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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 KZfaq 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.

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.

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.

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 think your premise is totally bogus. I've been a software engineer since the mid 70s and there has never been a lack of great content. The difference is that back then, obviously prior to the internet, content wasn't free. It came in the form of great books. With the rise of the internet the flood gates were opened and the waters were muddied by way too many people posting just learned skills and often incorrect but there was and still are great channels of valuable and accurate content out there. You just have to be smart enough to know who's bsing you and who isn't.

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. 🎉

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.

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 KZfaq 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 KZfaq videos.

The fundamental premise here is wrong. I can name countless very talented developers who teach and teach well. If you're teaching while you're a learner often you'll not have much context for things and can give information that makes people worse.

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

Those who can’t code become influencers

Us older great developers expect noobs to read books like we did in the 1970s. I don't need to teach you what you can read for yourself. Pick up a copy of K&R C. You'll be fine.

Their working with families and no time for youtube

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).

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.

There is more to life than coding but I hate the tone of this that it should be shameful to do it on your spare time. I have been in the business for 25 years. I LOVE to code. I also sail, do Jiu Jitsu, climb mountains, and cook. I am planning a Kilimanjaro trip next year and a transatlantic solo crossing. In all those trips I have planned via Starlink or another way that I can have full internet access so I can continue to work. Don't shame people for loving to code because you only do it as a job.

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

Me creating content about my programming work experience: "Okay everybody. Welcome. In order to follow todays lesson, you need a few pieces of hardware and software linked in the description which together cost at least 20.000$ and i will help you solve a practical problem you might have if you own a chemical production plant".

Yep, I am so glad I watched this video to help me put everything in place. As a coder and sharer, it is refreshing to find someone saying that sometimes coding is just a job. And for others, it's something we do and share with folks. But balance is also a good thing for mental health as a coder and a content creator. Just my two cents and to say thanks putting this out there. I also love to cover the basics because so many people ask me about them, not everything needs to be an earth shattering new super complicated way to do something that requires years of experience.

I am sort of a beginner. I have worked for 9 months in a company using flutter and something happened... which stopped me from putting time in development or horning my skills for the past 3 years. As a result, I kinda forget most of the coding. I am pretty sure I've got a bad memory. But now I am picking up Android development by making apps. As I learned I tended to write blogs and use them as my notes for the future.

Or worst why people watch other people learning making youtube videos. We are just consuming content and not really learning something

I started programming 16 years ago. I never had this thought of creating programming content. Instead I have two other channels, one I sing in, other I make instrument tutorials. Not much sub though. But still happy, I pass my time. However, only a week back, thought of starting a channel to show off the world how I program. I don't know why I did and I don't have any expectations from it. It just is there.

we’re just perfectionists and it’s hard enough keeping up coding skills - the thought of creating content around it and trying to translate the chaos of coding brain to a logical absorbable medium as a video or blog just seems overwhelming. that’s about it.

Extremely valuable and great advice from someone who obviously knows what he is talking about. Hopefully we will sit up and pay attention and save ourselves a lot of stress. Biking does it for me...makes me think clearer.

Awesome video. I think you needed to tell people HOW long ago you were starting these videos, because there's definitely been a pretty substantial increase in teaching via youtube recently. Every content creator and their dog is working on a course. Also, loved that Primeagen did a react to this too, so good.

The great developers ARE teaching. There are lectures by Abelson and Sussman available online, along with many others.

"Other interests"... yeah... like including... actually programming itself. Which making content, isn't. Great musicians generally want to just keep making/playing music, not become teachers. Likewise for other things too. I'm not sure what you mean by "great" exactly, but of the top tier coders I have in mind (those I know IRL, or otherwise famous ppl I don't), their main reason not to make content isn't because they're going outside instead. It is because they're actually doing, instead of talking about. For the majority, your 1st explanation at 2:15 was closest I think... no interest... except: regardless of when they started. Not everyone wants to be a youtuber. Anyway, we all know that the greatest programmer who ever lived DID make content anyway. RIP Terry.

Well, good devs usually build a highly specific toolkit around the problems they are facing. While this stuff is great in 1 on 1 or small-group teaching it's unlikely the general audience gets value for their effort. And while I can talk about all the stuff you can easily look up online if you are interested I'm neither allowed to talk about the technical details of our IP nor about the IP of vendor-specific tools we are using.

I started coding as a child on a C64. Back then about 1 out of 100 kids knew even what a computer game is. I was really into this, but it made me hard do make real friends or just hang out with any other kids. So around 16 I've realised that I have to focus to things like music, art, movies just to be able to talk someone outside my world. So I think you are pretty right here. Still I have some friends with whom I can have several hour long talk about the different programming languages ;)

I thought about creating content, but then I get in a rabbit hole of thoughts and overwhelm myself. When I am looking for a solution to a problem and I find a solution or lack of solution, I tend to give an answer that I found to work best. I seldomly do this, though.

Amazing video! Being a developer is hard, and it's important to have hobbies that get you away from the screen (both mentally and physically)

Haven’t read through all comments .. another reason in my opinion (15 years in backend dev) is the lack of investment by the audience. Many expect to be good after a short investment and fail at bigger glance. It takes time, failure and commitment to be a good programmer. Things I don’t see in current gen z … I rather help/teach someone in person who really is interested in learn to program rather than create yet another video, blog post or magazine article for what not basic stuff that can be found multiple times over in the web. And always with the possibility that they don’t grasp it and blame the creator for their lack. There is tons of stuff I don’t and never will understand, so I can try or move on 🤷‍♂️

there are great ones who do they are extremely small.. but creating content is also a skill and being good at both are difficult.

Let's be honest. The core reason of burn out is that many just don't like programming outside of their jobs. And that's it. They have to keep talking about coding in order to remain "the feeling of being competitive" in the job market. I got the total opposite experience unlike the video (but not against the video though, it's more like opposite but co-exist). All of the good engineers keep talking about coding outside of their jobs, they never got burn out, coding is just their another hobby but somehow also earn big bucks for them. They will just code something else for fun outside of the 9 - 5 jobs. The only reason they burnout is just the bad company environment, but never the programming itself. Also, love to talk about coding outside of the job !== willing to write blogs. I think half of the video is based on programming or coding is a burden for you. If you just love coding something for fun, you are unlikely got burnout.

I’m one of the greats….the reason I don’t teach on KZfaq is…I teach my lower level developers at my job, using the projects we use at work

Also, it's not necessary that a highly skilled programmer can also teach well, and the reverse is also true. Teaching is a different skill set compare to day to day programming.

Same though, most of the dev in Myanmar ended up with alcohol or beer at the end of their weekend and they stuck with invocation 😂

It all comes to a balance. My take is creating content is good way to learn stuff. This is especially if you love teaching like me and then building projects. So, on the hobbies and other activities. It's good to allocate time for them as well as your family. So there's nothing wrong in creating content. Cheers! to those who do.

There it is! Haha! Your last video had me going "I need to create more content". This one made me realize "oh yeah, I have programmed all day for 12 years. No wonder I don't blog / make videos about it off hours. I'm playing with my kids / rebuilding small engines / reading / coaching kids soccer teams / volunteering at church / etc etc. It is actually okay to live real world life. Social media is a game to play, with certain benefits. But it still costs life (time) away from other things. Edit: nice Lewis quote btw

15yr dev here working at fanng or w/e the acronym is, I’m so done at the end of the week I just want to chill and be with family, don’t care enough to record more coding stuffs, not for me right now. Thx for the vid!

Employers are not as interested in your mental health and personal character as they are your code output. let that sink in.

I totally agree. I'm a principal developer and I never talk about code and get bored by anyone who does. What I do talk about is everything else: politics, religion, science, whiskey and much more.

I'm a very experienced developer who makes content. I don't think you're overall wrong. But also, when we *do* talk about it, it doesn't get terribly popular. A lot of what gets popular -- the latest tech, hot takes, etc -- isn't what we do. Even within coding, I write things like "how do you keep developing for 40 years?", "how does a language survive a hundred years?", "what deep insights can you pull from one framework into a completely different one?" Most of what makes good popular clickbait is just a *lot* less interesting to a long-term developer. A lot of your advice -- such as "have other interests" -- is *really* good for your development career, but not so good for becoming popular on KZfaq. You can find great writing by great developers. There's not a constant stream of new stuff all the time. Instead, it's long-term, best-of stuff... and it's hard to find, because that's hard to sell ad space on.

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 real reason that the greats of any subject or skill rarely teach is that they don't need to. Their ability to do whatever it is they do (in this case, code) is far more valuable to themselves and to other people than their ability to teach or create videos and post them online. Teaching and creating media are their own skills, that means the person in question has to be interested and good at all of those things in order to effectively make online courses/tutorials. There's also the fact that people who are teaching as they learn tend to be making more opportunities out of doing one thing, which is why its so common for learners to teach. The thing with any skill is that its a slow burn getting to the point where people might be willing to pay you to do it. So if you can diversify the results of learning that skill by using it to build an online following or even just making things for yourself, then you not only improve your chances of actually learning the skill, but you also get more value out of it.

Another thing to consider is that there is some risk in making content and little benefit if you already have a high-paying job and good resume. For example, suppose you make a video about functional programming vs. OOP and you link to it on LinkedIn. Then, you're interviewing for a job and the hiring manager watches your video and doesn't like some point you made. If you have little work experience, you're better off taking this risk because it gives you a chance to demonstrate your knowledge without work experience. Once you have a lot of work experience this sort of thing doesn't help as much. Having said that, I think there can be value in this sort of "influencer" approach as you move beyond senior engineer, but it's just something you need to be really careful about and it's generally a better investment to just invest more time in your actual job.

Interesting reflections... personally I got into coding as a kid in the early 1990s and loved it ever since. But even now I don't feel like I have much to offer in terms of "content". So rather than doing that I prefer to just write code, play music or play computer games with my kids.

This will perhaps be difficult to grasp for those who have been immersed in the social media paradigm for decades, but I don't look at my relationships with my readers as a transactional "producer/consumer" or "creator/audience" type thing. Most of my online interactions are through e-mail or comments sections. It's rare for me to post as many comments on KZfaq as I have today. I boycotted KZfaq altogether for awhile because their bot ran amok and deleted all of my comments only seconds after I posted them, which made all of the typing seem like a waste of time. We'll see what happens today. If I revisit any videos and can't find my comments, I'll be off of KZfaq again for a few more months.

Not sure what this obsession with making content is about. There were ways to make content in the past, it was called contributing to magazine articles and writing books. Did we expect every dev to write a book? NO!!! It is almost a perverted right of passage that states that you are not passionate about your work unless you have a channel, a course, or a GitHub page with a solid green heat map. And you know who champions this garbage; new developers who don't have a body of work that can prove their skillset, hiring teams that don't have proper interview skills, and attention W H O R E S who don't feel validated unless you do what they do. Like Travis said, there is more to life than coding. It supports my lifestyle but is not my life. My mission is to solve business problems for my employer or customer, not give my time away for your entertainment or edification.

Is the lesson "people who've made good money longer have enough to spare for hobbies, and most people stop learning once they have a solid job"?

I'm in school and have kids. I have no time for hobbies 🤷‍♂️

I think great developers DO create contents. But it is not tutorials. They often write blog posts (just google their personal sites), many of them they post on Twitter, they give keynote speeches, they publish papers (check google scholar).

sometimes i take a break from coding, when i comeback i feel refreshed.

I am a film maker outside of writing code. I only write code if I am being paid for it. I started a KZfaq Channel just to create an online presence, but each time I try to talk about coding, I find it difficult. I just find it easier to get the job done then to explain what I did. Anyway, great insight

When I was writing my best code at my previous company, I barely had time or energy after work to think about content.

It is true I start to code 2 months ago and I stoped for 2 days to learn stuff I like (russian) and I felt so refreshed I had been coding like stupid getting nowhere

People don't create content either due to time constraints, or another important professional concept.... dark arts. Some people think, why should I teach my future competition? Knowledge as a gatekeeper, because most learning materials, don't even remotely put it together for you, even in open-source circles. Just researching a TLS pipe, you hit brick walls. By '07, Android surpassed NT4 in tls cve which exposes the knowledge disparity. You could build a real CS degree just with a TLS project as a capstone course. It's that important, it could land you a job, yet thorough docs? To this day, education is a problem.

Yeah, I don't put as much coding content on my channel as I would like because I'm just tired of doing that all day at work and don't feel like doing for KZfaq as well.

If you want a good childish giggle, on mobile, keep double tapping to rewind at the beginning of the video... bit random but yh 😂

Let's talk about table tennis or music composition!

"Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death." - Major Kusanagi

I dont think being frozen in front of a camera would be a problem at all, pretty sure a lot of people would watch a 10 H straight video of Jhon Carmack or a developer of that level at full focus without talking just writing code.

Haha, I like this. My only goal has always been to try and help teach the lessons I would have LOVED as a younger engineer. I’ve had to learn many hard lessons

They might be lazy They might be selfish to share knowledge They want to feel proud by feeling they know more than others

I tend to disagree with this position. Those who are passionate about coding and have 10+ years of experience should write content when possible. Breaks are important but this does not come at the expense of writing content, good content. There is so much garbage out there and if we don't write content when we have gathered the experience and the pain over the years, we are just being selfish. Now, not everyone should write, some are having a job and love to do music, hiking, or cooking. I'm talking to the passionate developers who encounter resistance and self-doubt when thinking about writing. Development styles and principles are highly opinionated and lead to less quality content. As a mentor, I encourage my developer students to start writing on social media their experience and their lessons. I believe that if we would share more, we would all benefit from it.

Sometimes I lie that I’m into finance so I don’t talk about code to most people, but I love coding don’t get me wrong

Oh wow. this is so real. PLANNED time off is what I have been missing.

😂😂😂 From my experience, this is so true! Excellent pick up @Travis Media. Until you mentioned that great coders have other outside interests, I totally forgot about that,

Because they are too busy and making real money and solutions. A lot of KZfaq is all hype and celebrates the small steps of achievements. Real achievers are too busy. It’s the truth.

Some people just find actually coding more fun than writing about coding. Imagine writing about going on a hike.

Well there is official documentation for everything. One needs to know how to read documentation to become a good developer. Courses are for beginners (I prefer books for them too).

The audience is much smaller for experienced developers and topics would have to be much more specific. That make it less rewarding for such creators. Plus, experienced devs can solve problems themselves. There are conferences and narrow channels that cover the need

no offense meant here, but you using the workout analogy is a decent example of why it’s not usually helping when beginners act as an authority source. They don’t understand nor are able to articulate the nuances in understanding things that you get from experience. Beginners should be welcome to teach, but they should be very clear that they are learning themselves.

Screw those critics. Travis, I L O V E your content. It was so invaluable to me. I often found that the best people in something were horrible at explaining. They don't know where to start because they forgot how difficult it was for them to begin learning long ago. So it's up to beginners and intermediate to teach beginners, because we know exactly what was hard when we started. Continue your journey! Ignore the haters!

I am self proclaimed the greatest programmer who breathed air I can tell you the answer I don’t have time I don’t have time energy or inclination to discuss programming matters with wannabes. It’s programming not coding or development as in real estate or photography

I haven't watched the video, but the title alone created a philosophical predicament: If your statement is true, it means as a content creator you can't be a good developer, so I shouldn't listen to advice from you. But if the statement is wrong, how can you be a good developer if you don't get the facts of your content right? It's the kind of thing that's gonna keep me up at night...

Because I’m 48, I have two young kids so am incredibly busy and, surprise, I have a really well paid day job (good developer, remember?) so I don’t really need a side hustle.

The Primeagen just did a hot take on your hot take!

This is a weird and narrow perspective. It's easier to isolate the reasons why someone does something than the reasons someone doesn't do something? It assumes so many things... you are very much so speaking to an exact audience and I'm not sure how I got included in that.

DUDE. You had me at C.S. Lewis

I love programming. I can do it forever. It's my passion, it's my hobby. And love what I do.

Most of the greatest developers I have worked with have been truly amazing and seeing them code is a joy but actually often understanding what they have coded or getting the slightest grip of the ideas and approaches was always beyond me. Not only that, most of the coders who were that good, really just didn't communicate well with anyone, it was eating pizza for 24 hours overnight sessions and zero info added to the code such as comments (hopefully that has changed) and often smashing up a keyboard if a single mistake was made. I suspect many of them would not do the best youtube videos. Again, perhaps that has changed. Also it takes time to create a great tutorial, I guess the best coders are still hard at work eating pizzas and coding. There are some great coding tutorial channels around that are easy to understand (hopefully my photoshop related one is anyway, though it is not particularly coding). I would have loved to done youtube coding videos but I doubt if anyone would be interested in my bad attempts at visual basic or cobol or fortran.

Thanks, I needed this video a lot. I feel like my whole self has been sinking in coding, and this made me remember that I truly need to greatly change my routine 😅

If my mind is not on coding, its on all the evil politics we have in the world today… so better to focus on coding and ignore whats going on in the world.

Because they thinking and leant, they do and learn, they optimize and learn. Also in general, they don’t like camera and maybe it’s really really hard for many of them to transfer the knowledge with a good pedagogical approach. Also, lake of time and their business model is different and they cannot focus on content creation and be updated with the new technology at the same time.

Nice video! Agree with all the points. In my opinion, it's a highly subjective question that depends on everyone's circumstances. Sometimes it just makes sense, especially in the initial steps, to dive deep into software engineering entirely and not to do any stuff other than that. However, after you build a solid professional foundation for yourself, it's important to take regular breaks from your main activity and just do whatever you like to do (other than coding) in order to support your mental and physical health, as well as the creativity of your brain.

They may not even have other interests😂. They just don't want to take on the work of creating a solid course and learning to sell it.(Imposter syndrome might be a part). It's largely because you'd have to learn business skills, video editing etc And yeah making free stuff for altruism sake is not what most people care about. In short, people only become content creators when there's a solid monetization plan behind it.

Its built innate when someone is going up everyone else try to pull them down

I don't give anything of value to corporate social media sites. I post it on my own website. Also, I'm a programmer, not a "coder." Any monkey can sling code.

Starting out I felt like making videos because I couldn't program very well.

There's always an exception to everything.

Why do I love this guy , and I just found him, doctor here changing field from surgeon to dermatology and I was uncomfortable and fear foul, this man is bright and intelligent and I feel him