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Discussion on: I'm Addy Osmani, Ask Me Anything!

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Addy Osmani

I often don't feel like I deserve any of the attention. Some of the most exceptional coders in the world don't get as much acknowledgement of their work as they should. I wish that we could change this and to the extent platforms like dev.to and social mentions enable a path to this, I'm hopeful more of them will be considered coding celebrities in the future :)

What's it like being a coding celebrity?

What's it like.. you learn the importance of being humble. You learn to be careful with what you say and how it can be interpreted when you make a strong statement. When people look up to you (in any situation), you have a responsibility to try giving them a measured response where you've considered the best data and facts available to you. It's far too easy to spend 15s thinking about something and just posting it out into the world (think before you speak).

There are tweets and articles about topics that I would love to post, but don't because I'd prefer to take my time to check on the data and consult with others in the community so I can be confident if I suggest something is a best practice, that I truly believe it is. It's very possible I overthink and over-analyze so take this with a grain of salt :)

Did you think you'd have a massive following like this before it happened?

I didn't think I would be fortunate enough to get the following I have. I just constantly hope I'm giving folks some value vs. throwing out nonsense :)

How did you get to where you are in this regard? I'm super curious about your mindset along the way.

I get asked this question a lot and the answer is: by trying to continue delivering value to the community as often as I can. I definitely don't do this every day or every week, but I think we all struggle to stay on top of things on the web. It's challenging knowing what the latest best practices, tools and techniques are. To the extent that we can distill some of this down into a bite-sized form for folks (tweets etc) that they feel comfortable digesting, maybe that's useful enough.

I will say the journey itself to this point, although hard, has been fun and educationally rewarding.