i love the framing introduction to this post that is something relatively quotidian but then loops back to something dev career related.
> If each person has a finite amount of time to spend either learning or sharing, we'd expect to find a negative correlation between output and experience. This, in turn, lowers the overall quality of content on any given subject
my counter would be that this is a U shaped curve, not a linear correlation. some reflection is good - you only know something when you can teach it, you dont know what you think until you force yourself to write things down, you learn faster when there are many people to correct you instead of having to personally experience everything first hand, etc - but there's some crossover where you're left not doing enough to support the amount of talking you've committed to doing. (this is related to the general study of optimal overhead, which i've tried to gather https://www.swyx.io/optimal-overhead)
I've noticed this effect when learning to play a game. In order to improve, one must practice a skill, but one cannot do so if they don't have an idea of what a better way to execute that skill is. Therefore, a certain amount of theorizing is required, otherwise one ends up just mindlessly playing and their skill stagnates.
This is part of why some people with 10 years of experience actually only have 1 year of experience, repeated 10 times.
The converse is also true of course, if all one does is theorize without practicing, then not only is the theory not being worked into a skill, but at some point the theorizing will be based only on prior theorizing instead of experience, which invariably results in incorrect theories.
The optimal loop seems to be:
1. Pick a desired skill to improve at
2. Analyze the way you're doing it right now and figure out a better way. This is the trickiest step, if unable to self-analyze look for guidance in others.
3. Consciously practice, one skill at a time
This applies to every skill in existence, not just games.
I notice this with YouTube personalities. It takes a lot of effort to run a high quality YouTube channel, and you often see people stop being competitive in their sports and start being youtubers instead. Some of the most well compensated sports people aren't even competing, they just teach on YouTube.
The only sporty YouTubers I follow are in parkour and World Chase Tag. Most of those are demonstrating their own skills, so they do have to be good at what they do. Some are among the best in the world at what they do. Only one (JimmyTheGiant) is mostly commenting and interviewing (and making brief documentaries about the history of the sport), and he's open that he's not the best at the actual parkour.
I suppose it depends on the field. A retired athlete probably still has a lot of useful things to say about their sport, whereas other fields really require you to stay up to date to be useful.
> If each person has a finite amount of time to spend either learning or sharing, we'd expect to find a negative correlation between output and experience. This, in turn, lowers the overall quality of content on any given subject
my counter would be that this is a U shaped curve, not a linear correlation. some reflection is good - you only know something when you can teach it, you dont know what you think until you force yourself to write things down, you learn faster when there are many people to correct you instead of having to personally experience everything first hand, etc - but there's some crossover where you're left not doing enough to support the amount of talking you've committed to doing. (this is related to the general study of optimal overhead, which i've tried to gather https://www.swyx.io/optimal-overhead)