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Comment on Ask HN: Are authors of “how to be great developer” blogs great developers?

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My take: I like the Bruce Lee quote:

   I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, 
   but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
The people who blog about being great developers are largely bordering on snakeoil salesmen/women. I think the great devs are too busy writing code.

I'd elaborate and endorse this view, but I'm too busy writing code.

As a mediocre developer, I'll gladly endorse this view.

This gave me a good chuckle.

Depends on your criteria. If you are interested in the best solo developer it's probably true. But in software engineering the hardest part is working in teams. Building a large scale system too large to fit in anyone's head while still maintaining a reasonable degree of modularity and cohesion is very difficult and requires a degree of verbal and written communication that could translate very well to blogging.

More relevant is the low barrier to entry to blogging and Sturgeon's Law.

I write in order to understand and solidify a concept in my mind and so that I don’t have to remember it next time I face a similar problem. I used to do so publicly but I mostly write privately now.

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