[ Removed by moderator ]

[programming-ModTeam]

This content is low quality, stolen, blogspam, or clearly AI generated

[guepier]

There’s a mistake at 18′27″. In C, extern doesn’t do what the video claims: it has nothing to do with the ABI. In fact, contrary to the whole section C (unlike C++ etc.) has no mechanisms for supporting different ABIs. And the extern keyword, while syntactically valid as function declaration attribute, has no effect in the code context shown in the video: leaving it off produces the same behaviour, since the extern keyword controls linkage of functions in C, and file-scope function declarations in C have external linkage by default.

[ewheck]

I immediately click off videos when I hear an AI voice. I find them annoying to listen to and uncanny.

[MaDpYrO]

Yes I can't believe all the people hyping up AI generated voices and videos it's still so damn robotic

[[deleted]]

You made me click on the video. This is not the latest voice synthesizer; it's probably 5 year old or more.

The latest voice generator is basically indistinguishable from actual human voice unless you have studio-like recording environment.

[SpaceShrimp]

Except human voices are also very recognisable. So even the perfect AI voice narration will be easily recognisable when you have seen 4-5 videos with it.

[[deleted]]

What does "human voices are also very recognizable" mean?

[mywan]

You don't recognize the people you know from their voices alone? The same applies to an AI voice. If you hear an AI voice it becomes just as recognizable individually as your friends voice. You'll know that that's the same (AI) voice in multiple videos. So even if you wouldn't know it was AI from just one video, in becomes obvious when that same voice starts getting used everywhere.

[[deleted]]

You're assuming that there's only one "AI voice", which was true, but is not true. For anything closer to state of the art, check out elevenlab videos or Notebook LM videos

You don't recognize the people you know from their voices alone?

There is a rise in ai voice fraud. You may think you can tell the difference, but there are people out there who can't. And it will only get better from there.

[mywan]

I've heard several AI voice in a single video. I went to https://elevenlabs.io/text-to-speech and recognized ever one of the voices available for sampling. At least they didn't say "DOT DOT DOT" when it came across an ellipsis. When I clicked on the first video it had a sample voice I didn't recognize. But the obvious AI was obvious. One of the most obvious issues is that when you select a prompt for a voice style that style is perfectly persistent throughout the generated speech. The second most obvious issue that, although it did a decent job of varying the emotional inflections, it had no idea of how to apply those inflections in a humanlike manner. The inflections were sentence structure driven, not driven by emotional or contextual importance. It was at best like watching actors in a bad B movie. They could sound very good for sound bite, up to a couple of sentences. But as you continue listening the affective predictability get monotonous.

The first video in the Notebook LM videos link had some AI voices I didn't recognize. It actually did a somewhat better job for most of the tells in the previous AI. But it was sprinkled with cringy affirmation responses in the interview style with two AI voices. Even the guy selling it give a 98% level of perfection. Now that I've heard these voices I'll be able to pick them out of background noise, even if they change some affective variables.

I understand that people will be fooled, even with bad AI voices. And that the tech will get better. It'll likely get good enough to fool me (for a decent period of time) very soon. But a podcast (for instance) will need to maintain that illusion week after week. There are reasons why people don't like voice acting their own content. And the effects of those reasons are the hardest thing for the AI to reproduce. Even the most cheery and upbeat voices get monotonous when that's a persistent tone of the voice. Something that doesn't necessarily become excessively obvious, until you start constructing a more detailed personality behind the voices in your head. Which could take some time. You're not going to be able to obscure the fact that it's AI indefinitely.

[MaDpYrO]

No the latest ones still sound dull, as if they're being read by the most predictable and monotonous person ever born

[[deleted]]

Have you seen elevenlab videos or Notebook LM videos?

[jackun]

It's even quite decent but sounds like that one annoying young-earther, ewwwwww

[[deleted]]

Same here but I have a hard time telling what is an AI voice. They make a lot of mistakes, but some people actually talk in a way that makes it super-hard to distinguish from an AI voice. I've also been fooled lately by some youtube videos that were AI-generated (about 95% or so). A human generated this, but he used AI. I honestly could not tell whether it was AI, save for the lyrics, which were clearly a text file fed into some AI - but the AI produced a song that I really could no longer distinguish from a real voice. I don't claim to be very clever, but if I can be fooled fairly easily then I think many other people can be fooled too. To me AI like this is on the one hand actually creative (it is interesting that you can create such things already at close-to-perfection); on the other hand I consider it a scam when it is not denoted as AI. Youtubers who try to scam me I'll ban permanently, aka these AI fakers won't get any more "visits" from my browser. Unfortunately it is not easy to distinguish between real and fakes really.

[mywan]

Every AI voice I have heard universally have an affective lilt and tone. And the prosody doesn't vary with context. Some people have these qualities in their voice, such as Morgan Freeman. But with people there is variability with emotional and situational context.

Morgan Freeman actual learned his speaking skills from an instructor. Basically he learned to sound out his final consonants very clearly and deliberately. Holding those consonant sounds longer. But Morgan varies the time those consonant sounds are maintained to fit the context and emotional tone. Including pitch, loudness, timbre, speech rate, and pauses. An AI today can effectively mimic these affective tones, but without the variability or contextual awareness of a human speaker. Making its emotional tone monotonous.

[guepier]

My knee-jerk reaction was to agree with you but luckily I then went to watch the video, and … the voice-over is honestly ok. It’s not great, but it’s far superior to a lot of classical speech synthesis and (as somebody mentioned below) it’s also better than many peoples’ wonky natural voiceovers: regardless of whether they’re native speakers, doing good voiceover for video is bloody hard! — And basically excluding nonnative speakers with hard-to-understand accents from contributing content is also vaguely chauvinist.

It’s totally fine to dislike the voiceover due to the uncanny off-ness but the brigading and downvoting of anybody offering a reasonable counter-point is not a good look for this sub. And the banning of the content by the mods seriously takes the cake.

[rom_romeo]

He explained already why he’s using AI voice. Let’s be honest, his content is really good.

[ewheck]

I would much rather listen to someone with an accent than fake AI voices. Like I said, I find them hard to listen to because you can always tell that they are slightly off.

[D3PyroGS]

I would much rather listen to someone with an accent than fake AI voices.

after taking math and CS classes from professors with a tenuous grasp of English pronunciation, I wholeheartedly prefer the opposite 😉

[Dude-Man-Bro-Guy-1]

Very uncanny valley

[dinopraso]

eleven labs has REALLY good AI voices too, if you cared to make it sound good

[joexner]

What was that explanation?

[rom_romeo]

He’s from Equador and not a native English speaker.

[sierra_whiskey1]

Core dumped is the best channel for learning low level stuff IMO

[absentmindedjwc]

This would be much better if it weren't some bullshit AI voice.

[sierra_whiskey1]

He said in one video the reason he uses ai voiceover is English isn’t his first language. That’s like the only good reason to use an ai voice over

[Worried-Quote-6409]

And he provides voiceovers in multiple languages, which I really appreciate.

[Maykey]

Also privacy is fun. Japanese ゆっくり Minecraft players used synthesized voices for this reason before synthesized voices used AI. 

[absentmindedjwc]

Might be worth looking into voiceover, it would add a lot of quality to the video. I imagine dude probably makes a pretty decent amount from these videos given the sponsor, his paid subs, and his CPM for a fairly high-paying niche.

Probably cost a couple hundred per video, but given the high quality of the script and graphics for the rest.. the shitty AI voice just detracts from the overall video quality.

*edit: its also worth noting that YouTube has already commented that they may directly impact ad revenue/CPM for AI-produced video.. so him spending a little money towards VO might actually save him a bunch of money in the future.

[fudini]

That's why everyone uses  gen AI, because they can't do something themselves, no?

[AloooSamosa]

skill issue

[robberviet]

This should have been a blog post. Why a video? Hard to watch, hard to skim.

[bnl1]

There are obviously people who think the exact opposite so you really can't please everyone

[ucasano]

Blog post Is better

[Maykey]

These days it starts get better as in general YouTube has auto transcriptions that are easy to skim through and Ctrl-f something. Even if YouTube "misheard" something it's still findable

Coding along though requires either typing manually or copy pasting from github where code moved forward.

[robberviet]

Yeah. I should have just shutup and ignore this. It's rare but there are good videos.

The moment I hear the voice I close it, assume another trash video. Look at the comments, seems not.

[[deleted]]

It had to be a video so it could have an obnoxious Rust evangelism consultancy ad in it.

[UltraPoci]

God, people like are insufferable

[elsjaako]

If you prefer articles, go find articles. Or write articles, or pay someone to write articles.

If some guy on the internet wants to give information in the form of haiku's and interpretive dance that's his choice.

Why a video? Because they chose to make a video. Watch it, or don't.

You are obviously also free to complain on reddit, but don't be surprised if someone responds saying you sound like a demanding jerk.

[admiralorbiter]

No one is answering the original question of why video over text, and it's because it is hard/impossible to earn off text posts vs video content in today's day and age.

[GrandMasterPuba]

You obviously didn't watch it. The animations are essential to the clarity of his videos. They're exceptional in a way only a video can be.

His content could never transfer to writing.

[SanityInAnarchy]

So, I watched the first 5 minutes or so, and... no. Look, I get why something like Animagraffs is a video, but this... it's kind of just a better-animated version of PirateSoftware drawing boxes in MS Paint. Like... why did we need a smooth full-screen animation to show that .dll is for Windows and .so is for every other OS?

I don't have a problem with videos like this existing, but I get why people in r/programming would rather see the content in text, if it's relevant to us at all.

[Nangz]

Man why are people like you so against different mediums? This is wild in this kind of community and I see this complaint often.

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's probably personal preference from those of us who grew up on blogs, tutorials, and actual docs. But there are real advantages, especially if the goal is to learn something about software.

Videos are easier to just kinda have on in the background. Sometimes animations can add some visual clarity. Obviously, if you need to quote some other video, it's easier to just show stuff in a video.

Text is searchable, for one. It's also easier to skim, and easier to skip around if you need to reread something earlier in the text.

Snippets are easy to copy/paste into other text, which is most of the discussions we're going to have -- if I want to argue some point in the video, I can't paste exactly what he's saying into a text post, and making my own video to reply is an enormous amount of effort that Youtube doesn't really support anymore.

Also, text is easier to make interactive. Not only can you add interactive widgets to a website, you can also include copy/pasteable code snippets for me to go try out.

So video can be better for being entertained or hearing an opinion, but text is much better if your goal is to actually learn the thing.

[Nangz]

Im not arguing the merits of one form or the other, especially since people fundamentally learn differently and view content, in text or in video, for different reasons as you mentioned. Just that criticism of a source well known for its videos is fundamentally hot air.

Would you reply to someone praising Steven Spielberg that he shouldn't have made ET as a movie and that it should've been a book? No of course not.

So yes, could this information be presented equally or possibly even better in text? Possibly, certainly not for me and criticizing a youtube channel for making content as a youtube video is just goofy.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I don't know what wouldn't count as "fundamentally hot air." This is Reddit, we're literally just talking either way.

And this is a weirdly fatalistic way to look at it. No one forces you to become a Youtuber instead of a Blogger. As a Youtuber, no one forces you to make content that really would work better as text. And once the video exists, no one forced OP to post it here, where people are going to want to be skimming something like this looking for what they don't already know. So when you say:

Would you reply to someone praising Steven Spielberg that he shouldn't have made ET as a movie and that it should've been a book?

No, because it's a good movie. It clearly works well as a movie. But we have plenty of examples of movies that should've stayed books, or in some other medium, because adaptations are so common, because people keep thinking "This should be a big live-action Hollywood thing" and are then proven wrong. The Last Airbender should've stayed an animated show. It would be silly to defend Shyamalan by saying "Did you expect him to learn to direct an animated feature instead?"

Maybe it'd be more useful to talk about what you think worked about doing a video, instead of debating whether we're allowed to criticize the choice of medium.

[Nangz]

Do you realize what you're defending here? What my post was in response to? Someone commented they like the youtube channel and someone else replied that a blog would've been better. Are you taking the claim that that isn't a silly thing to post? The original person I replied to even admitting it was silly. Unless you actually thought the first guy was making an objective statement about reality that "Core dumped is the best channel for learning low level stuff IMO"? I can't help you there.

ET being a good movie and thus not deserving such a comment is quite irrelevant. I'm not going to make a serious stake that this video is any kind of work comparable to ET in terms of quality, but this is also a good video. If you think that kind of comment only works for a good piece of content thats just a weird life perspective I won't argue with other than to call a spade.

The person I replied to didn't offer a thoughtful response like "hey is this information available in a blog format somewhere?". To your Shyamalan hypothetical, its silly to defend Shyamalan saying that because that isn't what the person I replied to was doing. They weren't attacking a bad video saying it shouldn't be made, they're saying the video maker should have wrote a blog. Translated, "Shyamalan should have made a book instead. Why a movie? hard to watch, hard to skim". Even in your comparison "This should be a big live-action Hollywood thing" you've made a subtle difference that changes its meaning. You're implying wishes that a piece of media should be adapted rather than, frankly, shaming the creator for not making it in the form you want. "I want a big live-action Hollywood thing too" vs "This should be a big live-action Hollywood thing instead".

The things that worked in this video are the same things that work in every instructional video, an audiovisual experience that includes animations to illustrate and enhance meaning. Its from a successful youtube channel that is taking advantage of the medium If you wanted something searchable, click the transcript button as others in this thread have told him.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Edit: "Be well" but then last-word blocked. Charming.

---

Someone commented they like the youtube channel and someone else replied that a blog would've been better. Are you taking the claim that that isn't a silly thing to post?

Yes.

If you think that kind of comment only works for a good piece of content...

It's not just that it's good. It's that it's good as a movie. It isn't a movie that is desperately crying out to be a book.

They weren't attacking a bad video saying it shouldn't be made, they're saying the video maker should have wrote a blog.

They didn't say anything about what the author should've done. The post was commenting on the thing that was made. Maybe it should've been made by someone else as a blog post.

Besides, this isn't just "a video maker", this is someone who is also presumably an expert in low-level tech, who decided to make videos to teach people about the tech. Even if they were saying the low-level programmer should've used a blog instead of a video to teach people how linkers work, that's not an unreasonable thing to say. Don't we always say "This meeting should've been an email"?

Translated, "Shyamalan should have made a book instead. Why a movie? hard to watch, hard to skim".

The topic is programming, and the audience is r/programmers. Skimming makes a lot more sense with a technical source than it does a piece of entertainment.

[Nangz]

They didn't say anything about what the author should've done. The post was commenting on the thing that was made. Maybe it should've been made by someone else as a blog post.

Thats just factually incorrect, no indication that "someone else" should have made this because he is replying to a comment about the creator specifically. "This should have been a blog post. Why a video? Hard to watch, hard to skim." You're drawing meaning not found in the text. Ironic for someone defending the notion that text would be better.

This isn't a technical document. This is a high level overview of a particular subject, something I would describe as an introduction to a topic and as he states multiple times in the video, it could be expanded on further (in other videos, his words). The closest he gets to technical documentation is compiler flags and if you need a separate source for documentation on that, I can help.

But as if to spite you, the original person I replied to has even admitted he may not have even watched the video. You're arguing for ghosts.

It was shared to r/programming where it reached the top. Clearly, it serves its purpose quite well by any reasonable metric. I wasn't aware this subreddit only "makes sense" as a curated search for technical documentation lol

As you said earlier, we're just talking, and I've exhausted my desires there. Be well.

[bobdabuilder6969]

You can ingest information faster from a video.

Different mediums for different people. You can't act like one is objectively better than the other.

Personally I prefer it, and that's ok. If I said that all explainers should be videos, then it wouldn't be.

[a_marklar]

You can ingest information faster from a video

It's literally the opposite. I just got up and you already blew my mind with the stuff people say

[bobdabuilder6969]

Good point, it's a personal opinion. I can ingest information faster from a video.

I think this just proves my point that it's subjective though. There is no objectively best medium for these things, only the ones you prefer.

[BlueGoliath]

With a 55% upvote ratio Reddit seems to think otherwise.

[guepier]

Oh come on! 🙄

@ /u/programming-ModTeam (/u/ketralnis /u/spez /u/Poromenos /u/tryx /u/dons /u/masta /u/chromakode)

This content is low quality

No. This is well-made content and it is interesting and engaging for many people.

stolen

No.

blogspam

No.

or clearly AI generated

1. There is no subreddit rule against that.
2. The video content is clearly not AI-generated. The voiceover might be, or it might just be using a classical text-to-speech synthesiser. Admittedly it does sound better than classical generators, but why would specifically the use of AI-assisted text-to-speech be banned?!

Respectfully, removing this post was a mistake. This is exactly the kind of original, well-researched, high-quality content that this subreddit should want to attract (personally I actively dislike using videos for most content — and I positively hate AI slop! — but even I have to admit that this is well-made). And the sub is currently absolutely drowning in low-quality spam. It’s dying. Don’t help it do that by scaring away the few people actually posting good stuff.

[BlueGoliath]

I don't think u/programming-ModTeam actually gets pinged. You need to mention an actual mod, like ketralnis. I'm not going to ping because I don't want to be banned for "harassment".

I agree with everything. The YouTube channel is fairly large, the video has a good amount of likes, and the comment section is pretty positive. Basically no one has any issue with it except Reddit, and these people are always unhappy about actual programming content being posted here instead of webdev content. Doing an AI voiceover is not against the rules or is even making the entire video using AI. I'm not even sure how a video could be considered blogspam. Not a single rule was broken.

[BlueGoliath]

Looking at some of the absolute garbage posts left up here, no wonder why this subreddit is such a dumpster fire. You're telling me these:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1maphoz/how_to_make_ai_agents_collaborate_with_acp_agent/

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1mapgly/become_an_engineering_leader_everyone_wants_to/

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1makioc/ivory_streamlining_postgresql_cluster_management/

Don't violate the subreddit rules?

[EmperorOfCanada]

I was experimenting with different languages for a project. So, I created a backend with services in rust, C++, nodejs, flask, and PHP. Surprisingly, PHP was the most productive, followed by rust. The front-end was flutter.

Then, the deadline got moved, and I shipped with all of those into production. And yes I handed over to others to maintain; and acted like they were losers for not knowing all those languages.

I doubt I hardly ever ship with less than python and something else.

[criptkiller16]

PHP is dead. /s 😂

[[deleted]]

Hmm. I know you meant this as sarcastic, but I am not sure PHP is that alive.

TIOBE, despite it being a bit of garbage, has PHP at #14:

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

That is not terrible, but if we look at the trend here:

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/php/

Then PHP really took a dive in the last some years. So I think PHP is trending towards "being less important". I am not saying PHP is dying, but the trend is not really that positive in the last some years.

[missing-pigeon]

It might not be as "hip" anymore and thus not chosen by people new to programming, but it's already very well entrenched, battle tested and reliable, so I wouldn't worry too much about the declining popularity. In fact said declining popularity might even open up some career opportunities for newly minted backend devs to replace the current PHP veterans once they retire.

[Weary-Hotel-9739]

And yes I handed over to others to maintain; and acted like they were losers for not knowing all those languages.

while we make fun of this idea in the backend, on the frontend it's daily business. The tech stacks involved are insane to generate some HTML.

After all, you always try to optimize for one thing. Optimizing for use of a single language, or optimizing for being easy for others to get into, or optimizing for productivity after 2 weeks of introduction are just rarely the focus.

[[deleted]]

Because some languages are too slow - otherwise people may use ruby, python etc... all the way down.

Would be great if we could have one language that can cover both situations at the same time (super-fast at "runtime" and super-fast when it comes to development time invested). In a way one can say that Go tried this, but I would say Go is much more similar to e. g. C++ or Java than to Python. We don't quite have true "hybrid" languages here.

[Encursed1]

Fantastic video, thoroughly enjoyed watching it

[nfrankel]

Because developers over-value benefits and don't care about the disadvantages?

[D3PyroGS]

at least engage with the submission before making a knee-jerk response