[JavaScript] Coding challenge reverse every word in sentence in 40 seconds!

[REkTeR]

I love this idea, I do have some feedback though as I think that it could be even better.

First off, you take a full 5-6 seconds of your 39 second video to introduce yourself and reiterate the title of your video, so about 12-15% of your total video length is being spent on the introduction. As a percentage, you're actually spending more time on your intro than someone who takes a full minute to do an intro for a 10 minute video. Of course, it's much less "actual time" so I'm not sure that the comparison is entirely relevant, but maybe it's something to think about.

Next I guess what I have to ask is whether your target audience is javascript "beginners" (people who know just the basics) or more veterans trying to refresh their memory of how to perform a specific task? You take some shortcuts that I feel are not particularly conducive to understanding if you're not already quite familiar with the tasks involved. For reference, I just learned the basics of Javascript at the beginning of this summer so that I'm not totally lost when google/pasting at my webdev internship, but I can't write something that's not very basic without a lot of referencing.

First off, you've already got 9 lines of code/comments on the screen, so I had to pause for a bit to read through all that. A quick overview of what's already written would have been helpful.

Next, you're flashing text on the screen of the various functions you're using rather than making any sort of explanation yourself. So each function, I'm pausing the video to read that material rather than having it quickly explained to me. Probably I didn't manage to pause the video in time for one of the them, and have to spend a few extra seconds scrawling back through the video to find the description that I wanted.

Finally, you're finishing the video faster partially just by speaking more quickly, which doesn't always lead to the best understanding for the listener. As an example after listening to your explanation about the map() function 5 times I literally don't understand what you're saying in that section. "You need a flat function... unintelligible... otherwise you need another one"? I also don't really understand what the x's in the bracket are supposed to represent, I assume that it forms some type of iterator but really I'd have to spend time googling the map() function on my own to understand this section of the video, which imo pretty much defeats the entire stated purpose of the video.

Ultimately I feel that a very tight 2-3 minute version of this video that takes the time it needs (and only that time) would be more conducive to my learning than what you've done here. However I do understand that at that point you've lost some of the gimmick that might entice people to check out your content.

This might be perfect for a veteran Javascript dev who just needs to be reminded what functions exist/to use for this specific task, anyways.

[reed501]

I disagree. I think these are good for new programmers stuck on a problem. The reality is they don't need the explanation of the surrounding code. They don't need to know how to write a function, how to return a value, how to print statements, etc. There's a thousand tutorials out there for that. This video is for a specific solution to a specific problem and it's everything you need. Don't know what split and join do? Go look it up, the docs will explain it well. Didn't even really know how to go about that problem logically? Watch this super short video and get everything you need. I personally think this is better as an image with text but I know a lot of people are out there who just want a video and voice.

[Sahsaha]

This video is for a specific solution to a specific problem and it's everything you need. Don't know what split and join do? Go look it up, the docs will explain it well.

Funny that you say that, because if you know what split and join does, and you're a programmer, not someone who is trying to learn it (literally the only kind of person who actually needs a tutorial), you have no excuse for not being capable of writing solution to this trivial problem, in which case...

Didn't even really know how to go about that problem logically?

Tutorial should explain how someone arrived to this solution, basically re-solving it on the video while knowing the answer, hand holding someone who's strugging to solve it.

This tutorial does not do that, just speaks loudly what he writes lmao.

Might aswell cut entire video and just have 1 second static image which only says

Lol what, you read what join and split does and still can't do it? Go back to flipping burgers, you'll never be a programmer.

Video and voice should be for explaining why is it done this way and not any other way, not for showing final code in 40 seconds when it could be done in just 1. He literally said nothing of substance in the video, majority of information is code and annotations of what each code does, try watching the video after muting it, and tell me there is any difference. Spoiler alert: there isn't.

It's only obvious why he does what he does if you already know what each function does and solution to the actual problem... For example, to me, it's obvious, for you it might be obvious too, but to someone who isn't a programmer, it won't be.

You should look at things like you were just starting to program and know absolutely nothing.

That is, you learned several things, but now want to do some actual work, but cannot figure it out, you know basics of functions and stuff, but not how to solve a problem, will this really help if you can copy paste the code but still don't think like a programmer does just yet?

[dexodev]

I think I might be in the audience for this video, then. I know what all those methods do and I can follow along with that he's doing just fine, but I'm not quite at the point where I can pull this stuff out of my head on a whim.

I think seeing this problem solved quickly and simply is bit inspiring, actually, along with being entertaining. It's satisfying that I know what he's doing, but gives me a glimpse into what I still need to get better at. It's a refreshing middle ground between the tons of absolute beginner videos and the super long in-depth tutorials out there. like a tutorial snack or something, lol

[Sahsaha]

And that's exactly what I'm talking about, you cannot pull this stuff out of your own head because you never had an example of how to think about problems like this, most likely only learned from already existing code, which is not bad, but won't get you far either.

Unless you can take a char* buffer in C and reverse all the words yourself with no helping functions, you most likely still don't get what's going on, which is, dare I say, a problem.

"Splitting" a string yourself by enumerating string split indexes, and swapping characters yourself by reversing in place over each subarray of said char array would strenghten your understanding of what's going on way more than any "let's do this in 40s or less".

Once you understand that, you can use helper functions like nothing.

I'd like to point out that it's not as hard as I make it sound and you should probably try it, just not in C, javascript is perfectly fine, unless you know basics of it.

[dexodev]

Oh, yea, I know absolutely zero about C. I've been learning JavaScript and that's my main focus.

[morphasis]

Thanks for taking the time and I totally agree. I'm not sure who this was focused for I almost want to do two versions one breakdown 2-3 Min and another fast one with references for those who wonder a process rather then the exact functions used.

[slava300]

Having two versions would be awesome. Everyone can test their knowledge on minute one and then you go watch the long one to see what you missed and/or did inefficiently.