Tim Bray on Explaining and Understanding Stuff

What happened was, Dick explained to me how Sxip worked, and I didn’t understand, I said so and asked for more explanation, he explained again and I got some of it but not the rest so I asked about this, and so on. And so on; this went on for quite a while. And I wasn’t bothered and neither was Dick, because we were applying the Two Laws of Explanation.

There’s a corollary to this that I have seen in action: being able to explain a given concept to anyone demonstrates mastery. If you remember how what you learned well enough to teach it to someone else, or better, how you came to understand it, you’ll never forget it.

now playing: The Disappointed from the album Nonsuch by XTC

[Posted with ecto]