Like a picture is worth a 1000 words, videos can often be really helpful. But from the standpoint of maintaining a pipeline, videos are difficult to change once they’re in place. Re-editing, re-shooting, or re-creating the video would be time-consuming. Since we’re busy sysadmins, let’s be realistic, maintaining static assets like these videos and keeping them up-to-date simply wouldn’t happen. Much like a docs as code philosphy, maintaining a pipeline in a text-based format would allow for us to use a version control system like git, and use a git-based work-flow like pull-requests to submit updates or changes, or suggest improvements. This is maintainable in the long-term. Video assets while helpful are static, don’t allow for version control, and if they become out of date, the only recourse is to just re-create them.

Videos may be more appropriate for official APS training since they would be maintained by the training dept. But if the pipeline is a more informal program which is maintained by T2S/MH/T3, etc, then it needs to be easy for us to maintain. We already use git to maintain our code. The pipeline should adopt this work-flow and be maintained as a docs as code like repository.