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Ask HN: How important is domain expertise for programmers?

2 points by ch4s3 ↗ HN
Lately I've been finding myself doing a lot of reading about my company's vertical/domain, healthcare. In fact I'm reading more about healthcare than software development/programming. How important do you think domain expertise is for you career? Am I making good use of my reading time(professionally, I obviously enjoy it)? How do you go about developing domain expertise?

4 comments

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mindcrime
I'd say it's crucially important, especially if you want to advance over time. Technical knowledge alone can only get you so far. Especially in highly specialized domains like health-care (and I saw this as somebody whose dayjob is in healthcare analytics). Of course you have to strike a balance between leveling up on hard-core technical skills AND domain knowledge. Unfortunately I don't know any strictly deterministic and universally optimal way to decide where that balance is. :-(

How do you go about developing domain expertise?

Other than working "in the business" so to speak, of that domain, I can only thinking of the regular stuff: read books, read articles, watch videos, interview people, etc.

ch4s3
Can you describe how domain knowledge has given you an edge? Are there other doors it opens?

Do you ever do online courses? I've been working through one on FutureLearn about antibiotic resistant bacteria, and rather enjoying it.

mindcrime
Can you describe how domain knowledge has given you an edge?

It's somewhat subtle and kind of hard to articulate. And I'm still working on developing that domain knowledge myself. But from looking at what's going on here, it's clear that the people who truly understand this system at the highest levels, are the people who understand how it's actually used by customers, and what this stuff means to them. As opposed to the folks who know 'just enough' to write code, but are operating in a bit of a vacuum.

Are there other doors it opens?

Based on my experience here, I'd say that the people who become tech leads, architects, offering managers, etc., are expected to have strong domain knowledge.

Do you ever do online courses?

I do, but most of the ones I've done have been more on the technology side (a lot of data science, math, and machine learning stuff).

I've been working through one on FutureLearn about antibiotic resistant bacteria, and rather enjoying it.

That sounds pretty interesting. I may just check it out.

joeblow9999
I have worked on software projects across multiple verticles over many years and I have found pre-existing domain knowledge (or lack thereof) to be utterly immaterial.