This powerful skill improves coding ability immediately
As developers we are always learning. There’s always a new framework or language we want to get to grips with. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s tough and we end up seeking help on sites like StackOverflow or on Slack. Eventually you find a solution to whatever problem you were facing. But do you understand why a solution works? Even if you understand it, will you remember it?
In the John Lewis Partnership, like many organisations, we run an I.T. graduate scheme and in Room Y we try to give graduates a chance to spend a rotation with us. We’re all multi-disciplinary down here, but the grads we’ve taken on are often on their ‘development’ rotation. Coming from a developer background myself I try to help them with their assignment.
I’m not a natural teacher.
One thing I quickly realised is that I’m not a natural teacher. But I’m actively seeking feedback from our grads to improve this. But what I have noticed is, when I am trying to teach a language or framework I’m cementing my own understanding of it. I’m even learning new concepts myself.
As I learn these new ideas I’m also beginning to find new ways to explain them and creating analogies to go hand-in-hand with those explanations. Seeing someone else learn new skills is also a great motivator and gives you a real sense of achievement.
The more I do this, the better teacher I will become (hopefully!).
Put yourself out there
I’m fortunate that working in Room Y gives me this opportunity for one-to-one teaching, but there are other ways you can teach.
- Make a presentation on part of a language you haven’t quite grasped. Just researching this will help your understanding, and working out how to present it to others will help even more.
- You can bill your presentation as a lunch and learn session, making it clear that you’re learning together and you don’t have all the answers.*
- Participate in online sites such as StackOverflow.com. You might not present the accepted answer all the time, but truly helpful people * will point out where your answers could be improved.
- Make a YouTube video or an online course. If you‘re a one-person shop and don’t have a company to present to, then present to everyone on YouTube. Or go a step further and create a whole online course on one of the numerous platforms out there.
* Some people just like pointing out mistakes so try to ignore them. Truly helpful individuals will want to help you understand a subject — even teachers need to be taught sometimes.
So if you want to understand something better try teaching it to someone else. You might be amazed about what you already know and you’ll quickly learn where your own gaps are. The satisfaction from helping someone else is also a great feeling and once you’ve done it once you’ll want to do it again.
So go ahead, teach someone something new today. It doesn’t even have to relate to coding.
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