Hey! This is the daily Overpass. My name is Eric and I make apps.
Hey! It is episode 500! Today I want to talk about " The Dangers of Becoming a
Pundit ".
All right, so here we are, it's episode 500. I have been looking forward to doing
this video for weeks, to getting to this milestone. But at the same time I've kind
of been agonizing about it too. Because I kept thinking it's 500! We should do
something special. We should do something, maybe something with special effects,
or maybe do a dance video, or something like that. Something crazy we've never done
before. And then I thought, no actually, that would be kind of stupid. Let's just
do what we do all the time. Let's talk about technology. Let's talk about apps.
Let's talk about things that we talk about. However, I would like to say thank
you to everybody who's been watching all this time. And thanks to everybody who
subscribed. And if you haven't had a chance to subscribe yet, now's your
chance. And I really appreciate it and I did get myself a little cake here which
I'll have probably later after dinner, just something, some kind of
celebration and I'm afraid there's not enough for all of us. So anyway, today I
wanted to talk a little bit about something about pundits, because, all this
stuff with YouTube as the channel starts to grow, you'll be getting more, you know,
more traction and it's a lot it's a lot of fun to do. And sometimes, I have to
admit, it can go to my head. I started to think like, hey maybe I could just do the
YouTube thing full-time. Or somebody says to me " Hey why don't you do a podcast? " and
I go " Oh yeah, we get to do a podcast too and then we could do this, we could do that ".
and then I forget about the fact that, I'm an app developer. I like doing the app
side of things, and I started to take my eye off that ball. And that's the
scary part of it. Years ago, I read this article by Jeff Atwood of the coding
horror blog. It was called ' Always Be Shipping'. And in the article, in the blog
post, I'll put it in the comments. It came out in 2007, but I think I read it in
2010. I liked it so much, I put it into Evernote, and every so often I go back to
it. But in the article he talked about how, when he talked to developers, he has
to tell them two different things. He has to say number one, find a place that you
could go and close yourself up, and be away from the world, and code away. And
number two, go outside and talk to other people about your projects, right. He says
for a lot of developers doing the first one is easy, doing the second one is hard.
But then he says something really interesting. He had this
really good quote. And I just I love this. He says, because he said his
fear was that he was doing too much of the latter. So he said " At the point when
I spent all my time talking about programming, and very little of my time
programming, my worst fear has been realized: I have become a pundit . The last
thing the world needs, is more pundits. Pundits only add ephemeral commentary to
the world instead of anything concrete and real. They don't materially
participate in the construction of any lasting artifacts.
Instead, they passively observe other people's work, and offer never-ending
babbling brook of opinions, criticisms, and witty turns of phrase. It's pathetic."
And I loved that when I read it. And this is one of the things I fear. I don't want
to get to the point where I become a pundit. The guy who could talk a good
game, but can't actually do it, right. So when I started thinking about let's do
something really good. We'll do, maybe we could do YouTube, but maybe we could do
two or three videos a day. Maybe we could just really go all in. And then I think
no. Because at one point, I may get to the point where I'm talking about doing
something that I no longer know how to do, right. And the truth is, I love being a
developer. I love being a software developer. If you've been watching
the channel for the last 500 episodes, you know that sometimes there's this
conflict in my mind. Because I know we need to scale. I can't do all the coding
myself. And we're hiring other people and trying to foster them around. And
sometimes I think, maybe I should stop coding altogether. But I love doing it,
and I don't want to stop. And then I started thinking, you
know what, when I was in the Army, the non-commissioned officers that we looked
up to, were the ones who could do what we were supposed to do. The managers I've
had over my career, are the ones who knew, who could do what I had to do, if I
couldn't do it. And that's something that I pride myself on, is knowing how to how
to code. So when I'm working with developers and they're having a problem,
I love the fact that I could jump in there and help. But you know, I don't want
to become a pundit. We all know people who could talk a good game, and they just
they just add commentary. They say stuff like, oh yeah, you should use sensor tower
or whatever, and they've never used it themselves. Or they read an article
about something, and all of a sudden they're an expert on it, but they've
never actually done it. I never want to get that way, so, that's all I want to
talk about today, being a pundit. And also, again if it seems like, I feel
like I've let you guys down, for not doing something special today, but thank
you so much for, you know, sticking with me all these episodes. And I'm really
looking forward to the next 500. And when we get to Episode a thousand, we'll do
something really really cool. I don't know what yet. Maybe I can bungee jump, or
dye my hair, or something and get a tattoo. Oh!! That would be awesome! Anyway
that is it for today. I will talk to you guys again tomorrow.