Mastodawn

Hi Everyone!

I’m excited to share that I just had a paper accepted in ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM) co-authored with @mastorey , where we present a grounded theory, rooted in cognitive science, of the developer’s cognitive experience of troubleshooting and overcoming confusion.

Our theory 𝗴𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗹—𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁.

https://artystarr.com/blog/giving-developers-words

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rhempel 19h ago

@art3starr @mastorey Hey this resonates with my experience too, especially the drain and the inspiration I get from troubleshooting.

One of the dissonant concepts that is very hard to convey is the idea of "engineering harder or more formally" to make the process of software development more predictable.

It's possible to reduce chaos, of course, but beyond a certain point you add friction to the process and that leads to ... more chaos.

@grimalkina

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Cat Hicks 16h ago

@rhempel @art3starr @mastorey thanks for the tag, I look forward to seeing how cognitive science is integrated in the paper!

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Arty Starr : ☮️ :starrgirl.eth 11h ago

@grimalkina @rhempel @mastorey I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it! I really tried to do a good job with pulling together all the background research and build a real constructivist grounded theory with some rigor. There's always limitations, and I also like the idea of resonance testing as validation, like the CGT paradigm is cool. Our troubleshooting theory is in the words the developers, which is pretty cool as an output. Peggy is looking forward to your thoughts as well. :)

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Cat Hicks

@art3starr @rhempel @mastorey oh I missed that it was already posted -- congratulations on the publication! An interview approach to this feels like a great way to build theory