Personally I don’t watch videos on software (except for skimming tutorials) since I prefer to learn about topics with written tutorials or Reddit. Software influencers have been on the rise for the past several years, everything from grifters claiming they can help you start an SWE career, to ones that make tutorials and showcases on software.
I’m more interested in hearing about the later. I came across found this discussion: What can we learn from Neovim’s rise in popularity? : emacs, with comments claiming that Youtubers like ThePrimeagen have helped a lot with making Neovim popular. I crossposted it to r/neovim and many so far many users there said that they found Neovim through ThePrimeagen’s videos.
Why is this being downvoted?
I hate watching videos. I have no interest in influencers. It might be good to know what their impact is given I won’t know myself, since I always opt out.
I don’t see the intersection set of people who use neovim and people who watch influencers would be somewhat big. It’s probably closer to an empty set. Neovim users are a subset of Vim users, which is already kinda niche to be influenced by some Youtuber.
I honestly was persuaded to start using neovim (again) because of theprimegean. I don’t like his content, but I was so tired of VS Code being so fucking slow and not part of the terminal. I used vim a lot, but with too many plugins it slows to a crawl. So when theprimegean talked about neovim, I was like great, yeah, I should try that. And then a few videos later I blocked his chanel because, yeah, it’s not great.
I don’t know who he is but it seems you were already in a searching for an alternative, he just did his part I guess. :) Corpos nowadays almost only use VS Code (and some force people to use it), free devs can use whatever they want. This popularity of Neovim is for that. It’s a fraction and very relative. The fact that VS Code sucks is for a different topic.
I wouldn’t complain about using VSCode if the team i was on primarily used it (a la Typescript). But yeah, I’m glad I am more independent… And not doing web dev.
CRYPT-- oh, you mean how the nice tutorial peeps have affected us.
Vimjoyer has increased the adoption rate for flakes on NixOS. And also NixOS use in general.
Mental Outlaw has probably contributed to new Gentoo users, quoth the meme, but Gentoo is still a dying breed compared to its heyday in the early naughts.
Fireship has made people – particularly CS students I believe – more comfortable with trying out new programming languages. (The “I’ll check out the Fireship video first” approach. But then again, ChatGPT has arguably had the same effect across undergraduates… that’s a digression)
Asahi Lina’s longform Rust dev work, while less of a network effect, has had its own substantial effects within the Asahi Linux “Linux on the M-series” sphere. I believe she also helped port a kind of anime mocap engine onto Linux, which could over the longterm boost the anime-nerd Linux-nerd center Venn diagram. But that’s speculation.
edit:
In a broader perspective, with the combination of SteamOS and large YouTubers trying out Linux, Linux desktop adoption will probably increase more than it has now. I doubt it will pass 10% though with Linux’s reputation (tech nerds, compile all day, games don’t run, command line – even though these are improving, it’s hard to kick)
- Linus Tech Tips - “Linux HATES Me - Daily Driver Challenge Pt.1”
- SomeOrdinaryGamers - “I Installed The Hardest System Known To Man…”
- not gonna lie I ignored this clickbait but he has “gamers” in his name so he’s probably a gamer
If we’re talking about people who simply make video content about software development, then the biggest impact I see is a bigger reach for any tool that needs to be seen in action or simply sounds too strange on paper. In recent years HTMX was probably affected the most.
I see that a lot of people boil it down to tutorials, but there is so much more content about software development.