I have seen first hand two people getting hired (I did not interview them) who had reasonable blog posts and who, once they arrived at a desk, could not program

I have seen first hand two people getting hired (I did not interview them) who had reasonable blog posts and who, once they arrived at a desk, could not program. (Fortunately the second time I was in a position to change the hiring process). I have also worked with several people whose skill was sounding clever. One liked to read MSDN magazine, and then regurgitate the talking points to the CEO and CTO, who liked to trot him out in front of potential investors and customers. The content was just advertising Microsoft products utterly inappropriate for our startup, and eventually the company died after failing to deliver feature after feature because of vast over-engineering. There are communication skills and then there are programming skills. Being good at either one is rare. So statistically if you meet someone who is good at talking or writing about coding then, absent any other evidence, that actually tells you nothing about whether or not they can code. Script kiddies are still alive and well, and some of them are Blog Kiddies now. Yet, though it is a small intersection, it is not empty.