Why are so many genius coders and hackers not giving tips to others to help them?

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Oh this is timely. Just this morning, on the way out to work, the concierge asked me what I did for a living. I told him I was a software engineer. He was like, “oh man, here’s my chance!” and started picking my brain. He was going to school for some kind of software security.

I told him he should be downloading different types of software and trying to break them, what they call pentesting. There are all kinds of software courses and packages to help teach you stuff like that. I personally don’t know anything but the fundamentals, being a software engineer and not a security guy.

I wrote down the URL to Hacker News, and gave him the names of a few of the security-minded high-profile users, very approachable guys. That’s all I can do.

The big thing people are missing is that if you want to have a geek job, you need to be a geek. When he was playing sports in school, I was learning how to build computers. Then I learned how to build websites. Then I learned how to make Windows do what I wanted it to. Then I learned Linux. Then I installed a dozen different distros and made them work.

A story I like to tell people is that 4 years ago, I went on a two month trip to Colombia. I spent much of that trip learning “real” web development. I was so happy when I realized that the hostel I was staying at had a desk that I could sit at. Did I chase the ladies? Sure, on my off time.

Technology and coding is who I am, and I’m very good at it.

Guys like you who come up to me and want to be like me because you see me making a hundred large a year and live in a super nice place all seem to think you just need to study hard for a few years and you’ll get there. You think it’s a matter of educational materials that aren’t there for you.

But I had exactly the same materials available to me that you had. I just chose to seek them out and use them. You chose to do something else with your time.

I can’t dump the countless hours I spent chasing down bugs, beating my head against manuals, reading programming books, building things, abandoning them because I realized they wouldn’t work, all into your brain, not on any reasonable time frame, anyway.

One of my good friends who I’ve known for years came up to me one day and wanted to learn how to code. He’s smart and driven, I thought all I would have to do is just point him in the right direction. So I, with my own money, bought the gold-standard Rails Tutorial, by Michael Hartl, for him and told him I’m just a phone call away if he ever has any trouble with anything. I even offered to sit down with him once a week and help him go through everything and anything.

Did I ever get a call from him? Nope. I kept on him when I could, but I quickly realized that the Rails Tutorial was too much for him. It was too steep a learning curve, and a shallower one would have taken him years, and he didn’t have years.

Everybody wants a shortcut. But guess what! That shortcut exists! They’re called code camps. You pay $X000 dollars and get access to a course specifically designed for people like you to take you from no skills at all, to having just enough to get an entry-level job in software development.

But you don’t just want a shortcut, you want a free shortcut. Well I can’t do that for you. I wish I could, believe me, I really wish I could be the guy to invent that. It would be amazing. I would happily give up my privileged position in the world so that I could live in one where my expertise isn’t even special. I get positively ecstatic when I think about it, it would be that awesome. You wouldn’t even have to pay me to invent it. I’d do it all just to unleash it onto the world.

But I have no idea how to do that. And nobody else does either.