Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

I've read an iteration of this blog post every week for the last decade, but something I've been doing recently and has actually helped (far more than writing) which I've not ever read a blog post about is simply explaining technical concepts out loud to myself.

I'm a very bad communicator due to being autistic and unlike writing as developer I often find myself in position where I need to discuss some technical concept with other developers on the team. Occasionally I also have to communicate technical aspects of my work with those on the team who are non-technical. I really struggle with this.

At the end of each day I'll now do a 10 audible recap of what I've done. Anything I struggle to explain I spend a little time thinking about how I can be clearer and try again until I'm happy. I then take some notes and I have something for standup the next day, but also I'm hoping that consciously focusing on how I explain things is helping a with my ability to explain things on fly.

I'm still in the early stages of learning how to code, but I've started doing something similar to help me get into the right mental state. As someone with severe ADHD, it takes serious effort to get the brain waves waviating at the right frequencies. If I mentally check out, even for a couple of hours, it's like I completely forget everything I've worked on.

Out of frustration, I started talking through my code out loud, and the difference was incredible. All my mental scaffolding and abstractions sprang to life, where before it would've taken an hour or two of rereading my code and rebuilding everything in my mind. Now I'm a chatty bird, typing and mumbling to myself as I work.

Also, not to discount your struggle, but don't write yourself off as a bad communicator—pun intended. I spent 15 years in tech, then seven years writing marketing content, and now I'm transitioning back to tech. Words are hard. The ability to string them together coherently does not make someone a great communicator. Like writing code and engineering, it's easy for laymen to conflate the skill with the vocation.

Keep practicing—you'll eventually outshine those who think opening their mouths and making noises is necessarily good communication. And check out some famous speakers who're on the spectrum if you haven't—you'd be surprised.

I'd argue that this is a form of rubberducking.

Something that I've tried a few times was basically pretending that I'm a live-streamer/YouTuber/whatever and verbally explain my thought process & actions as I program. I found that it was actually better practice for coding interviews than anything else, but I wouldn't be surprised if you found trying something similar also helpful.

I do think there is specific value in practicing summaries, though, as it's a really important skill to be able to distill down a 45-minute technical rant into something grokkable by others in a reasonable amount of time. Something that I do most mornings is plan out my exact phrasings for standup updates, sometimes verbally if I'm having troubles putting my update into words and I'm WFH that day. Then again, I'm probably a bit autistic too and often mentally plan out most non-casual conversations.

I do this by writing stuff into my notes, but yes! Oftentimes this even improves the solution you were trying to explain. Sure `poetry lock --no-update` fixed it, but why was it updating in the first place...? and I go back to discover an open issue in PyTorch 2.0.1, so I can solve the problem for good by skipping that release.

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