Can you explain your work?

September 23, 2024

It's one skill to be able to write code that works. But there's another, perhaps more important, skill that far fewer developers are good at.

Explaining the current state of a project, clearly stating the problem, and logically laying out the proposed solutions is a critical skill in itself. The skill of explanation & clear communication only becomes more important as you advance in your developer career.

You'll have to onboard new developers to your team. Or, distill technical decisions into an understandable choice for other business units. Or, lead a team working together on a big problem with many moving parts. In all these situations, your ability to explain yourself becomes more important than your ability to write some code.

Clear explanations come from clear thinking. The same can be said for good code. It all comes down to your ability to break problems into their component parts & the relationships between them.

Here's the cool thing - often you'll find that if you strive to become better at explaining the problems & solutions, you develop a sharper picture of the problem in your mind. In turn, that leads to writing better code & realizing novel possibilities for solutions.

I've said it a million times: developers should really invest in their ability to communicate. It will pay huge dividends in your career.


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