How I Created A ‘Create Your First Go Application with GoLand’ Video
TL:DR
(Skip to avoid Spoilers)
- Spotted a blogpost that JetBrains was looking for a Developer Advocate, so created my own version of Creating your first Java application with IntelliJ IDEA by Trisha Gee, but for GoLand
A Brief Retrospective
I was digging through Golang Weekly and saw a job ad for an advocacy role at JetBrains specifically around GoLand, which then linked to Trisha Gee’s Being a Developer Advocate at Jetbrains.
This shined a light on the Developer Advocacy space within Jetbrains and the areas I may need to work on.
I'll also pass onto a few of my friends who feel nervous about trying to enter this space the section about ‘A Call to Women’ as it'll hopefully help them to see they should give it a try.
Now if you recall, two weeks ago I wrote this advice.
"What's the best way to showcase you can create educational and informative content about a company's technology? By creating educational and informative content about a company's technology". - Jaminologist, literally two weeks ago
As an avid user of VSCode and plugins the best time to become a power user of GoLand, was probably yesterday, but today’s just as good.
I scoped out the JetBrains YouTube channels and I found this 3-part GoLand series, but as far as I could tell there was nothing similar to Creating your first Java application with IntelliJ IDEA
So, that seemed like a fun task. Create a video showing how to create a Hello World Program in GoLand and then write a blogpost about doing it. It’s a two for one deal! Which thinking about it is actually worse for me.
On With The Video! (That Totally Isn't A Knockoff)
The style I wanted to go for was similar to Adobe in a Minute‘s videos, which funnily enough helped me to create the video. Quick and to the point, unlike this post.
I thought it’d be quite difficult to create a simple coding tutorial, but technology has changed and it's quite accessible.
Screen Capturing
There is so much free stuff in the space of screen capturing, it now makes sense why everyone can just start up livestreams.
Anyway, I watched this video and decided to go with OBS
Audio Recording
Windows has a built-in audio recording, there’s also Audacity. However, as I had access to Adobe Creative Cloud I decided to record straight onto the video editing software.
In future, I think screen recording and recording audio at the same time, may result in a better, or friendlier tone to the video, but I'll need to experiment.
Video Editing
Once you have the first two, this part's a doddle. (Assuming you keep the effects to an absolute minimum)
I used Premiere Pro for this part. I’ve dabbled with the software before and it was easy enough to pick up. For what I’ve produced, there are likely free options that can do the same thing, but I did not look.
Music
I stole a song from my 19 year old self. It needs some kind of beat honestly. The video lacks jive.
Image Editing
Almost, forgot. I needed to use Photoshop to create the Thumbnail. I think it looks cool, as long as you ignore my blurry arm.
What I want to improve for next time
All in all I think the video took me around 3 hours to complete, if I ignore all the procrastination. It'd likely take longer with quality edits.
But, there is still more that could be improved.
Identifying Audience
I need to identify the type of audience I’m creating the video for before creating it. It wasn’t meant to be a Go tutorial in my mind, so I didn’t dwell on how to create a Hello World Program.
However, if it was meant to introduce people to GoLand, it doesn’t go into as much depth as the Java video linked above.
I do wonder if there could be benefits in taking the Adobe in a Minute approach to help Users become awesome when using GoLand.
Short, snappy videos that highlight different common shortcuts and tools that are lifesavers?
‘My Top Ten Most Useful Features in GoLand That Helped Me Create Hello World In Record Time! (And Other Things Too)’, now that’d be a cool YouTube video.
Editing
The video feels longer than 2 minutes. (The Music isn't helping).
Again, it's likely due to the editing, and perhaps my YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok addled brain, expects things to be a bit faster. This I'll have to leave to the court of public opinion.
It's a bit small
The video itself, is not clear. I wanted to include the whole IDE, but there are parts where a zoom or highlighting would be useful, to make it easier for people to see what I'm doing.
This could be considering during filming as well. I'm sure there are ways to increase the scale of the UI.
That's All For Now
Now, I can't promise weekly videos, especially because I'm doing weekly blog posts, but now that I have an example of creating one tutorial I'd like to try and make a few more in the coming months.
Next week, it's currently a toss up between doing a retrospective on one of my first three games, actually making the 'Top Ten' video, or seeing if there are other tools for other companies I can make content on.
See you next week!