I learned so much from your throughout the years. Don’t rush for stupid content you don’t like. We’ll always be here for you when you finally come back :)

take your time! we will be here always, great content and super helpful and friendly community

Your best video, in my eyes, was the shutting down a scammer message and reporting their websites to close them down. Also the list in python which I still use for ref. I know you can't keep doing them as it gets boring but these were the quick videos. So thank you

I totally understand how you feel. Thanks for the check in and honest feelings. My favorite content of yours is the programming and anything terminal related. But I pretty much gobble up everything you create. You got this!

Take your time. Thank you for everything you’ve already done. I’d love to see some deep dives into unique python modules. It’s exiting to see everything that’s available. It’s like going to an ice cream shop. Also, just to see how you’d use common builtin modules, best practices, better methods, etc. I feel like I have to go back every year and rewrite my old code.

Watching someone learn isn't bad content. Diggin in a little bit, then doing videos about learning the subject would be interesting, always good to see how an experienced engineer learns things.

What about reviewing viewer code/projects? You can point out mistakes, suggest improvements, highlight what’s good, etc. It’s an easy way stay within your expertise while creating educational content.

Everyone here supports whatever you decide to do. There's no need to rush new content. Looking back, there are still so many videos I have not seen. This type of authentic transparency is what draws your core audience to you.

One nice thing that would help people get past the issue of learning is to see someone experienced learn new stuff they never did before. Show that everyone makes mistakes, struggles with new stuff, and that not everything is read and understood on the first go. That would be inspirational.

There could be value to teaching us stuff as you learn it. Value to you, of course, but watching another learner is super helpful to me. It would need to be something you want to learn anyway, not just to create content. I am fascinated with anything to do with automation, simple scripting to avoid repetitive tasks, stuff like that. I also prefer short subjects. I'm not going to watch an hour of anything that's not brilliantly fascinating. But I'll sit for 15 minutes to get one good nugget of info. As others have said, a major appeal to your channel is how you think. It's not only the valuable content. Your critical thinking and logical development cuts through a lot of the nonsense some less articulate developers blather. I'm primarily a web developer, so anything you know about HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL would be valuable to me, even though I've done all this stuff for years. I have no formal training, and my implementation has always been solitary and, perhaps, unreviewed by anyone who knows what they're doing.

Transparency level : legend!

Love the transparency and honesty! I can relate, and have absolutely been there! I still love the EM Talks and the how to videos you started with! Don't be afraid to keep the talks simple! I still go back and re-watch some of your earlier videos when I need a refresher. I would love to hear about some of your favorite python libraries, and why/how you use them!

Takes great courage to open up like that, about other things than just what goes well. Take your time and I personally look forward to see where this channel will go in the future, feeling certain that great things await. Would personally love to see cloud computing topics, programming language highlights/comparisons, DevOps example projects, platform engineering topics etc.

One of the most wonderful & enriching channels out there. With so much knowledge & humility, you're the Bob Ross of programming teaching. Gotta love that revenge video with the PS5 scammer 👑

I'm glad you're sticking to your principles. I'd rather be subscribed to a channel that puts out content rarely but it's great every time as opposed to the content machines that have one good video for every 20 because they're just trying to make money. I actually end up getting channel fatigue from folks that spam the content weekly or even daily. I mostly skip over the videos. Content creators that don't post as much but still make get my views every time. If you're interested in the idea, you could do weekly/monthly commentary on the state of the industry. Doesn't require you to have in depth knowledge of every framework and language out there, but you can comment on the philosophies and principles and your reaction

We appreciate the update! I want to share some of my thoughts and hope that they help. I only started watching your channel recently, and I haven't watched a lot, so I could say something very stupid, take this comment with a grain of salt. Your favourite video of mine is the "Using my python skills to punish a scammer" one. It really was super eye-opening for me. It showed me a whole new way of seeing python, and it also showed me a bit about how programming interacts with the real world. And I think that your videos have had a similar effect on people as well. So I think that something in the same valley that would also help would be making videos where you take some concrete, real world problem and explain how we actually managed to fix that problem with a certain program, and then try to teach us how we can write that program ourselves. (An example would perhaps be something that explains the backend mechanisms of e-comms products. ) And something that I am personally interested in is robotics/automation in general. So if you do have the necessary knowledge to make videos about these, I'd personally like it a lot. I am thinking of something like "Write the program that changes the colours of your mouse", "Make the code for a self opening door", " Code for manually calibrating a roomba cleaner" ... And so on. I am absolutely not sure whether these are foreign ground for you, or whether you actually have experience with similar projects. So this is just a personal quirky suggestion. This turned out quick long. So, thank you for reading it, I really hope it helps :)

It's all good. You owe us nothing. Live your life. If you show up here for something new, those interested will be ready.

As someone who knows the basics of programming and has loads of projects they want to do, it's almost scary to think you can get to a point where you have finished all those ideas! Always appreciated your work EM! Thanks for all you do!

Always enjoyed your videos. I especially liked the ones where you use programming against scammers. There's a lot of new (not necessarily good) tech out there like GPT chat AIs and "smart" tech. Would be interesting to see your take on those. Even though its not something you've worked with in the past, your broad experience does bring a neat perspective. Just an idea. Looking forward to your next video.

You are an amazing youtuber / teacher and I have learnt so much from you Take you're time and Thank you for everything

Your honesty is greatly appreciated. Now, your channel has been an incredible source or knowledge, loved the formats you chose through each stage. Your output is always welcome. For ideas: chatgpt in programming, iot, arduino, cloud tech, create some big project from the ground up or just let me hire you :-)

Take your time, man. I really enjoy watching your videos. I can tell when somebody is very good at his job and I really like the way you deliver your content, your voice and confidence. Wish you all the best, bro!

Nice to hear from you, i learned too much thanks to your effort, wish you all the best, greetings from Tunisia

Dude always loved your content. Love the no mess no fluff. The stuff I enjoyed most was breakdowns of languages and coding with android games. Like breaking mobile apps with code. Would love to see more of that. End of the day do what you love.

Love the channel. Love the challenges. Post when u feel like it. I will watch.

I really enjoyed your laid back style! Maybe you can do something with HA clusters, PCS pacemaker or other stuff?

I started my first project after watching your video and I can't thank you enough for that. Your encouragement and guidance made the difference. So, take your time and don't worry too much about the content crisis. Take the time you need to come up with fresh ideas, and we will eagerly await your return.

Don’t trip brodie! Like u said, u make content you enjoy making. So make vids on the things you want to do. It’s okay to explore and learn new topics. Cyber and AI are really big rn, they may be things u wanna play around with 💯. If u take interest in cyber u can always hit me up 🤙

I follow for 4 years so, and I like your content, but here some ideas: - Memory management and low level programming in C/C++ - AI for dummies - Debugging and bugs fixing in PHP or another language - Maven/Gradle for dummies - Database design for dummies - Docker for dummies - Security/cybersecurity for dummies - Virtualization - Embedded systems programming using Assembly - Playing with raspberry pi or Arduino (project based) - Deep dive in Linux and Unix systems (OS, kernel) - Assembling and setting up PC games or workstations - Talking about FOSS applications or Android

What i loved most from your channel and why i subscribed is because of the python content.... i did love all the android game automations. Gaming and python is fun , or hacking things with python and automate things with python .... :-) hope you find some energy to make more of them. Thank you very much

I always liked your videos. Whatever you do, I'm happy with it. Do what is best for you.

I have learned so much through your content, you deserve as much time off as you like. Just a suggestion, maybe post more content about stopping scammers? I don't know, I really enjoyed the Craigslist and credit card scammer videos of yours and would love more content! Thank you for everything, I hope you enjoy your break!

I am starting to put together a humble homelab, and I discovered that there's a whole bunch of world that I do not know about. Proxmox, LXCs, Docker, ZFS, getting one VM to talk to another, remote access, security ... etc. Would be nice to see videos explaining these things to beginners, especially since all of videos and documentations about these things are usually aimed at professionals. If this is something that you would like to do and/or know how to do. Other than that, thanks for all your previous videos, and look forward to your upcoming ones. Cheers.

Your new equipment is working great! Whatever you decide I'll be watching and looking forward to the content.

First of all, all of the vids I've watched from you have been great, so thank you for all the work you have done. I could suggest maybe going for simpler and/or more subjective type of videos; not sure it is your cup of tea, but maybe you have some opinions on the state of technology, new trends, the internet you would like to talk about. Regardless of what you go for, just make sure you go for the kind of content you like to make, whether that means a video once a decade or once a week. Hope you keep doing great :)

Updates & evolutions of content/topics isn't necessarily duplication, don't limit yourself `too much` on that front.

It's not a content crisis. More of a content coffee break. The way you name the problem defines the problem. The viewers will be here no matter how much time between the content. Enjoy the coffee! ;)

Love your videos brother! Have you thought of long term video series where you show how to build x y or z?

To better engage with your audience and gather feedback for your upcoming content, consider creating a poll in the community section of your KZfaq channel. By offering a few options for viewers to choose from, you can learn more about their interests and preferences, allowing you to better plan your future content.

I highly appreciate the honest reasons Brain, but I have learnt a lot from you. It's because of you, that I'm a full time linux user today and have dumped windows. Also, it's not bad to learn something new and create a video for others, if you stick to the option A that you should already know something from years to teach others -- one day you'll definitely end up having content. So, I encourage you to please make more videos, and create with the style you had at the begining, with lots of terminals open and Screen Share. Good luck!!

Missed your content man! My suggestion would be to focus on stuff you can present in 10-20min videos. Iam sure there is stuff you have experience with on sysadmin, DevOps, automation side. Thanks for sharing all this content so far anyways!

Thanks for your update. I've enjoyed your quick "how-to" content and refer others to this space. Your video and audio is top notch. I do miss the hat. ;-)

Great Content. I've played your videos in my class. I can think of several subjects I'd love to hear your explanation for. You're awesome.

Thank you for the update, I was beginning to wonder if something unfortunate had happened. Excited for whatever comes along in the future!

hey EM, long time fan! love the livestreams and the hacking video with python you did a couple of years ago. would love to hear you talk about event driven stuff and how it works if you have any experience there :D greetings from croatia!

Do you have any knowledge of distributed systems/Microservices? Like design and concepts? That’s something I’ve been really into. Plus, there is quite a lot of content on it. Maybe you can bring in a colleague to help you.

I loved you more after this video, being so honest and clear. feel free doing whatever what you want we will always support you

I greatly appreciate your introspection. Too many KZfaqrs are chasing trends for views even when they're not the most informed. This issue is compounded by the absence of the dislike button.

stay in there brother! ur stuff is very educational, to the point and concise.

Thanks for sharing, we're gonna support you for whatever you decide works!

I think youre overlooking that you have a lot more experience and can easily make more intermediate content such as jwt, cookies, cloud infra, scaling docker etc. My favorite was automating games, not because of games, but how automation can be done. Perhaps some shorts for opinionated stuff like 2 spaces or 4 spaces... Looking forward to more videos!

Suggestion. Look back on what you shared. Is there any updates that should be made? We all know how stale something like stack over flow can get. How do you keep your back log fresh? One of the big things experiences gives you, specifically in technology is it can give you a very useful POV on any new technology. What are the technologies you are tracking? What are the ones you feel are a waste of your time to invest in, what are the ones you feel you really need to stay on top of? Talk about Twitter and how big Devops became discussed, the idea that it is brittle, and provide a view from the trenches of software development that scales. What makes it brittle, what should you do to avoid making brittle things? Think about what you know and how you could apply that perspective to things that are important to the developer hitting the market, or working TODAY.

All good dude. Learned much. Keep on keeping on. Still following.

I have enjoyed your content in the past, and I do not envy your position of finding ways to continue content creation when it seems you feel the well is tapped in your preferred content. I feel like this is a common trend for creators that last long enough, and some find new ways to move forward, while others do not. Regardless of the direction you go, I hope you can at least take some solace in the quality of the content you have created so far, as well as the lives that you have touched in such a positive manner. I wish I was able to make a suggestion that would make it easy for you to continue the journey, but that seems beyond me at this time.

You could always go deeper in the subjects you like to make videos on. Learning Linux is a never ending thing, for example scripting for automation, networking, there a bunch of linux commands. I think you have plenty of company because I see a lot of content creators respinning previous videos but also changing them so they are not the same exactly.

Have you ever thought about doing something like answering SO posts and walking through them as videos? I have really appreciated your videos for the demonstrations of solid execution, but I would also be interested in the problem solving methodologies you employ. Just a thought.

I had the same thing with my blog. At some point, I found my self that I couldn't make something new and I had a hiatus. This lasted more than a year so far and I'm happy without my blog. When I'll need it again it will be there.

Really appreciate and respect you for this approach

You do such a great job, my only idea as I spent 38 years running engineering departments in wall street high frequency trading technology software development and network deployment, interview me, because I have tons of free career advice for the corporate techie, but long past a practicing engineer. Otherwise, maybe a collaboration with Andreas Speiss or jerryrigseverything or dronebotworkshop or the inja. Heres to a moment of clarity and protect your passion dude.

First, thank you, and goodto see that your disappearance is only a "KZfaq mid-life crisis" :-). A couple of points: 1) I have no issue learning a topic from somebody who has just learned that topic; it gives me a feeling that it becomes more accessible. How you takle the learning of a subject is what is interesting. 2) It does not need to be rocket science to be of interest. We might be engineers, but we all have our limitations 3) I just watched the video on ChatGPT. This is exaclty what you do good; you help us scratching the surface (a bit more actually) of a topic for us to explore more. 4) I really appreciate more the videos with screen of an editor versus the "discussions on a topic in a sofa with a fake background" ;-) 5) take your time; we need quality, not quantity.

Funny, just last night I was thinking "I haven't seen anything from EM for a while". No clue what made me think of you but I do miss your videos. Glad all is well with you, hope you show up again soon bud, I'll get my notice when you do and come running.

Hi, it's me 😊 Thank you for posting this. I personally understand, and am not going anywhere! The only advice I can give is that you do and create what you want to create - don't do what you think the community wants. I totally get this is the opposite advice of what you'll find in places where advice is offered for growing channels (/r/newtubers) but it's the fastest way to burnout when you're trying to cater to your audience. The trick is finding that niche where you like the content you're creating, and you discover your audience does too. As you've seen though, you've hit a place where you've run out of short tidbits that you're an authority on. You may end up having to pivot a bit and do videos related to things you're currently working on, or having to explore new things - either way just remember to do what you want to do, otherwise it will feel more like a job. I think the stress of trying to fit xyz into what your audience "expects" is too stressful. Cheers man!

Hi Engineering Man, thanks very much! Please feel encouraged by the fact that it is more difficult to ask excellent questions, than find excellent answers.

Given your solid experience, I would like to see you do some videos on the topic of micro-controllers. Specifically, if you could cover the Adafruit Clue and the BBC Micro:Bit, that would be great.

Hitting the "Eli The Computer Guy" / "The Smoking Tire" content barrier can be tough. Good luck finding a new angle to your channel. Have you tried critiquing / analyzing viewers code? or hosting code challenges?

Thanks for the update. Your videos were really great and I enjoyed watching each one of them. Now you seem to need to take a big break, and that's perfectly fine. You don't owe us anything. Take it easy, enjoy your life, do what you like. Forcing yourself would certainly not be a good idea. Maybe with time the mood, ideas and content will come back, maybe it will in a different unexpected way, maybe it won't but you'll rock at doing something completely different. Anyway will be fine, life isn't a straight line. See you, sometime, somewhere !

How about creating and explaining every step of creating a barebone Linux system? You could delve into the intricacies of the Linux kernel, discuss the various distributions available, and provide step-by-step instructions on how to build a custom Linux system from scratch. To make it even more fun, the resulting product could be made bootable from a USB flash drive, allowing it to be used on any computer the drive is plugged into and the storage could be non-volatile

This wasn't neccesary. Corey Schaffer was gone for quite some time too, recently returned. The library speaks for itself. Unless its some monetary incntive to output new content which I doubt applies here. Idea: review if some technologies in older vids are outdated, review changes. Best of luck finding inspiration ;)

Thanks for the great content. We'll be patiently waiting for more.

What you're doing now is what you need to do now. As for new stuff, there's lots of new tech in the world of power electronics. Always practical. Motor controls, back EMF, and energy basics. In communications, there's LoRaWAN stuff, and IOT/IIOT. In consumer electronics, there's LED lighting and audio. In my opinion, all of it comes back to power electronics. The basics. How about review, too? Even the engineering of implementation, is itself deep and wide. Regardless, thank you for bring us your best!

If we can watch the engineering man learn, that would give us confident in learning new things as well!!!

You make great content, in my case I have always been more into watching the videos about automating games, and definitely the scammer whacking. These are two themes that can serve unlimited content, there's no end of entertainment with attacking scammers. Not sure how you feel about those videos, but there are lots of youtuber scambaiters that im sure would be happy to collaborate with someone with your skills, and it would be doing a lot of good, we're talking the likes of Scammer Payback, Jim Browning etc. Anyway keep it up, and that's my two cents!

I am in a similar situation. Just take a break and come back to the channel when your ready.

Personally, as long as it's "no BS", you've got one loyal subscriber in me. No matter the gap between your videos.

you can make more videos about the stuff you have like node but going more about it. more backnend focus series (I think series will be good) extend on the videos that you have made. i loved the github serie but it was brief. I had to go and search other videos for stuyff like github actions or CI/CD.

🤜🤛🔥Hey mate, fellow Engineer & KZfaqur here. An approach that helps me : on KZfaq, I "document" stuff. What you know >> tutorial. Fails & success >> worth sharing. Soft skills, projects >> sure. But don't force yourself to do sth you don't want, it won't work on the medium long term. Best of luck.

Will always be a loyal subscriber! Do you by any chance follow other creators in this space? I find that lots of creators are participating in a sort of wider meta conversation/discourse. Whether it’s some of the newest technologies (bun v NodeJS), design patterns, best practices in typescript (for instance Theo and the Primagean had a back and forth on whether it’s better to strictly type or to generally allow the typescript compiler to derive and implicit return type), I find value in getting a specific creator’s opinion, even if the topic itself is covered. Perhaps looking at other creators content can give you a sense for what your audience is potentially looking at and interested in. Also, what about career advice? Freelance advice? I talked to a startup founder the other day and he expressed to me some frustration for boot camp grads to not be able to move quickly/understand the fundamentals due to only knowing one technology. Don’t know if there’s a potential there for revising higher level concepts, rather than just “how to implement x in python in 5 minutes”. You have any incredible experience and a great story! There’s still so much you can offer and I await the next video whenever it comes out. 😎

As a noobie, it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on trends and ongoing projects of others'.

Found your channel about a year ago, so it's all still new to me. Is there any chance you could demonstrate the proper usage of Kali Linux in the area of cybersecurity? I have some background with Linux usage, C and Assembly software creation but I don't know how to tie it all together. I've been reading several websites of semi helpful information, however none of them seem to convey a subject direct to-the-point as you do. If cybersecurity is too far from your area of expertise maybe this would be a bad idea since you said you didn't want to learn something new just to make a video but I bet you could do this topic Justice.

you can break your livestreams into smaller chunks as part 1 and 2 . people are usually afraid to click on an hour long video but in the end it is just feeding the machine . for actual content maybe you can show us how if you ever have started github and got involved in any side projects in the community. I am not aware if you have it would just be an interesting thing personally to know.

Do you ever reverse engineer a product? What stools are needed or what programs can be used to pull its operating system off it?

you've said some interesting things here. not completely agreeing with what you have to say about "watching someone learn something". i think there's value in watching someone learn something. as there's value in watching people interact/struggle with trying to use your GUI. it's in the struggle that we can see where GUI design can be improved. It's in watching you learn something that others can maybe pick up better habits or pitfalls to avoid. secondly, the thought that comes to mind is that once you've done "everything" the idea of what's next is daunting. i think it's what ought to keep most of us up at night. how do we make this world a better place. i think that learning something for the sake of making content is bad, but learning something because you are generally interested, and/or learning something because it will make the world a better place is more motivating. are there things that you can teach to make people's lives easier. lastly, i mean, if you aren't having fun. don't do it.

There are still more things todo. No one was talking about Matlab vs Mathematica, IoT configurations, autonomous code development and assembly language for lower level soc or something else

I definitely appreciate the approach you're taking. I'd rather see less frequent uploads than you forcing dumb content that you don't enjoy making just because you feel "forced". Take your time and stay true to yourself.

Please make stuff for complete beginners. Things like Computer science basics for complete beginners, C for complete beginners, linux for complete beginners , algorithms and data structures in C, Design patterns in python, using git and git hub for complete beginners, VS code for complete beginners. Help us go through every level of abstraction so we can be computer science geniuses . Making programming playlists for complete beginners allows you to have a large audience base because mostly everyone would benefit learning CS. Helping people learn is the greatest thing on earth to do because it helps society most

You could use pulsar which is a fork of atom with all of the packages. Just see if it is compatible with your Linux distro. Also can you tell me what distro you use?

Content Crisis .... Maybe an idea to do a series setting up VS from scratch, using gcc as c++ compiler for cross compiling on another server with CMake and so on. There are a lot of templates but almost no one understands the "why". The "why" is required for understanding. You are a master in comprehensive explaining the "why" and "how". I know you are not the VS master. But that should be the reason you should do it so we can all gradually learn, also from the pits you felled in.

Not sure if you contribute to any open source projects. If you do, maybe do some live streams of changes/your work? Looking forward to when you can get your hands on the zed editor and a review!

CTO... CTO... CTO !! Great leadership here man, calling it out is the best way to get your brain firing onto the next thing.

Suggestion: Revisit old videos and update them if you think you could have done a better job, or given what you know now, you would have done it differently. Another suggestion is do some introductions to new technologies. There is always something new coming along. Some technologies succeed and flourish. Some make a big splash, then die a quick death. BTW, you said subscriber numbers don't matter to you but apparently the number of viewers for a live stream does matter to you. Fifty used to be good enough, but now it isn't. So what kind of viewer count do you want?

Take your time, engineer! We'll be around.

sooooo .... how many data structures do you know! there can be a video on each one of them, specially for people looking for learning those for the first time! do you know how hash codes work, how about a video on that? what about compression algorithms, and how about compiler topics, there can be so many of those!

You could make some content focused on you learning new tech etc. It would't be a case of you trying to teach people something you have just learned, but would show them your method of learning. Which is probably more valuable. Like the saying goes, give a man a fish, feed him for a day...

Hey, I would love to see some python content related to cache and thread pools, some of your old videos helped me a lot and I'm currently interested in those topics, if that's something you may find interesting doing, please, I would be very glad.

May need you to guest on OneTake Radio to talk tech landscape, other hot topics 🤔

You can make videos with a guest speaker, where they can open new topics to talk about

you have made awesome videos people can reference for years to come, if you never upload again you'll still bring value to new people from ur old vids, you have a legacy, I'd be satisfied with that if I were you. you could stop making videos now if you want, and forget about youtube; just don't delete ur channel!

How about some videos on how to get into programming with no computer background at all

Where have you been man

You must come back. Let me give you some ideas that are now looking on with node: - low level programming. Use only native nodejs without any npm commands to build chat apps, network communications etc. - and what I am looking for is to create smtp email services. Basically still low level, but create my own