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Tag Archives: programmer psychology

Programming languages are about people

Programming languages are more about people and less about machines. Programming languages are about staying inside the limitations of people’s minds and their ability to keep track of and work with abstractions. If people had no such limitations, they could code in assembly language all the time. Programming languages and supporting tools and environments are [...]

Posted 28 September 2009 † johan § Software development ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: ,

Searching and creating

We distinguish between inventions and discoveries. You can own the intellectual property rights to an invention, but not to a discovery (you can’t patent the discovery of mercury or selenium, for instance). Inventions are meant to be created, and discoveries are meant to be sought for. But sometimes, the line between invention and discovery is blurry. [...]

Posted 20 July 2009 † johan § Computer science § Philosophy ‡ Comments (4) ° Also tagged: ,

The ego fallacy

A senior manager at a company I used to work at once said that (making) software is a very social activity. I didn’t have much experience, and was very surprised at the time, since I had never thought about the human aspect of software development. But of course this aspect is extremely important. For example, [...]

Posted 01 July 2009 † johan § Software development ‡ Comments (0) ° Also tagged: