Learning to speak about your code to non-programmers is essential (100 Bytes Of Wisdom: Day 70)

Too often I see developers struggle to communicate their progress, challenges or even successes to people who are not familiar with programming in the nitty gritty level. This causes suffering for both them and the person they are communicating with. Learning to use figurative languages, simplications, examples and many other techniques to help you communicate accurately but abstractly about your work will serve you incredibly well over your career. You will be called upon more to represent your team, be first in thought for presentations and of course move up the technical chain faster with more promotions. It's a skill a lot of developers don't think to work on, but those who do very much reap the rewards.

Heads up: As with any terse bit of advice, there will be exceptions of course, and subtleties and nuance that can't possibly be captured in a Byte of Wisdom. This has been what I've experienced, I'd love to hear yours in the comments too!

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