The Value of Domain Knowledge in Software

Summary

Code and Climate Change. Blog about software development in ClimateTech The Value of Domain Knowledge in Software Something that I think is often overlooked by many software developers is the value of domain knowledge, i.e. understanding the industry you’re in and the mindset of the end-users of your software. I actually think that explicitly spending time to acquire domain knowledge might be one of the best uses of your time as a software developer for a few reasons: It allows you to act with significantly more autonomy. If you lack domain knowledge, it’s hard to evaluate whether user-facing decisions are a good idea, so you’ll have to get feedback from someone who does know. If you live in a fairytale where all tasks are perfectly specified up front with no room for ambiguity this might not be a problem you have. For the rest of us, having domain knowledge allows skipping a lot of back and forth because you often already have the knowledge you need to make decisions. Domain knowledge is great when scoping new projects or features. Having both domain knowledge so you know what to build and the technical experience to understand how to fit it into the existing product is a good skillset to have when figuring out what an MVP looks like. It’s just plain fun. Getting to learn about a new industry and domain is one of the really cool things about building software in my opinion. Types of Knowledge In my mind, you can split the knowledge required to be effective at building software into four (extremely coarse) categories: Foundational Knowledge The foundational knowledge about how computers and their building blocks work. This could be about how processors work, about complexities of algorithms, client/server infrastructure, when and how to cache, etc. This kind of knowledge is often something that’s picked up via formal education, but can also be picked up via reading books, or sometimes by learning painful lessons on the job. This kind of knowledge generally carries o...