Title: Editorial: Into Gold

Author: Bob Schmidt

Date: 09 July 2018 17:24:25 +01:00 or Mon, 09 July 2018 17:24:25 +01:00

Summary: 

Body: 

Software developers perform a kind of magic. There is quite a lot that goes into the act of creating working software. We pull in information and experience from a multitude of sources, filter out the bits that aren’t useful to the problem in hand, mix up the bits that are (or at least, might be), and a program pops out at the end of the process. Right?

Well, almost. We certainly use a variety of sources of information, filter that through experience and (occasionally) experimentation, in order to write code. Those information sources vary greatly, and include things like formal education and training, reading blogs, magazines, books, taking part in different communities –online, and in the flesh – and even just chatting to people in the coffee shop or the pub. I suppose I have some bias, but I still find magazines like this one to be a good source because it often exposes me to new ideas in a succinct way, which I can find more elaborate detail on elsewhere.

Previous experience of writing software – good and bad – is also a source of information, and the idea of filtering raw data through a sieve of experience is an analogy that appeals to me. Learning from our mistakes is only one side of this, because hopefully there are positive things we remember from previous jobs, projects or teams that can inform us on the job in hand today.

But it’s when you get a team of diverse people together in one place that the sparks of alchemy really start to fly. No two people have the same experience, or have read the same articles and books, or if they have, they will likely have not formed the same connections and opinions. Even disagreement can be the cause of innovation. Programming is a social activity, whatever image of the lone hacker people have in their minds when they hear the term ‘computer programmer’.

Notes: 

More fields may be available via dynamicdata ..