For what it's worth, these are my files from coding out Dan Abramov's "Getting Started with Redux" at egghead.io. I also found this repo to be helpful. As is this
These files represent the state of the code at the end of the video. Where the code changed from the end of the start of the last one, I tried to add an intial folder.
I tried to get Dan's setup on JSBin to work but failed. I ended up setting it up locally. I am using Atom on Windows/Chrome. Of course Atom had to be set up to handle JSX and the files needed to be linked differently in the HTML.
In some ways I thought this was a wonderful video series, in some ways horrible.
Note: A common complaint I've heard is that Dan's accent is difficult to understand. I don't know, maybe I've just had a lot of experience with accents as I've worked in other parts of the world. Except for a few words here and there, I managed to use context to understand. And the links above have transcripts. I try to remind myself that if some is speaking with an accent, that is because they are speaking in their second (or third, or fourth) language for my benefit because I am not smart enough to speak their language so they do me the favor of speaking in mine. It is also important to remember that we are in an increasingly global economy and we will need to work with many different cultures. And there is too much golden information in these videos because a few words sound "funny".
- Dan has a nice teaching style, explaining everything clearly and thoroughly.
- It covers everything I wanted to know, methodically.
- I think that things were logically broken down into small, easily digestible videos.
Now, I know it is easy to sit on the sidelines and complain. Some of these are problems with the tutorial and some are problems with the interface. I can't stress how helpful these videos were to me. And this is a complex subject. However, as someone that is consuming a lot of teaching videos right now and who has a background in education, I make the following observations:
- It moves too fast! Many of us like to code along with tutorials and it was nearly impossible to keep up. I don't know if Dan is that fast of a typist or if he was speeding up the video while he recorded a voice-over. I assume it was the latter. I had to stop and hit pause and back up soooooo many times. I prefer tutorials that type as they explain so the pace is more reasonable and so they are forced to explain as they go, explaining exactly what they are typing. Additionally, those tutorials tend to stop to test as they go more often, making it easier to find bugs early.
- Sometimes you drop into a new video and the code has changed from the last video with no explanation. This should never happen in a tutorial series. Every change should be shown. Or, at least have a repo that give the starting code for each example. (Which I've tried to do here where needed.)
- Sometimes the voice over does not correspond to what is being typed. Again, I think it is the voice-over narration idea which allows the speaker to not be actively involved with what is being typed. This is a problem for people trying to code along - you are typing one thing or debugging your code but the narrator is saying something but making a completely unrelated change in the code - so you miss the code change.
- Leave space at the end of the video. A few times I was trying to catch the last change in the code but the video ended too early. It was fast typing and then everything got cut off .5 seconds after the typing was being done. Trying to pause it at exactly the right moment is difficult. Just leave 2-3 seconds before you cut it off.
- Similar to the last entry, don't scroll away immediately after finishing typing. Pause a second for us to see what the last few keystrokes are.
- Please number the videos in the title. It makes it much to difficult to keep track of where you are in the series. The interface did not index through the videos very well. There were times when I was repeating videos or had skipped videos and didn't realize it.
- The video "play button" overlay icon in the center of the screen? It's white. The background (the coding page) is white. Am I the only one that sees a problem here?
- In general, I found the interface to be a pain, especially on my tablet. I never knew if touching the screen was going to start/stop the video or toggle full screen. Sometimes I had to tap twice to pause the video, sometimes once. When finishing a video, it didn't automatically go to a new video and sometimes I had to back completely out of the site to find the next video.
- I would have put the "building from scratch" sections in another series. That kind of theoretical stuff is more intermediate level knowledge. I was still trying to understand what redux is and was getting bogged down in a theoretical understanding of how redux works. As a professional teacher, I like to control students' exposure to information so they aren't overwhelmed. If you're teaching me how to drive a car, don't explain how to build an engine. That's probably good knowledge eventually, but it clouds comprehension at this stage.
- I wish the build was more linear. There were too many "OK, we built it that way, now let's back up and build it a better way." It was very hard to follow. To the guy designing the app it may make sense, but to people struggling to follow these concepts in the first place it was a struggle to remember which section of which incarnation was being talked about. Maybe build different apps of gradually increasing complexity instead of constantly rebuilding the same app.
- Explain your setup. I tried doing it in JSBin but could not get it to work. It would have taken 30 seconds to explain how you set it up and saved a lot of hassle. Instead I spent 20 minutes trying to get it to work before doing it locally, creating new problems I have to solve. People shouldn't have to jump over unexplained hurdles to get to your tutorial.
Don't get me wrong. I found the series helpful, especially since there is so little good material out there on redux. But as an educator, I had some nitpicks.