I think that YouTube is great for culture. It includes programming culture. Basically telling you that things exist.
However if you really want to do something, you need practice, and YouTube is not ideal for that.
For programming, what you need is a computer, a development environment (preferably something well integrated if you are beginning) and a project (if you are a beginner, the simpler the better). Text documentation you can refer to at any time is I think the best. Paper books vs online articles and manuals is debatable but they are all better than video for practicing.
For programming, yes, especially if you're a beginner. But for more conceptual aspects of software engineering and system design, or tutorials on new technologies, videos can sometimes be useful.
Here's a good recent one by Raymond Hettinger on making things easier for yourself when programming, such as ways of reducing how many things you'll need to keep in working memory at once. It actually does directly involve a lot of pure code so it's maybe not the best example of what I described, but it's mostly focused on cognition and is generalizable to programming in any language, or possibly doing any kind of demanding mental work in any field.
I think certain hands on skills are an exception to this. I can't imagine Bob Ross teaching me to paint through a manual. But programming is such a text based activity, so youtube is great at the what and the why, but text is still the best for the how.
However if you really want to do something, you need practice, and YouTube is not ideal for that.
For programming, what you need is a computer, a development environment (preferably something well integrated if you are beginning) and a project (if you are a beginner, the simpler the better). Text documentation you can refer to at any time is I think the best. Paper books vs online articles and manuals is debatable but they are all better than video for practicing.