How to Identify Your Unknown Unknowns in Web Development
July 4, 2025
If you’re a web developer, you know what HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are. Although massive topics by themselves, these contain many of your “known knowns.”
You’re aware of languages like TypeScript, WebAssembly, or Rust, that touch your world but are languages you may or may not be comfortable with. Those you are not, represent some of your “known unknowns.”
And then there are concepts like, let’s say, AT-SPI, palpable content, restricted production, __qem, or qooxdoo, that maybe you’ve never heard of, even though they can relate to your work. These are some of your “unknown unknowns.”
“Cool,” you say, “what am I supposed to do with this.”
Source: How to Identify Your Unknown Unknowns in Web Development · Jens Oliver Meiert
Jens Meier observes in Web Development there are a lot of things we need to know, and many we don’t know we don’t know.
This analogy is lifted from a convoluted quote from US Secretary of Defence during the second Gulf War (and at other times over a 3 decade period) about known knowns, and unknown unknowns.
It’s one I’ve used for years when framing for myself and others what we try to do with our conference programs–help people find the gaps in their knowledge, the things they don’t now they don’t know.
And that’s a ket goal of Conffab too.
