It’s been a while since I last wrote blog posts and after reading a nice post about this, I feel like it’s time to get back on track researching and posting summaries of things that I’ve learned recently. It’s also worth noting that with the rise of ChatGPT it’s been easier than ever to have interesting conversations that spark the crave to learn more about some subject. It’s an opportunity to eventually grow as a software engineer and to better structure the knowledge I’m acquiring.

Writing as a learning tool

From all the possible goals that I could have from writing, my main goal with blogging has always been the pressure it gives me to research a topic well before writing about it, besides analyzing different sides to reach a balanced and more neutral opinion. Blogging can be a powerful tool not just for learning, but for critical thinking.

As discussed in this nice article:

Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. […] writing is also the process by which you figure it out.

In a presentation on a Microsoft Research conference, Leslie Lamport talks about how writing is an important step into structuring any idea. According to him:

  • To think, you have to write.
  • If you’re thinking without writing, chances are you’re fooling yourself.

One thing I love about ChatGPT and its ability to discuss ideas is the possibility of asking for it to “ELI5” some concept or idea. This is interesting because the best way to know if someone really understand something is their ability to explain it in simple terms. This is the idea behind subreddits like Explain like I’m Five.

By forcing yourself to explain something in simple terms, it is necessary to have a good grasp of the concepts you want to explain. The problem here is that very often we think we know something when we don’t, and this is known as the illusion of knowledge.

The illusion of knowledge (or illusion of explanatory depth)

This BBC article discusses the problem in which most people think they know more than they actually do until they’re presented with a question to explain something more in-depth. It seems this problem arises in a few different ways:

  • Believing you know something when you just have a superficial grasp of the concept (ex: you watched a 20 min. Youtube video about it).
  • Believing you know something because you used to know it, but the details and the practice of it have already faded from your memory.
  • Believing you know something because you saw someone else do it, but you actually have no idea which knowledge or skillset they used.
  • Believing you know something because it’s easy to find the answer (ex: Googling it).
  • Believing you know something because people around you know it.

I shouldn’t have to say how much all this can hurt us in our jobs and personal life. Luckily, the BBC article also presents a solution to prevent this problem:

What can people do to avoid these traps? One solution is simple: test yourself. […] take a bit more time to think carefully through the steps that you would have to take to achieve the goal. You may find that there are huge gaps in your knowledge that you need to fill.

I believe writing about our fields of expertise is exactly the practice that can help us be sure we know what we’re talking about, and by consequence to be sure we know what we’re doing. By engaging in technical writing we explore, reflect and articulate the actual knowledge we have, filling the gaps in the process.

Becoming more humble

At the bottom line of all this lies a fact that many of us ignore: our minds are much more confused and forgetful than we’d like to admit. We often forget things, and by having a practice of filling our knowledge gaps from time to time, we can benefit enormously long-term.

Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People starts his famous book by saying:

I once spent almost two years writing a book on public speaking and yet I found I had to keep going back over it from time to time in order to remember what I had written in my own book. The rapidity with which we forget is astonishing.

So a few things can be taken from these insights:

  • We should never assume we actually know something without trying to sctructure our knowledge about it first.
  • We need to constantly revisit or use something if we want to actually retain the information contained in it.
  • Summarizing is a good way to make sure you keep the information that matters to you. But summarization needs to be done in a way that makes sense for your mind, hence why we developed methods such as mind maps.

So in conclusion, this is a short introduction on the reasons I think writing (and especially technical writing) is an important way to keep myself growing in my career. And I hope I can look back to it in the future and see how it helped me move on from moments I felt stuck in life.