7 YouTube Channels That Will Help You To Become A Better Frontend Programmer
With how fast the frontend programming landscape is changing, many people complain that they're tired of feeling like they're falling behind on the latest frontend trends. If working on side projects after work and on weekends doesn't sound like your cup of tea, there's a much less demanding alternative – Tech YouTube.
In this article, I'm going to highlight seven best YouTube channels that not only provide valuable insight and information about frontend programming but also make it fun and engaging.
The Primeagen
Prime is the chaotic good of the tech YouTube.
By watching his videos, you can learn how to edit code blazingly fast with Vim, how to write high-performance web servers in TypeScript, and why rewriting them in Rust is always the best idea. He makes a lot of comparisons, performance profiling and talks about software engineering in general, that can help you grow fast as a developer.
Apart from strictly technical stuff, Prime also talks a lot about the struggles and challenges of software engineering. He is a highly experienced developer that works at Netflix, and has been through a lot. Having battled ADHD and addiction, he has many inspiring and unique life lessons to share.
Whether you are an experienced software engineer or just starting out, you will benefit from following this channel. That's a great youtube channel to start your learning journey, however, Prime's slightly chaotic personality may need a little getting used to :)
Andrew Burgess
Andrew Burgess is a real gem on TypeScript-related YouTube.
Even though his channel is not one of the most popular YouTube channels out there, the quality of his videos and explanations are outstanding. I wish I could choose such excellent examples for my tutorials!
Andrew releases a new youtube video every week. He talks about concrete, often lesser-understood features of TypeScript, such as discriminating unions, generics, or the satisfies keyword. He also talks about developer productivity, cool open source tools, and he has a few videos where he gives some tips about writing shell scripts.
I would recommend this channel if you are a TypeScript developer, but feel like you are missing some in-depth understanding of more advanced concepts and techniques.
Theo
Theo is known for his strong and sometimes controversial opinions on software engineering.
But there is often pure gold beneath the clickbait thumbnails and titles. As a former Twitch engineer and now CEO of Ping.gg, he is an experienced full stack web developer. In his videos, he often uses real-life cases to back up his opinions, which is not so obvious on a platform where anyone can upload videos.
His youtube channel features short videos on full-stack TypeScript, Next.js, React, and coding patterns. The technical videos are interspersed with content about tech news, drama commentary, and industry predictions.
He's also a vocal proponent of what's known as the T3 stack, which is a template for building a production-ready full-stack application with amazing developer experience. The stack consists of TypeScript, Next.JS, tRPC, NextAuth.js, Prisma, and Tailwind CSS.
Theo churns out new videos on an almost daily basis. Even if some of his thumbnails are a bit over the top, I'd say his channel is worth checking out.
Fireship
Fireship is the king of creating fast-paced, easy-to-digest, and often humorous videos about tech.
His most popular series is 100 Seconds of Code, where he introduces various technologies like languages, databases, or tools, explains the problem they solve, and how to get started – all in 100 seconds. In another series called The Code Report, he gives a light-hearted overview of the latest trends and recent events in the tech world. He covers topics ranging from CSS tricks and front-end frameworks, to choosing the best language for data science and creative ideas for AI-powered startups.
This is the most popular youtube channel on this list, with nearly 2 million subscribers, and for a good reason. Fireship doesn't waste viewers' time, he gets right to the point, and his videos are extremely well-researched and edited.
What I really like about this channel is that Fireship gives great overviews of a lot of technology in a fun and concise way, so I can decide later if something is worth looking into.
If I had to choose just one channel to stay up to date with new frontend trends and have a lot of fun at the same time, I would 100% choose Fireship.
Matt Pocock
Watching Matt’s videos will make you a TypeScript wizard.
His channel is literally a knowledge mine when it comes to this language. He gives quick tips, deep dives into advanced topics, introduces interesting libraries, resources, recaps new TypeScript releases, and more!
I like how many of his videos are created in direct response to feedback he gets from his largeTwitter communityof developers. As a result, his tutorials and tips solve real pain points that people have when working with TypeScript in their jobs.
Matt is truly passionate about his role as an educator. In fact, he recently left Vercel to pursue content creation full-time. As he caters to developers of all skill levels, there is something of interest for everyone to learn from his YouTube channel.
Jack Herrington
Jack's channel is all about stepping up your React game.
He talks about hooks, rendering, common mistakes, libraries, and more. Besides React videos, you can find comparisons between frameworks like Vue, Svelte, or SolidJS. Another interesting niche he sometimes touches on is micro-frontends.
What makes this channel different from the other YouTube channels on this list is that most of Jack's videos are fairly long deep dives. Instead of showing slides or ready-made examples, Jack writes code from start to finish during the video. A great advantage of this approach is that you can see the obstacles he encounters along the way and how he solves them.
I think this channel is invaluable for beginner web developers, because watching Jack's videos feels like pair programming with a senior developer.
Bonus: Gary Simon AKA DesignCourse
In an ideal world, every front-end team would have a dedicated designers, or even a design team. Designs would include all possible states of the UI, all interactions would be carefully described, and the user experience would be tested with real users using mockups before implementation.
Well, I don't know about you, but I've yet to work on such a project. Enter Gary Simon. Although he is a UI/UX designer and not a web developer, I think following his channel could be extremely beneficial if you want to take your front-end skills to the next level. Being able to simply write code that implements some designs is one thing. But being able to spot UI inconsistencies or sub-optimal user flows and come up with the complex concepts and sensible solutions to fix them will make you a much more valuable team member.
There are many different types of videos on Gary's great YouTube channel. For example, short ones that focus on specific parts of the UI, such as forms, maps, or navigation bars. However, one series that I find particularly valuable for front-end programmers is called "Negative Space". These are longer streams in which Gary reviews his subscribers' designs and often quickly redesigns them. As he does so, he shares his exact reasoning with the viewers.
Watching Gary Simon work on designs is a quick way to learn the basics of design for free, which is an incredibly valuable skill for any web developer.
Summary
Did you find any of these youtube channels particularly interesting? Or maybe I missed your favorite? Let us know in the comments and help other youtube users discover more channels with video tutorials tailored for frontend development.
