpose-driven and I'm not super interested in just messing around for fun.

[Bene592]

If you do want to learn about pipelines, or want a more powerful breadboard computer without 6502 you should check out James Sharman[1] on YouTube. He has VGA and audio output too. [1] https://youtube.com/@weirdboyjim

[hedora]

I wonder if there’s much overlap between people that watch YouTube to get deep technical content (instead of reading), and people that care about hobby electronics.

I’m having trouble wrapping my head around how / why you’d use youtube to present analog electrical engineering formulas and pin out diagrams instead of using latex or a diagram.

[robinsonb5]

I consider YouTube (or rather, video in general) a fantastic platform for showcasing something cool, demonstrating what it can do, and even demonstrating how to drive a piece of software - but for actual technical learning I loathe the video format - it's so hard to skim, re-read, pause, recap and digest at your own speed.

The best compromise seems to be webpages with readable technical info and animated video illustrations - such as the one posted here yesterday about how radio works.

[jpc0]

For some things there is a lot of nuance lost in just writing. The unknowm unknowns.

There has been a lot of times where I am showing someone new to my field something and they stop me before I get to what I thought was the "educational" point and ask what I just did.

Video can portray that pretty well because the information is there for you to see, with a schematic or write-up if the author didn't put it there the information isn't there.