Some people have a career in building new things or inventing things. Other people have a career in connecting people together, or writing criticism of things

Some people have a career in building new things or inventing things. Other people have a career in connecting people together, or writing criticism of things other people have built, or writing documentation or other kinds of exposition, or interviewing, or doing investigative reporting, or editing, or building communities, or ... John Gruber does not sell himself as a programmer or computer scientist or technical wunderkind. He was able to cobble together a little ad-hoc specification and perl script (markdown) that works for him, and many other people like it (because it’s great at what it does!), but I have never heard him introduce himself as “hi, I’m the brilliant inventor of markdown, that technical masterwork”, or whatever. He has made his career in writing, which in his case is some mix of criticism, journalism, and surfacing interesting stuff from around the web. He’s quite good at his job, which is why many people read his blog.