In this episode, I ask the question: what would a software design style inspired by ecological and embodied cognition be like? I sketch some tentative ideas. I plan to explore this further at nh.oddly-influenced.dev, a blog that will document an app I'm beginning to write. In my implementation, I plan to use Erlang-style "processes" (actors) as the…

In the '80s, David Chapman and Phil Agre were doing work within AI that was very compatible with the ecological and embodied cognition approach I've been describing. They produced a program, Pengi, that played a video game well enough (given the technology of the time) even though it had nothing like an internal representation of the game board and…

Scientists studying ecological and embodied cognition try to use algorithms as little as they can. Instead, they favor dynamical systems, typically represented as a set of equations that share variables in a way that is somewhat looplike: component A changes, which changes component B, which changes component A, and so on. Peculiarities of behavior…

Suppose you believed that the ecological/embodied cognitive scientists of last episode had a better grasp on cognition than does our habitual position that the brain is a computer, passively perceiving the environment, then directing the body to perform steps in calculated plans. If so, technical practices like test-driven design, refactoring in re…

Embodied or Ecological Cognition is an offshoot of cognitive science that rejects or minimizes one of its axioms: that the computer is a good analogy for the brain. That is, that the brain receives inputs from the senses; computes with that input as well as with goals, plans, and stored representations of the world; issues instructions to the body;…

This excerpt from episode 40 contains material independent of that episode's topic (collaborative circles) that might be of interest to people who don't care about collaborative circles. It mostly discusses a claim, due to Andy Clark, that words are not labels for concepts. Rather, words come first and concepts accrete around them. As a resolute, c…

Software design patterns were derived from the work of architect Christopher Alexander, specifically his book A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. This excerpt (from episode 39) addresses a problem: most software people don't know one of Alexander's most important ideas, that of "forces". Sources Christopher Alexander et al, A Patter…

The last in the series on collaborative circles. The creative roles in a collaborative circle, discussed with reference to both Christopher Alexander's forces and ideas from ecological and embodied cognition. Special emphasis on collaborative pairs. Sources Michael P. Farrell, Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work, 2001 Louis…

Farrell describes a number of distinct roles important to the development of a collaborative circle. This episode is devoted to the roles important in the early stages, when the circle is primarily about finding out what it is they actually dislike about the status quo. In order to make the episode more "actionable", I describe the roles using Chri…

Collaborative circles don't have a smooth trajectory toward creative breakthrough. I describe the more common trajectory. I also do a little speculation on how a circle's "shared vision" consists of goals, habits, and "anti-trigger words." I also suggest that common notions of trust or psychological safety may not be fine-grained enough to understa…

An interview with Lorin Hochstein, resilience engineer and author. Our discussion was about how to handle a complex system that falls down hard and – especially – how to then prepare for the next incident. The discussion is anchored by David D. Woods' 2018 paper, “The Theory of Graceful Extensibility: Basic Rules that Govern Adaptive Systems”, whic…

I was a core member of what Farrell would call a collaborative circle: the four people who codified Context-Driven Testing. That makes me think I can supplement Farrell's account with what it feels like to be inside a circle. I try to be "actionable", not just some guy writing a memoir. My topics are: what the context-driven circle was reacting aga…

Michael P. Farrell's Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work (2001) describes how groups of people follow a trajectory from vague dislike of the status quo, to a sharpened criticism of it, to a shared vision (and supporting techniques) intended to displace it. The development of so-called "lightweight processes" in the 1990s ca…

Michael P. Farrell's Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work (2001) is about how groups of people ("circles") begin with discomfort about the status quo and, after collaboration and discussion, make creative breakthroughs. It's based on six case studies. Four are circles of artists and painters, one looks at the early developme…

Jessica Kerr (known to computers everywhere as @jessitron) is a software developer, speaker, and symmathecist. (A symmathesy is a learning system composed of learning parts. To her, each software team is a symmathesy composed of the people on the team, the running software, and all of their tools.) @jessitron is another of those people who apply id…

The final episode of "the Foucault trilogy". Ways of evaluating humans that became common during the ~1750-1850 period. Bentham's Panopticon as a metaphor. Self-improvement via exhibitionism. Final reflections on Foucault. Sources Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, 1975. C.G. Prado, Starting With Foucault (2/e), 2000. …

An intermediate episode. It seems wrong to talk about Foucault without mentioning his theory of power and societal change. But I don't think there's a lot you can *do* with that theory in the sense of "applying it to software". So it doesn't really fit with the podcast theme. But his is a disturbing theory for the problem-solvers among us, so I mak…

Part 1 is a synopsis of Foucault's claim that the societal attitude toward punishment of criminals changed radically over a period of about 80 years, starting in the mid-1700s: from punishment as vengeance, to punishment as persuading the minds of many, to punishment as correcting the personality of one. Books Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish…

Open Systems Theory (OST) is an approach to organizational transformation that dates back to the late 1940s. It's been applied a fair amount, but hasn't gotten much mindshare in the software world. It has similarities to Agile, but leans into self-organization in a much more thoroughgoing way. For example, in an OST organization, teams aren't given…

I describe how the Gal Oya irrigation system got better. It's an example that might inspire hope. I also imagine how a software codebase and its team might have a similar improvement. As with earlier episodes, I'm leaning on Elinor Ostrom’s 1990 book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, and Erik Nordman’s 202…

A short episode that encourages members of software teams to give Elinor Ostrom's ideas a try, in two ways: 1. I'm arranging for Elinor Ostrom's intellectual heirs to provide support. 2. Your situation is not worse than those of Sri Lankan farmers in the Gal Oya irrigation system. A commons-style approach helped them, so why couldn't it help you? I…

Ostrom's core principles for the design of successful commons: how to monitor compliance with rules, how to punish non-compliance, how to resolve disputes, and how to participate in making rules. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, 1990 Erik Nordman, The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Ess…

This is the first of two or three episodes that draw on Elinor Ostrom’s 1990 book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, and Erik Nordman’s 2021 book, The Uncommon Knowledge of Elinor Ostrom: Essential Lessons for Collective Action. What I hope is that those lessons apply to the problem of keeping codebases fro…

My goal is to help you understand what it means when you see a headline like “Scientists find that people on the political right are less open to experience than people on the left.” TL;DR: For practical purposes, it doesn't mean anything. You might guess, from the previous episode, that it's just that personality traits don't predict behavior. Tha…

It’s hard to predict how personality traits will affect behavior in new situations. We don’t have a good grasp of the difference between a “new situation” and “a variant of an old situation.” Small differences in the situation (like recent good luck) can make a big difference in how traits like “helpfulness” are expressed. So you'll probably need t…

The key message begins with the observation that categories and concepts have central examples and fuzzy boundaries. The idea that categories are usefully defined by boolean-valued necessary and sufficient conditions is outdated. The stock example is the question: "Is the pope a bachelor?" The answer is, "Well, technically", but there are clearly m…

Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, 1991. Note: I'd say this is the least readable of the books I've covered so far, especially if you're allergic to jargon-heavy academic social science. On the plus side, it's only 123 pages (excluding bibliography and index). Étienne Wenger, Communities of Practic…

Julian E. Orr, Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job, 1996 Credits Image of a person using a copier via Mr. Domingo.By Brian Marick

James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, 1998. XKCD, Always try to get data good enough that you don't need to do statistics on it. Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961. Rosa Luxemburg, Organizational Questions of Russian…

James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, 1998. Paul McCauley has used the idea of eidolons in more than one series. (Two that I know of.) The most recent is in his "Jackaroo" series of two novels and a few shorter pieces. The first of the novels is Something Coming Through. Here's a review…

James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, 1998. The Mastodon companion to this podcast: social.oddly-influenced.dev Credits Satellite image of Brasilia courtesy Axelspace Corporation, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsBy Brian Marick

Mentioned One of Glenn's talks on engineering. The first part of Hillel Wayne's interviews of people who've "crossed over" to software from "real" engineering. It's really good. Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 1969 Fredrick Brooks, Jr., The Design of Design: Essays from a Computer Scientist, 2010 David L. Parnas and Paul C. Clements,…

Mark Seemann blog twitter Code That Fits in Your Head, 2021 The books Peter Watts, Blindsight, 2006. Goodreads description. Or: free at the author's site. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011 Also mentioned Read Montague, Why Choose This Book?: How We Make Decisions, 2006 Felienne Hermans, The Programmer's Brain, 2021 George A. Miller, "T…

DDavid Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, 2001 David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, 2011 David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: a New History of Humanity, 2021 Dr. Anna O’Brien, Cows have distinct social classes and 'Boss Cows' Aimi Hussein and Racheal Bryant, "The secret life of cows: Social behavior in da…

David Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, 2001 David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, 2011 People mentioned Einar W. HøstBy Brian Marick

David Graeber, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, 2001 David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, 2011 Eric Raymond, "Homesteading the Noosphere", 1998-2000 Credits Picture of a Kula ring gift item, Brocken Inaglory, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsBy Brian Marick

Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, 1997 The 1968 Software Engineering Conference An objection to the trading zone Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities, 2002. Eric Raymond, "Homesteading the Noosphere", 1998-2000 Credits Roulette wheel image from Flickr user …

Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, 1997 Wikipedia on academic genealogy @made_in_cosmos had a tweet about tradition that I mentioned Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdős and the Search for Mathematical Truth, 1998 Context-driven testing website and book The Agile Fusion workshop desc…

Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, 1997 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962 Steven Law, "Do you see a duck or a rabbit: just what is aspect perception?", 2018. (Also has a picture of the Necker cube, which Kuhn also uses. Come to think of it, it might be he only uses the Necker cube, not the r…

Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, 1997 Credits Roman coin depicting the harbor at Ostia, from the title page of The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea: Travel and Trade in the Indian Ocean by a Merchant of the First Century, translated by Wilfred H. Schoff, 1912. Source unknown, but the entire book is public domain. Vi…

Peter Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, 1997 Brian Marick, An Outsider's Guide to Statically Typed Functional Programming, unfinished Brian Marick, Lenses for the Mere Mortal: Purescript Edition, unfinished Programming languages: Clojure, ClojureScript, Elixir, Elm, Purescript Credits Photo of proton-antiproton collision…

Lakatos in a nutshell Scientists join research programmes. Research programmes are characterized by a small hard core of 2-5 postulates that guide development of theories and experiments. The hard core is not questioned from within the research programme. To be progressive, a research program must produce a series of dramatic ("novel") predictions …

James Shore: website, The Art of Agile Development, AOAD book club, twitter Mentioned Susan Leigh Star, This is Not a Boundary Object: Reflections on the Origin of a Concept, 2010 Jeff Patton: website, story mapping articles, story mapping book, twitter Gojko Adzic: website, book on impact mapping, impact mapping website, twitter Diana Larson: webs…

Guests Elisabeth Hendrickson, @testobsessed, Curious Duck Digital Laboratory Chris McMahon, @chris_mcmahon, blog Citations Crafting Science: A Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics of Cancer, Joan Fujimura, 1997. Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing, Elisabeth Hendrickson, 2012.…

Citations Crafting Science: A Sociohistory of the Quest for the Genetics of Cancer, Joan Fujimura, 1997. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, Richard Rorty, 1989. Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns, Kent Beck, 1996. Ward Cunningham on "working the program", 2004. The Mathematical Experience, Phillip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, 1980. "Elephant Talk", Ki…

Recombinant DNA ("gene splicing") was a wildly successful technology in the world of cell biology. Its success gave credibility to the associated "proto-oncogene theory of cancer." The theory piggy-backed on the tool. jUnit was a fairly successful tool in the world of Java programmers. But it was not as successful as recombinant DNA, and it was fai…

When TDD arrived on the software scene around 1980, it became popular very fast. Why did it succeed so well? I think it's because it was a combined theory and technology that hit the same "sweet spot" of intellectual infectiousness that the "proto-oncogene theory of cancer" did in the 1980's. Most of this episode is a history of the proto-oncogene …

The episode builds from the paper “Institutional Ecology, 'Translations', and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-1939”. It contains a brief history of how biology was changing around 1907, how scientists and collectors collaborated using "boundary objects", and how acceptance tests can be s…