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Taking over DevTips


Good Friday morning this is an extra

episode with some huge huge news this is

finally happening it finally happened

this is the official announcement for

something that I we’ve been working on

for over a year

well it’s almost exactly one year okay

here yes here’s the thing

me and David have you seen on channel a

couple times we are taking over

one of the biggest programming channels

on YouTube

damn tips so this little YouTube

business of ours is now multi channel

this is massive massive news

the combined subscriber power of the

orphan phone function and dev tips

together is over 400,000 people four

hundred thousand like there are okay so

to put that in perspective there are 56

countries in the world that have a

smaller population than that

including Iceland suck it Iceland okay

this is gonna be me talking a lot in

this video rambling but the most most

important thing to get out of the way

should you subscribe to deb tips we’re

still experimenting with content but the

general idea is that dev tips is going

to have two types of contents that fun

fun function does not the first one is

videos for beginners fun election

doesn’t have that and videos about truly

like libraries and frameworks and stuff

like that

when i make videos for fun fun function

i imagine people a person a developer

that is about one year into their first

full-time job they’re like that’s just a

persona there are a lot of people that

have more or less experience at that

that’s that’s the archetype that I

imagined when I’m making the content

convert function is also very focused on

teaching general programming concepts

like programming programming so it

doesn’t spend a lot of time teaching

specific libraries or specific

frameworks and stuff like that doesn’t

mean that’s bad it’s just not what fun

fun function is about however it’s

really cool to do both of those things

beginning videos and and tooling videos

so we have decided that dev tips at

least initially that’s going to be an

outlet for that that way fun for

function and depth tips they complement

each other so probably the more early on

you are in your programming journey the

more likely it is that you are going to

appreciate the content that we put out

on dev tips if that sounds like your

thing you can subscribe to dev tips

there there’s also a link in the

description that’s the most important

stuff out of the way the rest of this

video is going to be me talking about

behind the scenes stuff why all this

happened why are we taking over dev tips

who’s David really what is the strategy

moving forward if that stuff doesn’t

interest you then that’s perfectly fine

that’s meta fun fun function stuff just

skip this video and come back on Monday

for the regularly scheduled programming

but if you are still here I am now going

to vent because this has been a big

secret since last year and I really hate

keeping secrets it is the worst and I’m

so glad so glad that I can finally talk

about this there is a corresponding

announcement video on dev tips where

Travis the the previous owner of dev

tips talks about why this is happening

he also does an interview with me and

David so you might want to look at that

if you’re interested but I also wanted

to make a video here that is more from

the perspective of fun fun function and

more towards you the fun

audience what is depth tips deb tips is

a huge programming channel it’s it’s

bigger than funfun function it’s older

than one function has over a quarter of

a million subscribers it has been run by

Travis Nielsen who is a designer that

knows coding the channel was actually

originally called dev tips for designers

the production quality of dev tips has

been consistently stellar Travis is very

good at video production when I started

from production about three years ago

there was basically no competition when

it came to production quality except dev

tips so that meant that I kind of set

dev tips as my my bar to reach where the

production quality of fun for function

like that is the level that we have to

hit this got Travis this amazing this

is so amazing I’m gonna live kind

of hate him that it’s how good I want to

be but jealousy that’s a very good

motivator for me but why but why take

over another channel how does fun fun

function fit with dev tips why not just

focus on one channel almost exactly one

year from today

Travis reached out to me on via private

message on Twitter at that point dev

tips had been on a hiatus for a couple

of months so I kinda sort of guessed

from his message where this was going

and when I talked to him I got my

suspicions confirmed that he was indeed

looking for someone to take over death

tips properly like pick up the torch

Travis had been recently been employed

by Google and he was career wise he was

getting a lot out of that

and dev tips wasn’t a good fit in his

life as it had been previously but

Travis is he’s like this is really great

I he also felt this very strong sense of

duty towards his audience when you build

something like a YouTube channel that

such a massive amount of work and such a

big relationship with with so many

people that expect your content if you

produced and haven’t liked your content

it’s it does something with you even

when you feel like you can’t do it you

want that thing to live on I can really

really understand that feeling so he he

wanted someone he wanted that to live on

or on under good stewardship someone

that he trusted would make sure that dev

tips lived on in kind of the same

fashion not that it was form then like

with our touch of course but I not lose

the spirit of that tips from my

perspective like a business strategic

perspective taking over dev tips made of

course a lot of sense to be perfectly

honest it’s kind of like the an offer

that is stupid to refuse as I talked

about before the the target developer of

fun fun function is a developer that is

sort of one year into their first job a

lot of the stuff on the channel is

pretty advanced like we do I have a

monad video also on fun fun

function I try to focus a lot on the

fundamentals of programming like what is

composition how do we modularize

software what’s a func door so I have

boy did stuff like specific tooling like

angular jQuery stuff like that basically

if funfun function had been about making

movies it would have been more about

filmmaking how to frame shots rather

than talking about cameras so dev tips

kind of revealed itself as this place

where maybe we could put the

beginner stuff here and maybe we could

do some tooling things here on this

channel it felt like it could be a

really great compliment to find

malfunctioning but there was a tiny

drawback of taking over another channel

and that meant that I would die heart

attack

space die explosion because at the point

when I was talking to started talking to

Travis I was very far from I was still

pretty far from doing fun her function

as a full-time job the patron had not

launched yet I still very much had a job

a part-time job but still job the

prospect of taking over and and running

another channel just seemed unthinkable

weird no I could not do that on my own

and that is where David comes in who is

David do you’ve seen David on the

channel a couple of times unlike me he’s

actually a real engineer by trade but

for the last few years all right you

know a lot of the last years he’s been

working as a data analyst while doing

this video I calculated that have

actually known David for 15 years that’s

bonkers we started our first company

together when we both turned 18 which

was the legal age to start a company and

we’ve had a few businesses since David

is one of those people that’s those very

few people in your life that I would

just easily trust with my life is so

reliable and I communicate very very

well with him those two things are very

very good to look for when you’re

looking for someone to run a business

with

and we’ve been talking on and off trying

to figure out what if there is a such a

business that we could do together like

what’s the next big thing that we could

do so when Travis offered me to take

over dam tips that turned into this very

obvious opportunity like it was time it

was time to grow from from function

beyond one person and beyond one channel

or to something bigger and that is where

we are now we are officially going

multi-channel it’s very scary we don’t

know if this works but if it does there

might be more shows in the future with

more posts any thoughts or ideas and

reflections that you have or questions

just post them down below can’t reply to

everyone but we read them all I am LBJ

telling Bombay thanks [Music]

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