Antares Programming have been my passion project for about 4 years now. I have been inspired by a lot of content creators when I was still a student. I remember watching MPJ’s Fun Fun Function almost religiously as I prepare to go to school. Layout Land became my CSS companion and taught me a lot about progressive enhancement and fallbacks for the newest features. I also enjoyed a lot of talks that An Event Apart posted online. I enjoyed them so much that I eventually paid for my tickets to a similar conference several years later. (I recommend it, too. It’s a very rewarding experience)
Through all this, all I could think about is the saying that we are all “standing on the shoulders of giants” that came before us. And whenever I think about the likes of Jen Simmons, Miriam Suzanne, Rachel Andrew, Ahmad Shadeed, Una Kravets, Sara Soueidan, Sarah Drasner, Ethan Marcotte, and others, I think about how there aren’t anyone like them creating content in Filipino. They have a lot of things to share that most Filipino developers just won’t hear about either because people are not that good at English, or their radars just don’t catch these interesting people.
I set out to create Antares Programming to share what these people are talking about to Filipino developers like me, and to encourage others to be content creators too and talk about the latest about web development. Of course, I am nowhere near these other “giants” who had laid the groundwork for web development, but at least I can reach a few people and share a bit or two.
The road to videos.
For several years now, all I have done were blog posts and infographics. Through these, I have talked about CSS, graphic design on the web, a tiny bit about accessibility, and best practices. And while it’s been a good 4 years, it’s apparent that my audience don’t really read blog posts all that much. I don’t have a statistic, but what I see from experience is that most Filipino developers would rather watch than read. After all, most textual content about software development in general are in English and are very technical at that. So, for someone who isn’t all that fluent in a foreign language, reading wouldn’t be all that pleasant when compared to watching someone just code and show what happens.
Videos have been my goal the whole time. It’s just that it’s something that requires a lot of effort, time, and money. This year, however, I have all of those things for the foreseeable future. And I am so excited to start working on it.
By the time this post gets published, I would have already posted my first video on the Antares Programming YouTube channel. I do not intend to monetize the content for now, although I would not be pretentious and say that I wouldn’t monetize it in the future. I think we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. For now, all I want is to produce these videos and keep them free for as long as possible.
I need your help, however. If you are a Filipino developer, it would be very awesome if you could share to people you know about Antares Programming’s new videos. If you think this is something that would help you and others, please tell them. It would be a very huge help. Also, if you are interested in creating something like this, I highly encourage you to do so, especially if you have the means.
The content.
Filipino creators in tech already exist, and arguably, they can all be considered behemoths with several tens of thousands of subscribers. We have Boss ROD who has been in this for years. We also have Pinoyfreecoder who has a ton of tutorial series. Then we have PATutorials for a lot of low-level CS concepts and advice. Algo Filipino is another community that’s focused on tech for Filipinos. I am sure there are tons of others I haven’t heard of that are also really great and deserve bigger platforms.
For Antares Programming, I just want to do content about web development in general. Short videos for YouTube Shorts and TikTok are good ideas I want to explore. In the past, I have focused more on HTML and CSS since that is what I haven’t seen much of from other content creators. And with videos, I would still love to talk about HTML and CSS and a bit of JavaScript on the side. I wish to also talk more about general concepts like accessibility, progressive enhancement, error handling, and debugging.
Of course, blogging and infographics will still have their place in all of this. But in this transitionary time, I think I’ll have to do a little bit less of them. We don’t want to be burnt out doing what we love to do.
Conclusion.
If you have been following me and Antares Programming for a while, thank you so much for your support. I always tell people that I would still do this project even when it doesn’t have as much reach as it has now, but I would lie if I don’t say that having this many people caring at least a little bit helps.
Now, please subscribe to Antares Programming’s YouTube channel. And if you can, please share the videos to everyone you know that would appreciate this kind of content. Also, follow other Filipino tech content creators. Even better, be one yourself!
Here’s the first video of Antares Programming.
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