Keynote: Unknown Knowns
Channel: ConfEngine
Date: 2014-05-15

Agile India 2014: Day 4 Keynote

In 2002, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld introduced us to the concepts of known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. But he left out Unknown Knowns, things that we know without knowing it. And it turns out that these Unknown Knowns are actually the biggest category of knowledge - tacit knowledge.

As developers, we work with knowledge: knowledge of the problem domain, knowledge of our tools, knowledge of our techniques, and knowledge of each other. So getting good at accumulating tacit knowledge is important.

This talk will look at how we are poorly served by most of the current ways we are taught to be better developers. Can we do better? Only if we stop talking and start showing. Let's see why.

Dave Thomas, Pragmatic Programmers, LLC