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I feel this pretty regularly, and I've settled on an approach where I feel like I can be helpful without too much risk of giving bad information. I bucket the statements I make into three categories: 1. 95%+ confidence, usually meaning I've done it before, or I've seen it with my own eyes, or I am experienced in this space to the level of depth that matters for this conversation. I won't qualify my level of confidence. If I'm wrong, then I'll investigate and confirm, admit that I was wrong, and we all learn something new. 2. 80% confidence, I'll say "I think it's ____, but you should verify." 3. 60% or lower confidence, I just leave it at "I don't know, let me look it up". I think the other key is not to try to go into more depth than you know. For the example in the blog post, if someone said "So, how does React Native works? How does one write Javascript and then magically turn that into Java and Objective-C?" my response would be "Well, not quite, it adapts the native OS API's so that your JavaScript can manipulate native UI components." If they ask further, I would say "Honestly I haven't dug much further because I never needed it." |