Zoobie Coder: Why Teaching Breaks the Code Zombie Cycle
Let’s be real—most software engineers are low-key just surviving the code jungle. We follow tutorials, paste in snippets, see it run, and call it a day. Everything works. Life is good. But here’s the twist: working code doesn’t always mean understood code. And that’s where the "Zoobie Coder" comes in. Note author of the book programmer brain Felienne Herman confirm this in one of the podcast she was interviewed What’s a Zoobie Coder? A Zoobie Coder is someone who codes on autopilot. You use the tools. You build the features. But you don’t really understand the inner workings. You just go with the flow—because it works. There’s no pause to explore why something works, or how it could break. And it’s not because you’re lazy—it’s because most learning environments are built for speed, not depth. The Escape Route? Start Teaching. Now imagine this: someone asks you to teach a class on how to clone Amazon—not just build it, but explain every step. Suddenly, the game changes. It’s no longer about “just getting it to work.” Now you’re thinking, “Wait, how does this routing setup actually function?” “Why did we choose this API call pattern?” “What would break if I changed this logic?” That’s the shift from Zoobie Mode to Deep Learning Mode. Because when you’re learning to teach, your brain operates on a whole new level. In both episode 1,2 and 4 of React entrepreneur and every challenges done by @Sonny Sangha and @Jay Rathod they preach this concept of teaching. in case you forget anytime @Sonny Sangha mentioned Jimmy just just know it time 😊 Why Teaching Forces Real Understanding When you're building to use, you aim for speed. When you're building to teach, you aim for clarity. You slow down. You ask better questions. You start caring about structure, naming, flow, and edge cases. And ironically, you end up learning faster—because you're no longer skipping over things you “don’t need right now.”