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PSYCHOLOGY_OF_COMPUTER_PROGRAMMING

                                             March 19, 2024

Gerald M. Weinberg
"Psychology of Computer Programming" (1971, 1998)

The title of this book can be slightly misleading:
here, "psychology" essentially means anything that
isn't "technology"-- The book opens with the line:
"Computer programming is a human activity", and
so what we're talking about here is the "human"
stuff:

  The bulk of this book is essentially about
  business management, and the author
  uses the familiar techniques of business
  writing: There are lots of anecdotes
  describing what are supposed to be actual
  real world cases, but typically without any
  of the attribution you'd need to check
  whether they're presented accurately.

The author sometimes claims to be applying Social
Psychology to the field of computer programming, but there
his attributions are often little more than handwaves to
the literature-- "here, if you want to know what I'm
talking about, read this stack of a dozen text books".


In places, Weinberg gives us an actual citation...

But pretty often, it's more like so:                       As in this case:

  "It is a well-known psychological                           PSYCH_ASCH
  principle that in order to maximize
  this rate of learning, the subject
  must be fed back information on how       I wonder how well established
  well or poorly he is doing.  What is      it is that the feedback should
  perhaps not so well known is that         be accurate.
  people who feel that their performance
  is being judged but who have no                It could be, for example, it's
  adequate information on how well they          better to be encouraging.
  are doing will *test* the system by
  trying certain variations."  -- p. 102                Many bosses seem to feel
                                                        it's better to be
I have no reason to doubt any of that, but if           discouraging, which may
it's so well-known you would think it wouldn't          be a quirk of their own
be hard to find a reference for it, and there           psychology.
doesn't seem to be one in the chapter's       
bibliography.                                 

I was reading the "Silver Anniversary Edition",
with the author's commentary from 25 years later,
and perhaps the biggest disappointment for me is
that he doesn't have any later research to confirm
or deny his earlier assertions.  while he did do
some actual research early on, I gather he soured
on it, and realized he could make more money
consulting.

   Research is hard, so let's go shopping--
   for corporate clients willing to buy snake oil.         RESEARCH_IS_HARD


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