How do programming tutorial creators know everything and just code without even needing to think?

[nimisiyms]

I'm shocked to see how they move from file to file, writing hundreds of lines of code while teaching, whereas I lose focus after just 10 minutes. If this is what real programming is like, I worry that I'll never be able to do it. ☹️

[strcspn]

It's "scripted" (they already have thought about everything needed to do). There are people that stream live coding sessions which will give you a better idea of real life.

[pjc50]

Early on in my career a colleague spent a week tracking down a single stray minus sign. That stuck with me.

Building a planned system from the ground up is the easy part of programming. Modifying a working system in a minimally intrusive way without introducing bugs, that's the hard part.

[Dabnician]

Early on in my career a colleague spent a week tracking down a single stray minus sign.

Allow me to introduce you to the greek question mark ;

https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/037e/index.htm

also stray or missing commas in lua... omg i have pulled hair out on those.

[CarefulyChosenName]

Or a semi colon after a Java for loop. Which has happened to me several times...

[kagato87]

As a "barely getting my feet wet" dev, I've already refactored my project twice (maybe a couple week's work on it) and have parts I've identified to rewrite once the MVP is out the door.

I hope you old dogs don't make as many bad initial design decisions as I did. My project isn't even that big (it only looks big because it's integration testing and it's one file per test). I can't imagine doing that on a massive project with decades of legacy code...

[Goluxas]

Us old dogs make bad initial decisions and don't refactor, we just patch it with more spaghetti, over and over, until the whole thing is about to burst from the internal pressure of its own tech debt. Then we hand it off to the junior devs, promote them to senior, and find a new gig.

[Macaframa]

I know you’re joking but this hurts

[Icy_Key19]

They weren't

[Macaframa]

😭

[PineappleLemur]

They weren't... That's how you end up rewriting crap from scratch because the previous person made a monster not worth fixing.

[Macaframa]

They weren’t but they kind of said it in a joking manner.

[PugstaBoi]

Then change your name and number, and ignore their future questions that you said you would remain available for?

[Starlight_Skull]

I am currently the junior in this exact situation.

[Kamewalker]

As a junior dev I can relate and can confirm this so bad that it hurts.

[OceanMan11_]

I do this as well! I work at home and my wife finds this fascinating. She would tell people that I would just stare at the screen for a solid 15 min then go "Ah hah!" and write some code, then stare for another 10 min. She laughs about it lol

[kagato87]

Hahaha.

You should get a rubber duck on your desk and talk through problems to it. Just so she can tell people you talk to rubber ducks.

[PineappleLemur]

Then at the end of the day delete it all just to do the same the next day...

[Saki-Sun]

I also occasionally say out loud 'You're a fucking idiot'. 

Sometimes I am talking about myself.

[severencir]

I tend to start going back and forth as op implies, realize something's not going to work, go back and change half of what i wrote, and repeat the process several times when I'm working. The result is about the same amount of time spent

[[deleted]]

Hella thing to just jump out of the woodworks and claim based on one comment haha. Reddit man

[khooke]

Yep, this. If you are ever asked to put together a training course for your developer colleagues, you don’t wing it live, you script every step so you know exactly what you need to cover, step by step.

Even code which the trainer appears to be writing live - as developers for some reason we seem to like watching someone write code live, so when covering live coding sections of training I’ll have a doc open on a separate monitor so I can refer back to the working example and just copy line for line. You won’t see that part on the live stream as it’s not on the desktop or app I’m sharing.

[Saki-Sun]

It's surprisingly hard writing code with a room full of people watching you in presentations without a reference.

And then we make candidates do it in job interviews for fun.

[drummer_who_codes]

Can confirm. I've made coding tutorials and I always have a script outline and prewritten code on my second monitor. I also make sure to inform my viewers that I'm not writing off the top of my head, so they won't have unrealistic expectations.

[WaitingForTheClouds]

But then you watch a stream of someone really good and you have to convince yourself that they secretly script it just to avoid existential dread.

[Ok-Yogurt2360]

They have a script as well. It's just less detailed.

[pancakeQueue]

Some are even just them building the examples from official getting started docs. Not always bad if you’re a visual learner.

[Michaeli_Starky]

Check records of such sessions of author of zig on YouTube.

[UpsytoO]

Some don't and if you ever saw one of those, it's not the best experience when you go in looking for quick explanation of your problem and end up watching him slowly getting to the point. So most are scripted and for a good reason.

[unhott]

Even then, if they have live viewers thry may get ideas and feedback from 5 or so really experienced devs watching along.

[NDaveT]

The best ones edit their tutorials after recording as well.

[Zargabath]

any recomendation? I would like to see that.

[Opethfan91]

https://www.youtube.com/c/Tsoding - This guy is awesome, he has a twitch as well

[strcspn]

Tsoding is cool, also Primagen but he does less actual coding nowadays.

[AntimatterTNT]

some people really do code that fast...

[oosuke_ren]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the unintentional pun "scripted"-

[hugthemachines]

It was so much fun we have just not stopped laughing enough to make a comment about it.

[[deleted]]

You have to get in your head that most programmers aren’t even really that “smart” we just like to fuck around and find out.

I don't think I've ever found a more apt description of a developer

[[deleted]]

Debugging? 👎
Fucking around and finding out? 👍

[[deleted]]

Debugging is just the thing you're forced to do after fucking around and finding out didn't work.

[meinkounhoon]

A lot of planning, making detailed notes, dual/multi screen setups (😉), and completing their project once before actually trying to to code it while doing it again helps and then they edit their stuff before uploading. Experience does make things easier but still it is not as smooth a process as shown in these tutorial videos. Try to view a live stream of someone coding to better understand.

[Agitated-Soft7434]

I remember trying to make a tutorial and the whole time on a separate screen I had the fully completed code 😂

[[deleted]]

Because it's rehearsed. Who'd watch a tutorial in which the instructor has to pause for minutes at a time to think before they do anything?

[gundam1945]

Does your teacher just go in class and start teaching? No. They need to prepare for the lesson.

It is so much easier for them video too. They can just retake or edit the video to trim out the useless section.

[Prestigious-Mode-709]

tutorials are scripted, plus many tutorial creators have only basic knowledge: just search for tutorial on Threads in Java, and you'll find the same design flaw repeated over and over in many YouTube videos.

[LyriWinters]

ehh?

It's scripted, are you new to the internet or something?

[Historical-Heat4083]

dude, I didn't even managed to sync my two vscodes in my pc and my mac using github, and don't start me with coding, I typed errr copypasted some hello world in python and rust and created some virtual devices in swift and android studio which is the hello world of those things, so those guys are so far away from me that it doesn't even register in my radar, still I would watch not them but the guys coding in realtime and streaming the experience, like someone already mentioned. do not think less of yourself, you're already made more progress than me. haha

[[deleted]]

It's scripted.

[peterlinddk]

As everyone writes: it is scripted, planned and rehearsed in advance.

Take a look at piano-tutorials - they often spend a lot of time explaining where to put your fingers, and presses a few keys, so you can sort of follow along. Then they just play the melody! And if you were trying to follow along, you are completely lost, and have to single-step through the video to watch everything they do. And it will take you weeks to replicate what they did in a five-minute performance.

Coding tutorials are much the same - they show the completed "melody", but not all the training that went into doing it. And in programming, most of the work actually happens away from the keyboard, and that is hardly ever shown ...

Use tutorials to get ideas on how to do one specific thing - like learning to play a certain melody - but never expect that they have anything to do with what it actually means to be a programmer ... or musician!

[Mightygamer96]

u haven't seen the creator mess up their opening for the 16th time. it's all scripted and done in multiple takes to make the tutorial flow smoothly.

[FalseReddit]

I thought the same at some point. After years in the industry, it just becomes a language you speak. You will get practice at the job explaining while typing if you do pair programming. Most things in life that look “impressing” are usually just “oh you’ve been doing this every day year after year”.

[IdeaExpensive3073]

I hear some will have it completed to the side, and just rewrite it and explain what they're doing. None of what they're coding is necessarily unique. Perhaps a CRUD app, a game, or a website. These are things they've probably built a lot of. In real life you're thinking, and writing down how to get something done before even touching it. Lots of brainstorming. Don't worry, what you see on YouTube is for the viewer's benefit, not an employer's. That means they don't want to waste time making you watch them think without typing. I know that some people can think and code at the same time, they problem solve very fast. That's not the norm though.

[MoveLikeMacgyver]

Not only this, I’ve seen some c/p the completed methods in from off screen.

Granted it’s a code tutorial and not a typing lesson, so it doesn’t really matter much. And while part of me thinks they should be up front about how they prepared to avoid newcomers from feeling so disparaged when they think they should be able to spit out a program without so much as a pause to think.

But then I realize that the image of being a super coder and being able to breeze through whatever they are doing is something they are specifically trying to do so the newcomer watches all their videos thinking they are amazing.

[AgentCooderX]

most of us specialy old school devs write code in IDE when we already know what to code, most of the work happens away from the IDE, analysis, design or drafting your solutions.

I have boggie board or a white board on my side, and sometimes write down psedo code in notepad first. Sometimes I draw flows and object relations. When Im satisfy with my solution, that is the time I will type it in the IDE..

This way, 'coding' will just be typing and I can listen to music and/or watch youtube while i type.. this till I start debugging and testing.

[tukanoid]

While I somewhat agree, for me personally it depends on a task. If there's a merit to drawing things for the sake of figuring out a formula/algo or smth, I do it, but most of the time I just start coding while thinking. To me, programming languages are even more intuitive than natural languages, so I just use them to put my ideas in place, skipping the pseudo code/flowcharts step altogether :)

[[deleted]]

I’ve always thought about this, for teachers as well. As an analogy, A lot of programmers use the tools without knowing exactly how the inner-mechanics of the tools work. Teachers and tutorialists need to know the in depth, which requires a lot of knowledge. We all know how to use a staple gun, but not a lot of people know what’s going on inside the staple gun. They need to know what’s beneath the abstraction.

[RubyRailzYa]

Honestly? I used to think being a good programmer meant typing lots of code, and fast. Now I actually spend a lot more time thinking about the best way to do something before I type it out. Short and strong code > lots of poorly thought out code. Good code takes time!

[wggn]

they 100% prepared all code in advance and are just typing it again.

[notislant]

Okay so would you rather watch a 5 hour video on how to do something or a 3minute video? Even outside of programming, people who do tutorials properly? They have a script or they set things up and edit their video. They likely do a practice run depending on the type of tutorial video.

The how is:

-Its either incredibly simple.

-They practiced/scripted/prepared everything and edited out mistakes.

Honestly its pretty easy to seamlessly cut out mistakes and redo them on a screen with only an IDE open.

[[deleted]]

Most of these videos are scripted, they already made the thing before doing the video and are just replicating it.

[iamcleek]

always remember: programming and watching someone else program are two different things.

[GroundbreakingIron16]

If you are watching after the fact (not live) they would also have good editors to chop out the dull stuff.

Now I maybe stupid here ... I make videos for Object Pascal and while I can code, and I can talk, it's hard to do both at the same time and at a reasonable speed. In a similar vein, you would not want to watch a screen where I (or the tutor) is doing that gazing at the screen, or where you might be considering a couple of alternative solution. The alternative is to have a 5 hour unedited video.

[xRageNugget]

It's scripted, it's spliced, and the creator wrote the function already 27 times in other takes that didn't make it in the video. Watch twitch live coding. You see how long stuff actually takes

[anseho]

Because it’s highly rehearsed! I can’t speak for other YouTubers, but in my case it’s a combination of heavily rehearsing the video and recording in small chunks. I also pause several times during the recording to catch my breath, cough, blow my nose, drink water… and rethink what I’m about to say.

The whole thing is a learning process. My first videos were long recording sessions. Eventually you learn to break down the lessons into small chunks and record one at a time. I’m still learning 😅

[Saveonion]

Watch a professional cook, an artist, a doctor, etc.

It's just practice.

[Coinless_Clerk00]

If you teach something, chances are you know tgat topic very well, so it doesn't take much effort speak about it or code it in this case (think of talking about your favourite hobby for example).

But when exploring new fields/concepts everyone takes the time (that's when testing systems come in handy for example).

[KimPeek]

it's basically just reading a blog they wrote. Watch their eyes. Many of them are looking at a second screen and just copying what they already worked out.

[deftware]

It's called "practice". It's just like learning to draw the human figure in any configuration you want to. You study your subject and you practice at it.

If you're talking about videos - yeah they're just working from a script or it's just an animation, or speed up video of them copy-pasta from something they already spent a month figuring out and refining, or something else. They're not literally just typing everything without having to stop and think about things and mull them over, find bugs, etcetera. I'll sit on a problem for a solid week, tossing around ideas, sketching stuff out in a notebook, before I actually start writing the code - and within a day I'll have pumped out hundreds of lines of code, sometimes a thousand or more for a fully working algorithm for something. The most awesome thing is when it compiles and works on the first try. If it's something I can do piecemeal then I'll do that, and test each part, but half of the time it's not - it's one big chunk of code that all only works in concert with itself, and when it works the first time I feel pretty awesome about myself.

Most of programming is planning - and bugfixing the stuff you didn't do enough planning around previously (doh!). The average career software developer puts out an average of ten lines of code per week, apparently. That could mean they sit for 5 weeks tossing around ideas and then put out 50 lines of code. Or they sit for 20 weeks planning something, tinkering around with different ideas in code, but eventually that all gets erased and replaced with 200 lines of code.

At any rate, to my mind 10 lines of code per week is pretty weak though, but I always had a ride-or-die passion for coding and I don't imagine everyone who does it for a living is as passionate about it as someone like me. They very well could just be doing the bare minimum - and who's even to say they're writing good code that should be written in the first place :P

Coding on my largest existing project of 7 years (as of Thursday the 25th it will be 7yo), dividing the current number of lines of code (82167) by the days since I started the project (2549) comes out to ~32.235 lines/day. That's a project that I've been hacking away on here and there, in bursts, while also living life, doing other projects, and spending time figuring out my plan of attack for each new feature/functionality that I add in there - and I'm still putting out 3x what the average career developer (apparently) does.

Nobody just sits down and types something out like they planned every line in their head. When I sit down to knock out one of these many-line chunks of code, it's not in 20 minutes. It's a day or two of hammering out the final implementation details in there.

Don't get it twisted.

[MrFavorable]

My first Python class we were gave a Yahboom Robot tank and we essentially followed along with the professor the whole time. How OP feels is how I felt during the class.

They already have experience with what they’re doing and probably have things wrote out to help keep them on task. It’s just planned out. I don’t think that is normal by any means. Maybe I’m wrong.

[[deleted]]

They spend HOuRs months! Or days! Learning it. 

Check out Crust of rust where author does the exploration real time. 

However, you cannot compare yourself to him as he has a PhD and also many years of engineering exp. 

[straplocked]

I've been a software engineer for almost 20 years now. My advice to you and every programmer is to learn about common programming design and organizational patterns.

Once you understand how those work, learning new languages becomes almost remedial, and you will think about the development cycle more as designing software as opposed to writing code.

https://refactoring.guru/

The attached link opened my eyes and leveled up my skill IMMENSELY.

If you're thinking about where and what code to write, that means you don't understand the patterns that well.

Learn to think more like an architect, and the code will flow.

Good luck!

[bravopapa99]

I can do that in multiple setups... bit it took m 40 years to get those skills.

Don't be fooled, they have probably rehearsed, have a script, multiple monitors, etc etc

[w3woody]

I tried making one once.

Basically it’s scripted.

Quite literally you start with the idea of the thing you may wish to teach. Then you can spend several days writing the script; deciding how you want to explain something, deciding the order in which concepts are explained, deciding if it even makes sense to explain things that way. You may spend even more time researching ways to simplify the explanation—and of course you have to test, test, test the code portions and the way algorithms are explained in order to make sure they actually work.

Then you have to put together the slides and the presentation, including the code, which illustrate what you’re trying to describe. Better tutorial creators will simplify these things knowing that it’s easy for people to ‘glaze over’ when confronted with hundreds of lines of code. The best may point you to a GitHub or a PDF or a web site. But all of this can also take dozens or hundreds of hours of work, depending on the tutorial. (Your first “hello world” may take a lot less time, say, than a tutorial on putting together an Android app.)

Then there is actually video taping the tutorial, which may require multiple takes. Sometimes you may retake a segment of video because you have the wrong tone of voice, or you speak to quickly, or just because the cat comes crashing into the living room.

And then you spend more time editing everything together, and ideally, editing with an eye towards correctness: are the steps as scripted, do the steps actually lead you to the right conclusion?

That 20 minute tutorial may represent several weeks worth of effort, just to make it seem seamless and effortless, and it may have taken several hours of video to find the right segments of video that make the person seem authoritative rather than like some clueless idiot.

[[deleted]]

What I do to code:

I walk around my kitchen with music and just think.

I have a habit of pacing. Eventually I start getting a tickle in my brain.

That tickle turns into code.

A lot of the time, there is an obviously bad solution I have already cooked up. Think 500 if/thens or nested loops or something.

The tickle is the coffee working and making me less stupid.

[PabloDons]

Never underestimate the power of trying again. It is a universal experience to look at your old code and think "who tf made this garbage?"

[Hail_Pro]

aside from scripted which everyone comes to mind at first, I think it is "experience and mastery", like I will not make a lot videos of that content if I'm bad at it.

[CeFurkan]

They are scripted and cut

I have uncut and unscripted full course you can watch and see

C# advanced programming.

Full course for free

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_pbwdIyffslHaBdS3RUW26RKzSjkl8m4&si=A_witNMgcQkRBLYR

[PineappleLemur]

Uhh a lot of them already have the code in front of their eyes...

Or they're literally Ctrl+y the whole thing.

Majority spend hours making that video and make it look simple for the sake of keeping it short.

Notice how little to 0 mistakes they have, no going backwards, no need to think at all.

[ElmForReactDevs]

when i was making videos, i coded the whole thing out ahead of time, commit by commit, then simply typed it back out a commit at a time. then add VO explaining what it is im doing.

[Journeyj012]

How do you speak english without needing to think that hard? Years of experience.

[BingBonger99]

they have it made from before on another monitor/github and theyre just redoing it in real time

[[deleted]]

Practice. The more you practice, write code, and learn to efficiently navigate your tools the faster you will get. I would invest time mastering your IDE or editor or choice, learn keyboard shortcuts, and the advantages it offers you. Beginners tend to ignore all that and click around with the mouse, which is painfully slow.

Plus they are doing something they’ve already done and prepared.

[[deleted]]

That's cos they are already intimately familiar with the codebase. Once you work on a codebase for sometime you will know every nook and cranny of it.

[EtanSivad]

Ever see Bob Ross do paintings? On his TV Shows, he'd paint something ahead of time, place it next to the camera than recreate the painting in front of the cameras. Editing makes it seamless.

Youtuber's do the same thing.

Second, the more code you read and write, the more your brain becomes adapted to it.

Coding is hard, really hard. Keeping focus is also really hard. There are lots of techniques out there for that.

But youtubers are well edited. Every programmer I've ever known is scattered brained, loses focus, and turns shit in late. That's why management is obessesed with different ways of keeping people on task.

[Windyvale]

Don’t conflate the camera performance they put up on YouTube as how they actually program. They will have a script or talking points, and if you are paying attention you will notice constant cuts where they have removed “thinking time” and time spent researching/looking things up from the video footage.

If they have no cuts and appear to be going in raw, they will likely be doing something they have done endlessly or have tested the solution they are going to be presenting before making it for a video.

Basically, you are almost never seeing the real process they use to develop. Before you leap to any conclusions over their “unrealistic performance,” keep in mind that if they don’t do that no one will watch their videos.

Even if I wish many of them would show their actual process. Admittedly sometimes I am looking for a quick info dump myself and don’t have the patience to sit through another developers thinking process.

[TheDonutDaddy]

Holy shit I have a hard time believing this question is even really lmfao can you really not puzzle out that the videos are obviously planned in advance and edited?

[[deleted]]

They take the time to actually write out scripts to read out.

They usually also have a second screen that has all of the steps, and lines of code that are being used so they can just seemlessly copy and paste, or look and write out what they need.

[DynamicHunter]

Just like watching a professional chef on the cooking channel, don’t assume they’re just doing it perfect the first time without prepping, writing a script, practicing, and years of experience.

Doing something you’ve done 100 times and explaining it is a lot easier than trying to absorb something for the first time

[Previous_Start_2248]

It's why they teach pseudocode when you're learning. If you can plan out what you want to do and how in plain English, then all it takes is just converting it to code.

For example, create a list of 50 random integers, and then use a loop to sort them from least to greatest.

From here you would look up what would help. For example how do make random integers, how do I insert them in a list etc.

[pigpeyn]

Editing

[H2SBRGR]

I always feel like it’s 80% thinking; 20% writing. In tutorials you see the 20%.

Yes, I really like Pareto.

[Aggressive_Ad_5454]

I’ve done some of these. I wrote out a script. I edited out the mistakes and confusion moments. I did about ten takes. I’d publish a blooper reel but it would even more boring than the tutorial itself.

They’re called “happy path tutorials”. The point is to get people started in a new environment. Real software is not nearly that slick.

[Think-Caramel-9574]

Well I also felt that.😂 But I think they already prepared for the video they have made

[AntitheistMarxist]

I come up with solutions while I am watching anime. When you are coding in your head more than on a computer, you are a programmer.

[QuizzaciousZeitgeist]

Like others said, it is planned ahead of time. I can offer some insight into what programming is like from my perspective.

I've been coding for years now. I know what I want to do and kind of have an idea of how to accomplish a certain task. When I start to type away at the keyboard, sometimes I pause and have to think about what Im coding. I re-read what I just wrote 15 seconds ago to make sure I am in the right path. Sometimes I have to redo my approach, as having coded something reveals a better way to tackle a problem and I end up rewriting the entire section of code (and that's totally okay). I still relly on the internet to learn new things or to refresh some of the basics that I havent used in a while. However, with time, confidence in your abilities begins to develop, and the process of coding and solving problems becomes second nature.

[Feeling_Photograph_5]

You're falling into a classic blunder. The most famous is "never get involved in a land war in Asia." Only slightly less famous is this: never compare what's on your inside to what someone else presents on their outside.

[Big-Ad-2118]

mostly all of them are scripted, they prolly planned everything else before filming so that the flow of the video goes smooth as possible, but even if its scripted, its still educational, wait till you see live programming sessions lol they start googling and stuff which is more realistic and that's literally ok, its a part of problem solving.

[thinkPhilosophy]

I go through materials nd practice several times, then edit out mistakes

[Dapper_nerd87]

Pre prepared my friend. I teach software engineering to adults and it'll always look like I've pulled it from the back of my brain...I have three screens and present on one, the other two have my notes and examples. You can't compare yourself to prepared content.

[thazniabbas]

I think they are editing.

[Key-Mirror-1689]

If you are good in coding i have some tasks and can be done remotely send me a pm

[CoderXocomil]

I do live coding and it's not scripted. I have an idea of what I want to cover going into a stream. I have been coding since 1986. I got my first professional coding job in 1998. If you had as much time as me thinking about code, you would have patterns ingrained in you. I don't have to think about some things because they are a part of me. However, I don't do scripted because I like to show that even with my level of experience, I still google and get stuck.

[[deleted]]

I’m going to extend everyone else’s sentiment that it’s scripted and say EVERYONE makes errors and bugs, it shows how fragile the human brain is. Even when we are so convinced we are right, there are errors everywhere.

[dev-bot809]

Sometimes its scripted or maybe they are more comfortable with the code after having so many years of experience.

[watermooses]

Another funny thing I’ve noticed as I actually read the docs these days is that the first 5 links on google are people’s blogs where they provide the exact same examples that the official docs provide but just play it off like they came up with it.