The most important skill

As a software developer you need to have large skill set: knowing the right tools, languages, frameworks, platforms, and so on. To complicate things you need to keep every piece of knowledge updated since the field of computing is changing so rapidly. But what is the most important skill among all these? I argue that it's not knowledge of some key technology that make you more than an average programmer, nor is it how many fixed point combinators you dreamt up, how many open-source project you've started, or how fast you type. If non of these, what is the most important skill?


First let me note that with developer I do not mean someone like Alice who write shell one-liners for her husband Bob to search his photo collection of dogs with hats. I don't mean teenanger Charlie who uses barbed wire and duct tape to hack together scripts to play suitably random mp3s to match his parents' photo slide show from their vacation last summer. What I mean is someone who write code that other developers will maintain, test, read, enhance, etc. In essens I mean developers that work with other developers either directly or through their code.

So, the important part here is work with other developers, which leads me to the heart of this post: the most important skill for a developer is communication. Err, I'm sorry, let me correct that: the most important skill for every developer is effective communication. By communication I mean source code and comments, documentation and specifications, power-point presentations and white-board explanations, mail and phone calls, and so on. I could continue, but I think you've got the point.

A small disclaimer before we continue. I assume that the ones you communicate with want to understand what you say or write. If that's not the case then you have an entierly different problem, and I don't think much in this post can help you. Sorry. Ok, that's that, let's continue.

I've met many very technically skilled developers that, when I tell them I don't understand what you mean, literally repeated what they just said (only louder). Is this good communication? I don't think so. I've also got mails from otherwise good programmers which basically required mind reading ability in order to be understood. Even worse, the mails were sent to 10-50 people, meaning (10 to 50) * (mail length) / (reading speed) * (average speed reduction factor due to lack of mind reading ability) man-hours was spent reading that mail. Effective communication? No.

I think there are two kinds of communication: one-way and two-way. Explaning some intricate technical detail to you pair-programming collaegue is a two-way communication since you (should) instantly realize if you collaegue understands you (by her facial expressions and body language). Phone calls are also two-way since the vocal intonation (should) indicate directly to you whether or not your explanation is good enough.

On the other hand, I consider mail to be a one-way communication (especially if sent to many people) since you don't get any indications when you write the mail if it will be understood or not when received. The same is true for documentation, specifications, code comments and source code. All these kinds of communication is one-way since it takes long time until you get any feedback on if your colleagues understand it or not.

So, how to become a better developer? How to communicate more effectively? For two-way communication I suggest to practice. For one-way communication I suggest... practice, as well actually. That is. Move along, nothing more to see here. Hit the back-button on you favourite browser.

Just kidding. Well, kind of any way. I do think that practice is the one thing will make any noticable difference, so my suggestion is to try to explain whatever technical work you're currently doing to your aunt Mathilda who lives in that small red cottage and knits hats all day long. Oh, it's impossible you say? Your aunt has never heard of numerical stability? She thinks monte carlo simulations has something to do with SimCity? That's doesn't mean you can't make her understand the ideas behind your work. It only means that you have to try harder to explain and simplify it using her language and concepts! Remember that the whole idea with this exercise is to make you better at explaning to other people, not make your aunt capable of challenging the next Turing award winner. To be blunt, she is just an exercise tool. A excerise tool that makes extremely good blueberry pies, though. Yum.

In fact, you could do this exercise by explaning anything. For instance, describe the story of the last book you read, a news article, or the story behind the best photo you ever took. But remember, you're not just telling the story, you're explaning what happend. You should "listen" (with your ears and eyes) to your audience to make sure they understand every word you say.

Some simple concrete tips:

• Be clear about the background. Just because you remember the context, does not mean every one else do. Start the explanation by giving the relevant context. If you have discussed it before with the audience, refer to that. If you haven't, start by giving a hand-waving overview of the problem.
• Use you hands. If you talk about many different objects, place them on different places in the air and "hold" the object you talk about by making a fist on that spot. Much less confusing for those who listen to you. Also, if you need to move your arms around to refer to different objects, you will probably speak more slowly which is also makes it easier to take in everything you say.
• Pop the stack explicitly. Often in a discussion you need to get back to something you talked about earlier. In that case, say "as I said before" before you start talking about it to indicate to your audience that you pop the conversation stack. If you just change the subject people could get a bit confused and miss some parts of your explanation.
• Be utterly clear when something is important. Say "this is the key point", or "this is important". Use short sentences. Repeat yourself. Use short sentences and repeat yourself. Make a pause to let your audience take in what you just said and let them think about it. Use some uncommon phrase or a silly name when explaning this key point that you can use later on to refer to it.
• Speak clearly or stay quiet. If you don't know what to say, don't mumble something incomprehensible. Just shut up. Scratch your head a bit if you feel akward to let the audience know that you're thinking about what to say. People won't mind anyway, unless you do it twice every minute. They will probably thank you for the moment of mental relief. In fact, you can make pauses like this work for your advantage. (Read the bullet above one more time if you don't understand why. (You still don't get it? I'm refering to the 6th sentence, silly.))

That it for this post. But what about the one-way communications? How to improve those? I'll get back to that in my next post on this subject. Until then, if you have any other tips please let me know by leaving a comment!

And oh, before I forget, say hello to aunt Mathilda for me!