21 Lessons From 14 Years at Google
Writing forces clarity. The fastest way to learn something better is to try teaching it. Writing forces clarity. When I explain a concept to others - in a doc, a talk, a code review comment, even just chatting with AI - I discover the gaps in my own understanding. The act of making something legible to someone else makes it more legible to me.
This doesn’t mean that you’re going to learn how to be a surgeon by teaching it, but the premise still holds largely true in the software engineering domain.
This isn’t just about being generous with knowledge. It’s a selfish learning hack. If you think you understand something, try to explain it simply. The places where you stumble are the places where your understanding is shallow.
Teaching is debugging your own mental models.