I Stopped Performing Online and Started Building Again

If you create software or otherwise participate in the technology realm, you have to accept the idea of remaining obscure and unknown. Over the last few years I’ve posted my work and ideas on Medium, reddit, dev.to, youtube and all the usual publishing platforms. They’re fine for short-term feedback, but they don’t really get your name out there—nor should they. They reward performance—how well you play to an invisible audience—not the actual craft or skill behind your work or contribution to the field.

The place that’s actually changed how I think about my work is GitHub. Almost nobody will ever browse my profile, and most of the repos won’t get traction. But the code itself is there - and maybe that's the only part that matters. If the work is good, it will eventually find its place in the infrastructure, find the people who need it. If it isn’t good enough, no amount of posting or engagement elsewhere will compensate.

Realizing that has been strangely stabilizing. I stopped chasing visibility on platforms built around attention and started caring more about the quality and usefulness of what I build. The metrics are quieter, but they’re more honest.

In the end, obscurity is normal in the tech industry. Who can name all those who work on the firefox browser or the openbox window mgr, etc. The work has true value even if the author doesn’t become a name people know. And if something I build ends up helping someone, even years from now, that has to be enough.