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It’s always lovely to see software engineers link to my original piece on tacit knowledge, saying that they identify with the skilled people I describe in it. But it’s also a little bittersweet, because I gave up the pursuit of that level of intuitive expertise in software.

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Testing Required

@testingrequired

Mar 6

Replying to @TheCodeJunkie

This made me think of: commoncog.com/blog/tacit-kno "In my previous job, my technical lead, Hieu, had an uncanny ability to sit in on requirements meetings and, within minutes, sketch out a program structure that would be the simplest possible solution with the fewest moving parts."

5:41 AM · Mar 7, 2022Twitter Web App

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That isn’t to say that I can’t acquire it. But I know the amount of work (and the number of years) to get to that level, and my current path doesn’t allow me to put in the reps necessary.

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Mar 7

I’d always thought of myself as having above average taste in software engineering. But I recently realised that most of my peers — at this point in our careers — have significantly better taste and judgment in software eng than I do, and I’ve learnt to defer to them.

Cedric Chin

@ejames_c

Mar 7

It was — to put it mildly — a pretty humbling experience. Especially since I’ve always seen myself as a rigorous technical person.

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I'm curious to learn how you would view tacit knowledge in relation to experience. They seem synonymous to me, yet quite interestingly the word experience isn't written once in the article (I even ⌘+F'ed it 😅)

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Definitely related, but I don’t like using experience as a descriptor in the piece because it’s too … imprecise? It allows me to sweep a great deal under the blanket of a single word.

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Someone needs to create the environments for engineers to do excellent work. It’s equally important, and expertise in that is probably more rare than expertise in software engineering itself. Much more subtle and indirect, but equally powerful

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You're not wrong. It's hard (impossible) to teach or even measure yet seeing two devs with this intuitive power speak in half sentences even seeming to share thoughts telepathically. Hard to measure but can be observed.

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and

Environment is also so important to grow this within a team. Trust builds and understanding of your code bases. Pairing, asking questions, understanding, cross functional teams of t shaped skill sets, tasks over roles. There's a lot of variables and it's never a guarantee.

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