Software development as a scientific activity
Posted by Pete McBreen 22 Nov 2009 at 22:21
Given that I do not agree with the characterization of software development as software engineering, it was somewhat of a surprise to find that there are a lot of parallels between software development and science.
Debugging and testing are probably the most scientific activities, in that developers have to make guesses about what is happening and then devise experiments to prove those guesses wrong. Developers also have to make predictions about how the systems they are developing will behave and then defend those predictions against speculations made by uniformed observers and occasionally defend against misinformation conveyed by financially interested parties.
One conclusion I could make from this is that the politics of software development are very similar to the politics of science. Practitioners try to pretend that there is no politics involved as it is all perfectly rational and understandable, but because people are involved it is all about politics. As soon as we start making predictions, then how we interpret those possible futures has a big effect on the actions we might take. This then becomes the realm of politics and it is that part that many software developers forget about (and many scientists as well) - Politics Matters.
We probably could have saved ourselves , but we were too damned lazy to try very hard … and too damned cheap. – Kurt Vonnegut
To celebrate the politics of science I’ve included a graphic reminder in the sidebar that small changes over a long period can result in a very interesting future.