Why Great Developers DON'T Create Content (and a lesson to learn)

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There is another reason, not everyone has a need to share everything about themselves all the time. I would even put it that way, people who are great at what they do usually don't feel the need to talk about it because the work gives them what they crave so they can focus on getting better instead on being seen.

At 45 and 20+ years as a coder, I've spent a great deal of my career teaching people face to face. 6 months ago I started a YouTube channel about coding. I'm loving it so far, but the reason most long term coders don't teach more via blogs or videos is the time investment. There's already such a massive time investment to keep up with new technologies in the industry it's extremely difficult to learn the multitude of skills required to move to a wider teaching platform.

Senior solutions architect and developer here (30+ years experience). There is also another reason, we spend a lot of time mentoring and coaching the juniors who work for us or with us at work, and so we don't want to spend our own time producing content. I love architecting and coding, but I also enjoy teaching and mentoring my juniors on personal finance and investing.

Technology must serve human ends. My problem with most “coding content” is that it focuses on nothing more than… coding. The examples are dull, the context is dull, the problems are so small and atomic as to be useless. The thing about being a multi-decade developer is that you learn that progression in solving the human problems moves you from tightly optimizing some inner loop or using a clever dispatch method to defining the contracts and interface between systems and the organizations that produce them. The most challenging and fun stuff exists at a level that most “coders” don’t, so the perpetual cycle of entry-level content repeats itself.

This is more simply put as: "They just aren't interested in it." It doesn't have to be a lack of time or competing interests. Not everyone wants to teach or produce content.

This is really great advice. I disconnected with so many hobbies in my college days to focus on development, only to find myself completely burnt out a few years into my career. Only more recently am I recovering, embracing old and new hobbies.

At 47 and 20+ years as a coder, I code as least as possible and think as much as possible when doing all the things I love. That is the thing with coding, if you take a break, someone else most likely will solve your problem, and that is how it all moves on.

What most people don’t realise is that 80% of devs are terrible (at coding), 15% are mid and that leaves the last 5% for the legends and wizards and that the 15% of devs that make it past intermediate get swallowed up in the buerocracy

So from 1991 to 2007 I was a pabx tech, and we all knew our jobs, but never spoke about it. We spoke about social events and hanging out, and in those days everyone was family.

I definitely used to be the type that would code all day and all night. After 20+ years of programming, I've found that my favorite way to teach is one-on-one, or in small groups. I also have no need to teach language features or algorithms. Instead, I find myself teaching the odd nuances of the craft that are highly contextual and impossible to convey in a simple video. As far as just living life, I've found that writing code is just one aspect of my love for building things. Wood, metal, plastic, and code are just different mediums to express myself.

Most great software engineers I know don't consider themselves great and worthy of teaching others. They think what they do is normal. Apart from most of them being social awkward introverts.

Coding is one skill, teaching is another one. You are a gem, who was able to pursue both. I am glad we have you here! Love ur channel. 🎉

Love how you emphasized that there's more to life than coding! Striving for balance between tech passion and other hobbies can spark creativity and keep burnout at bay. 🌟

The Real reason is this: They don't have time for it, if you love programming and you are very good at it, you will certainly always have multiple projects you like to be developing that you are not, because you just don't have the time for all of them. Writing, recording and editing Youtube videos takes time, that is a time investment that will rarely be worth if you have 20 programs you like to develop that you consider more interesting than making Youtube videos.

That's me 100%. I'm not a super advanced developer, but I'm pretty good at what I do. I've tried writing blog articles, and I've made a few, but I just can't bring myself to be doing that all the time when I'm not at work. I genuinely enjoy programming, but I also enjoy photography and film and running and going to clubs and all kinds of other things. For reference, I'm 43, I've done programming on and off as a hobby my whole life, but I only got into it professionally about 6 years ago. Like, I was one of those kids who taught himself BASIC on an Apple //e in grade school, but I was more famous for performing magic every year for the talent show, and for other kids at recess.

this is so true about me, I'm a self taught as well, got my first job at 24, spent the last decade not creating content per se but basically studying for most of the time, now I'm 35 I'm still passionate avout work and learning, but now I'm doing 3 different martial arts classes and going to the gym, way more happier and productive everywhere in my life

I wouldn’t dare to say that I’m a great developer, but I’ve been programming since 1990. While I’ve made some attempts to create content, I must confess that it’s challenging to do so consistently. Having a daytime programming job tends to sap any desire to code after work. When I return home, I’m often exhausted. I prioritize my health by working out, and then I tackle household chores. Additionally, I have various hobbies—I produce electronic music from time to time, dabble in 3D modeling, and read books. Unfortunately, after all these activities, it becomes very difficult to produce valuable programming tutorials.

As a recently laid-off 41yr old Lead Automation Engineer already 20 years into the industry , the short is answer is most of us are just too exhausted to do anything else outside of work. We spend a lot of time mentoring aside from the usual operational work. Creating content and sharing experiences takes effort.

The older I get the less "fun" work is. When I was a new college grad, all my friends were from work. Now I avoid those people like the plague and just hang out with my own people (none of them are engineers).