Learn To Explain Concepts To Non-Technical Users

Dear new developer,

I taught technology courses for about a year and a half, but have been teaching folks almost my entire career in one way or another (everyone has something to teach), primarily through my blog.

One thing I’ve learned over time is that if you can’t explain a technology choice in a way that a non technical user can understand, you don’t understand it. It can be very easy to get caught up in jargon. Jargon in and of itself is not a bad thing. It’s a shortcut. If I say RDBMS to another developer, they know that this is a third party piece of software which provides safe, durable, transactional data storage. (See how jargon builds on itself? “transactional” is jargon as well.) But just like if you take one shortcut after another you’re likely to get lost, too much jargon can blind you. (Or at least put you in a fog.) AWS In Plain English is a great example of how the names of AWS services are confusing and could be improved.

So, learn how to think about technical topics in a non technical way. Then you can bundle it up in jargon later, when you have a clear understanding of it.

One great way to do this is to learn to explain things to non technical users. You can do this via writing (a blog), speaking (at a meetup), or just talking to someone in your life (parents, friends) about what you do for a living. Lots of people are mystified by software and are happy to learn more about it. You can start as small as you like (“what’s a directory?”). Go slowly and try to explain exactly what you do. An example for a site I worked on is “we pull information from a couple of different sources and publish it.” (I confess, I had to write slowly and rewrite that sentence because I used jargon.)

Other benefit of learning to do this is that as you continue your career as a developer, you’ll typically spend more and more time around non technical people. These folks make decisions that affect business and software, but they won’t always understand the latter. If you are well versed in explaining technical concepts, you’ll be valued and be able to be at the table when decisions are made.

So, if you can explain something non technical, you gain:

  • clarity for yourself
  • the ability to teach others
  • influence in your organization

What’s not to like?



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