Dan Vega - Spring Developer Advocate, YouTuber and Lifelong Learner

I hope you had an amazing weekend and you’re ready to take on a new week. In today’s edition of the newsletter, I want to talk about YouTube and being asked to review a book.

Before we jump in I want to make sure everyone is prepared for one of my favorite days of the year. If you have to suffer at the hands (on the clock) of daylight savings, I’m sorry. If you vote for me for President my first task will be to abolish this ridiculous tradition.

Until it goes away I need to remind you that on Sunday, March 13, 2022, we spring our clocks forward. I mark this day on my calendar every single year because it means that the worst of winter is behind us and Spring is near.

It’s now staying light out longer and the sun is rising earlier. If you’re in San Diego or Miami where it’s probably 75 and sunny all year long you probably don’t feel my pain but I can assure you it's real. It certainly does give me a bigger appreciation for the seasons. I am excited about being to run outside, take my girls to the playground and baseball. That is if they actually play baseball this year 🤦‍♂️

YouTube

I had a conversation with someone last week about YouTube and I want to share some of that with you because it might help someone out who is in the same situation. She wants to start creating YouTube videos and wanted to get some advice from me on the subject.

I usually start this conversation with “What is your why”. What is your motivation behind the desire to create videos for YouTube? She responded with exactly what I thought she would and that was to bring her unique perspective and help people.

I usually ask this question because if your only motiving factor is money, it’s not going to work out. Can you make money on YouTube, absolutely? Can it be a motiving factor, for sure but don’t let it be the primary reason for getting into it.

There are a lot of people who have left their 9-5 because of their YouTube success but this doesn’t happen over night. YouTube is a long game and if you’re in it for the money you aren’t going to get that instant gratification you’re looking for.

The next set of questions usually revolves around hardware and how to set up an office for content creation. This was something we didn’t really need to go into, she live streams a lot and has this down. If this is something you have questions about please feel free to reach out to me.

With the rest of our conversation, I thought I would just share some tips that I have learned from others or through personal experience. Here are a few of the highlights:

Just upload

When you’re starting something new you want to do it right. This is great but too much thinking about making that first video can lead to paralysis by analysis. I’m going to tell you something that you don’t want to hear but it’s the harsh truth. Your first video and maybe even up to 100 after that aren’t going to be very good. Sure there are exceptions to the rule but the majority of YouTubers go through this phase.

Now that we got that out of the way I want to let you know that it’s ok. Your mission is to learn about YouTube and find out of creating videos on the platform is something you enjoy doing. It’s about the process of sharing your passion with the world and you need to remember this in the beginning.

Your job is to figure out what you want to make a video on and just make it. As you begin to make more videos if you can find 1 small thing to improve on in each video you will be on your way to achieving your goals.

Deliver on your promise

Don’t use clickbait. It doesn’t help you, your channel, or the viewer. Instead, make sure that your title and description inform the viewer of what they can expect from your video. When there is a clear outcome defined everyone wins.

You can reiterate the purpose and the outcome of this video in your outcome as long as you keep it short. As a viewer, I don’t want a 10-minute intro after clicking on your video. Explain the purpose and get right into the meat of the video if possible.

Follow your passion

This might seem like common sense to most people but let me explain. Remember when I said that YouTube was a long game? If you’re going to be in this for the long haul you need to be making videos on topics you’re passionate about. If you’re simply making videos because you think they are going to make the most money it is not going to last.

Consistency is key

Again this might seem like common sense but it’s not. It’s easy to get caught up in all the vanity metrics like subscribers and number of views, especially on the road to making the YouTube partner program but they shouldn’t be your initial goal.

If you can set a goal of producing a video on a consistent schedule great things will happen. This doesn’t need to be a goal of 5 videos a week or anything crazy like that. This needs to be a schedule that you can consistently stick to without burning out. You might be able to create 4 videos one week but if you go another 4 weeks without making one it isn’t going to help. If you think you can deliver 1 video per month and stick to that schedule, do that.

Books

I have a ton of resources on YouTube and people you should follow but to keep this short and sweet I will leave you with 2 books that I absolutely love.

Java Records in Spring Boot

We have all heard the complaints that "java is too verbose". Some of the worst offenders of this are classes that are nothing more than data classes. To write a data class properly, you have to write a lot of low-value, repetitive, error-prone code: constructors, accessors, equals(), hashCode(), toString(), etc. IDEs will help with a lot of this but it doesn't correct the problem of readability or verbosity in these classes.

Record classes were finalized and released in Java 16. In today's tutorial, you will learn how to use record classes in your next Spring Boot project.

Spring Constructor Injection

I had a lot of fun putting this video together. In this tutorial, we try and answer the question that I hear a lot from Spring developers and that is “Why is constructor injection the recommended approach to dependency injection. I took a look at how we declare and manage dependencies outside of spring and then how we can tell Spring to manage our objects for us.

YouTube Reviews

In just a few days I have had a lot of feedback on this video and it’s been humbling. One person in particular who I look up to and is on the Spring Team had this to say:

Hey, Dan. I just wanted to let you know that I absolutely love your videos on YouTube. I really mean it. Those 15 to 20-minute bites on particular topics have really ramped up our game on this. So well thought out and produced. Keep `em coming!

This comment really made my day. It’s really easy to reach out to someone and say something nice and I really appreciate this person for doing so. Comments like this keep me pushing forward!

YouTube comments

Finally a high-quality Spring tutorial! can't wait to see more 🔥 this was so clear glad I found you

Really good content! i always made constructor injection cause my lead told me to, but i never knew why. Thank you!

Hi Dan, this is a great video, I have been a Spring dev for years, but this is such a nice clear explanation. Really enjoy these videos that take small aspects of spring and are explained so well. Thank you

Great content, as always, so clear and well structured, Dan is the best instructor ever! Deep dive please 😊

Book Review

I was asked by a friend to review a technical book. I was honored and I’m really looking forward to going through this process. It should give me some perspective for when I write my first book 🤩 This is the first time I will be a reviewer for a book but please don’t tell him that or the publisher for that matter. Actually, I know for a fact he reads this so hopefully, he took the week off.

If you have any suggestions or tips for me I’m never above listening to those who have walked the path before me. When it’s all said and done I hope to share some more details with you. What I can tell you is that the author is amazing and I am sure the book will be too, even without having read a single word!

Around the Web

📝 Articles

Announcing ListCrudRepository & Friends for Spring Data 3.0

🎬 Videos

Notion - Block by Block 2022: Keynote

🎙 Podcasts

Until Next Week

Thanks for sitting down and sharing a cup of coffee with me my friend. I hope you enjoyed this installment of Coffee & Code and I will see you next Monday morning. If you have any links you would like me to include please contact me and I might add them to a future newsletter. I hope you have a great week and as always friends...

Happy Coding
Dan Vega
danvega@gmail.com
https://www.danvega.dev