Dayvi Schuster 12 min read Thursday, September 18, 2025 Dev Culture Is Dying The Curious Developer Is Gone From tinkerers to metric seekers: How the shift in developer culture is impacting innovation and creativity.
When Curiosity Lead the Way
If you have been in software development for a while, you might remember a time when developers were launching unique and innovative products and projects just for the sake of curiosity, learning or even just because they had a particular interest in a specific topic.
This curiosity and problem solving mindset gave us some of the best tools that we still use today such as VLC, Linux, Git, Apache HTTP Server, Docker(arguably), and many many more.
These tools were not created by large corporations or solopreneurs looking to increase their MMR or ARR. They were created by curious developers who wanted to solve a unique problem they had or even just wanted to learn something new.
Nights Spend Chasing ideas and Tinkering
I still remember back in the 2000s (2003-2009) the nights I spent tinkering with new technologies, frameworks, and programming languages. I would often find myself staying up late into the night, fueled by curiosity and a desire to learn more about the craft of software development. I would make the dumbest of projects and the strangest of shortcuts just because I could and just to see if it would work. Even if it would only serve me and no one else, I would still make it because it was simply fun.
Learning Without a Purpose
There is something to be said about learning without a clear purpose, goal or even a expected reward at the end of your journey. It allows you to explore new ideas and concepts without the pressure of having to deliver a specific outcome. It allows you to be creative and even tinker with suboptimal implementations and solutions or even some that are flat out insane or idiotic.
Because at the end of your journey, you will not be met with disappointment that you did not create a new product or service that will generate passive income or be used by hundreds of thousands of people. No, that was never your expectation going into it in the first place, you started the journey simply because you were curious and you wanted to create something even if your target demographic was just yourself.
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