how to watch egghead screencasts

Joel Hooks
author
Joel Hooks
how to watch egghead screencasts

The primary purpose of egghead.io is to give you the opportunity for exposure to the sea of technology choices you need to make to stay relevant in your career as a web developer.

✅ egghead instructors are working professionals.

✅ egghead instructors are forward thinking.

✅ egghead instructors solve real problems with real tools.

✅ egghead instructors provide you with information-rich, concise summaries of the tools and techniques that are most valuable to them on the job.

But, here’s the thing…

egghead courses aren’t really meant to be code-along workshops. 🤯

egghead courses are meant to be practical, concise, in-depth, and most of all they are respectful of your limited learning time.

egghead courses are created to inform you so that you can make your own decisions about where to spend your precious time learning new tools and techniques.

egghead is your constant stream of “what’s next?” to help you level-up your career and make smart choices.

egghead gives you access to real-life in the trenches experience presented in a concise, information-rich, level of depth that you can leverage to make the best decisions.

egghead is a very real competitive advantage to you as a web developer. 🏁

When you are watching an egghead lesson, try to not code along in the first pass. Don’t pause the video constantly so that you can type what you see on the screen.

Watch the lesson. Take notes.

Then try to apply the example yourself in an environment like codesandbox.

If you’re watching a course, consider this approach.

⭐️ Watch all of the lessons without trying to type the code as it is presented!

⭐️ Take written notes of key information or things you’d like to look up and get more details on.

⭐️ When the course is complete, try out what you’ve learned. This is when you can use the individual lessons as a reference and return to the ones that you need to understand in more depth now that you’ve got the bigger picture.

Because of the concise nature of an egghead course, you can effectively treat it as an overview before you take a deep dive. You will gain more understanding of the topic, and decide if it is appropriate for you to pursue more in-depth practice and study.

Now, watch the course again if you'd like to code along, or better yet write a blog post summarizing what you've learned using your own example.

Sharing what you learn is one of the best ways to absorb and understand your new knowledge.

Try watching at 1.5-2x speed with subtitles.

The increased speed forces you to concentrate and you get the audio cues along with the visual cues of the code and subtitle text. This allows you to watch a half hour course in 15 minutes and you can’t even consider typing along with the code.

At the end of 15 minutes, you’ve got a really solid idea of if you want to pursue what you’ve just learned, and what you will do next.

In other words, you’ve leveled up and gained experience points that you can apply to future learning focus.

This approach allows you to survey the new hotness and understand how it affects you and your career in a space of time that fits your busy work schedule.

Please keep in mind that these are all just suggestions. You know how you learn best and can use egghead in the manner that you choose! egghead isn't here to be bossy about your personal approach, but it’s also important to us that you maximize your success as a web developer! 😀