6th January 2021
When you know something it is almost impossible to imagine what it is like not to know that thing. This is the curse of knowledge, and it is the root of countless misunderstandings and inefficiencies. Smart people who are comfortable with complexity can be especially prone to it!
If you don’t guard against the curse of knowledge it has the potential to obfuscate all forms of communication, including code. The more specialized your work, the greater the risk that you will communicate in ways that are incomprehensible to the uninitiated.
Recent articles
- The new GPT-5.6 family: Luna, Terra, Sol - 9th July 2026
- sqlite-utils 4.0, now with database schema migrations - 7th July 2026
- sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25) - 5th July 2026