Tag Archives: creativity

Software Creativity and Strange Loops

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the kind of technology and scientific understanding that would need to go into a computer like the one on the Enterprise in Star Trek, and specifically its interaction with people. It’s a computer that can respond to questions in context—that is, you don’t have to restart in every question everything needed to answer. The computer has been monitoring the conversation and has thus built up a context that it can use to understand and intelligently respond.

A computer that records and correlates conversations real-time must have a phenomenal ability (compared to our current technology) to not just syntactically parse the content, but also construct semantic models of it. If a computer is going to respond intelligently to you, it has to understand you. This is far beyond our current technology, but we’re moving there. In 20 years who knows where this will be. In 100, we can’t even imagine it. 400 years is nearly beyond contemplation.

The philosophy of computer understanding, and human-computer interaction specifically is incredibly interesting. I was led to think a lot about this while reading Robert Glass’s Software Creativity 2.0. This book is about the design and construction of software, but it has a deep philosophical undercurrent running throughout that kept me richly engaged. Much of the book is presented as conflicts between opposing forces:

  • Discipline versus Flexibility
  • Formal Methods versus Heuristics
  • Optimizing versus satisficing
  • Quantitative versus qualitative reasoning
  • Process versus product
  • Intellectual versus clerical
  • Theory versus practice
  • Industry versus academe
  • Fun versus getting serious

Too often, neither one of these sides is “right”—they are just part of the problem (or the solution). While the book was written from the perspective of software construction, I think you can twist the intention just a little and consider them as attributes of software itself, not just how to write it, but how software must function. Most of those titles can be broken up into a dichotomy of Thinking versus Doing.

Thinking: Flexibility, Heuristics, Satisficing, Qualitative, Process, Intellectual, Theory, Academe

Doing: Discipline, Formal Methods, Optimizing, Quantitative, Product, Clerical, Practice, Industry

Computers are wonderful at the doing, not so much at the thinking. Much of thinking is synthesizing information, recognizing patterns, and highlighting the important points so that we can understand it. As humans, we have to do this or we are overwhelmed and have no comprehension. A computer has no such requirement—all information is available to it, yet it has no capability to synthesize, apply experience and perhaps (seemingly) unrelated principles to the situation. In this respect, the computer’s advantage in quantity is far outweighed by its lack of understanding. It has all the context in the world, but no way to apply it.

A good benchmark for a reasonable AI on the level I’m dreaming about is a program that can synthesize a complex set of documents (be they text, audio, or video) and produce a comprehensible summary that is not just selected excerpts from each. This functionality implies an ability to understand and comprehend on many levels. To do this will mean a much deeper understanding of the problems facing us in computer science, as represented in the list above.

You can start to think of these attributes/actions as mutually beneficial and dependent, influencing one another, recursively, being distinct (at  first), and then morphing into a spiral, both being inputs to the other. Quantitative reasoning leads to qualitative analysis which leads back to qualitative measures, etc.

It made me think of Douglas R. Hofstadter’s opus Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. This is a fascinating book that, if you can get through it (I admit I struggled through parts), wants you to think of consciousness as the attempted resolution of a very high-order strange loop.

The Strange Loop phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started.

In the book, he discusses how this pattern appears in many areas, most notably music, the works of Escher, and in philosophy, as well as consciousness.

My belief is that the explanations of “emergent” phenomena in our brains—for instance, ideas, hopes, images, analogies, and finally consciousness and free will—are based on a kind of Strange Loop, an interaction between levels in which the top level reaches back down towards the bottom level and influences it, while at the same time being itself determined by the bottom level. In other words, a self-reinforcing “resonance” between different levels… The self comes into being at the moment it has the power to reflect itself.

I can’t help but think that this idea of a strange loop, combined with Glass’s attributes of software creativity are what will lead to more intelligent computers.

Top 5 Attributes of Highly Effective Programmers

What attributes can contribute to a highly successful software developer versus the ordinary run-of-the-mill kind? I don’t believe the attributes listed here are the end-all, be-all list, nor do I believe you have to be born with them. Nearly all things in life can be learned, and these attributes are no exception.

Like this article? Check out my new book, Writing High-Performance .NET Code.

Humility

Humility is first because it implies all the other attributes, or at least enables them. There are a lot of misunderstandings of what humility is and sometimes it’s easier to explain it by describing what humility isn’t:

  • humility isn’t letting people walk all over you
  • humility isn’t suppressing your opinions
  • humility isn’t thinking you’re a crappy programmer

C.S. Lewis said it best, in the literary guise of a devil trying to subvert humanity:

Let him think of [humility] not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. . . Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. . . By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools.*

Ok, so we realize humility isn’t pretending to be worse than you are and it’s not timidity. So what is it?

Simply put, humility is an understanding that the world doesn’t begin and end with you. It’s accepting that you don’t know everything there is to know about WPF, or Perl, or Linux. It’s an acknowledgment of the fact that, even if you’re an expert in some particular area, there is still much to learn. In fact, there is far more to learn than you could possibly do in a lifetime, and that’s ok.

Once you start assuming you’re the expert and final word on something, you’ve stopped growing, stopped learning, and stopped progressing. Pride can make you obsolete faster than you can say “Java”.

The fact is that even if you’re humble, you’re probably pretty smart. If you work in a small organization with few programmers (or any organization with few good programmers), chances are you’re more intelligent than the majority of them when it comes to computers. (If you are smarter than all of them about everything, then either you failed the humility test or you need to get out of that company fast). Since you happen to know more about computers and how software works than most people, and since everybody’s life increasingly revolves around using computers, this will give you the illusion that you are smarter than others about everything. This is usually a mistake.

Take Sales and Marketing for example. I have about 50 Dilbert strips hung in my office. I would guess half of them make fun of Sales or Marketing in some way. It’s easy, it’s fun, and it’s often richly deserved!

But if they didn’t sell your software, you wouldn’t get paid. You need them as much as they need you. If someone asked you to go sell your software, how would you do it? Do you even like talking to people? As clueless as they are about the realities of software development, they have skills you don’t.

There are some industries where extreme ego will get you places. I do not believe this to be the usual case in software, at least in companies run by people who understand software. Ego is not enough–results matter. If you have a big ego, you’d better be able to back it up. Unfortunately, the problem with egos is that they grow–eventually you won’t be able to keep up with it, and people will see through you.

The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague. – Dijkstra

Without humility, you will make mistakes. Actually, even with humility you’ll make mistakes, but you’ll realize it sooner. By assuming that you know how to solve a problem immediately, you may take steps to short-circuit the development process. You may think you understand the software so well that you can easily fix a bug with just a few tweaks…and yet, you didn’t realize that this other function over here is now broken. A humble programmer will first say “I don’t know the right way to solve this yet” and take the time to do the analysis.

Finally, humble people are a lot more pleasant to work with. They don’t make their superiority an issue. They don’t always have the “right answer” (meaning everybody else is wrong, of course). You can do pair programming with a humble person, you can do code reviews with a humble person, you can instruct a humble person.

Leave your ego out of programming.

It’s not at all important to get it right the first time. It’s vitally important to get it right the last time. – Andrew Hunt and David Thomas

Perhaps most importantly, a humble programmer can instruct him/herself…

Love of Learning

If you’re new to this whole programming thing, I hate to break it to you: school has just begun. Whatever you thought of your BS/MS in Computer Science you worked so hard at–it was just the beginning. It will get you your first job or two, but that’s it. If you can’t learn as you go, from now until you retire, you’re dead weight. Sure, you’ll be able to find a job working somewhere with your pet language for the rest of your life–COBOL and Fortran are still out there after all, but if you really want to progress you’re going to have to learn.

Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival. – W. Edwards Deming

This means reading. A lot. If you don’t like reading, I suggest you start–get into Harry Potter, fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, whatever. Something. Just read. Then get some technical books. Start with my list of essential developer books. They’re not as exciting as Harry Potter, but they’re not bad either.

A lot material is online, but for high quality, authoritative prose on fundamental subjects, a good book beats all.

Reading isn’t enough, though. You have to practice. You have to write your own test projects. You have to force yourself to push your boundaries. You can start by typing in code sample, but then you need to change them in ways unique to you. You should have personal projects and hobbies that expand your skills. Be writing your own tools, or “fun” programs. Write a game. Do what it takes to learn new things!

The type of programs you write have a big bearing on how well you learn new material. It has to be something that interests you, or you won’t keep it up. In my case, I’m developing software related to my LEGO hobby. In the past, I’ve written tools for word puzzles, system utilities, multimedia plug-ins, and more. They all started out of a need I had, or a desire to learn something new and useful to me personally.

Another aspect of this love of learning is related to debugging software. An effective developer is not satisfied with a problem until they understand how it works, why it happens, and the details of how to fix it. The details matter–understanding why a bug occurs is just as important as knowing what to do to fix it.

Learn from mistakes. I have seen programmers who make a mistake, have the correct solution pointed out to them, say, “huh, wonder why it didn’t work for me”, and go on their merry way, none-the-wiser. Once their code is working “the way it should” they’re done. They don’t care why or how–it works and that’s enough. It’s not enough! Understand the mistake,what fixed it, and why.

Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement. – Fred Brooks

Obviously, some balance has to be struck here. You cannot learn everything–it simply isn’t possible. Our profession is becoming increasingly specialized because there is simply too much out there. I also think that in some respects, you need to love learning just for the sake of learning.

Detail-orientedness

Developing software with today’s technologies is all about the details. Maybe in 100 years, software will progress to the point where it can write itself, be fully component-pluggable, self-documenting, self-testing, and then…there won’t be any programmers. But until that comes along (if ever), get used to paying attention to a lot of details.

To illustrate: pick a feature of any software product, and try to think of all the work that would have to be done to change it in some way. For anything non-trivial, you could probably come up with a list of a hundred discrete tasks: modifying the UI (which includes graphics, text, localization, events, customization, etc.), unit tests, algorithms, interaction with related components, and on and on, each discrete step being broken into sub-steps.

I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. – Dwight Eisenhower

Here’s a problem, though: few humans can keep every single task in their head, especially over time. Thankfully, detail-orientedness does not necessarily mean being able to mentally track each and every detail. It means that you develop a mental pattern to deal with them. For example, the steps of changing a piece of software could be:

  1. Thoroughly understand what the code is doing and why
  2. Look for any and all dependencies and interactions with this code
  3. Have a well-thought-out mental picture of how it fits together.
  4. Examine the consequences of changing the feature.
  5. Update all related code that needs to (and repeat this cycle for those components)
  6. Update auxiliary pieces that might depend on this code (build system, installer, tests, documentation, etc.)
  7. Test and repeat.

An example: I find that as I’m working on a chunk of code, I realize there are several things I need to do after I’m finished with my immediate task. If I don’t do them, the software will break. If I try to remember all of them, one will surely slip by the wayside. I have a few choices here:

  1. Defer until later, while trying to remember them all
  2. Do them immediately
  3. Defer until later, after writing  them down

Each of these might be useful in different circumstances. Well…maybe not #1. I think that’s doomed to failure from the start and creates bad habits. If the secondary tasks  are short, easy, and well-understood, just do them immediately and get back to your primary task.

However, if you know they’ll require a lot of work, write them down. I prefer a sturdy engineering notebookin nearly all cases, but text files, Outlook tasks, notes, OneNote, bug tracking systems, and other methods can all work together to enable this.

The more experience you have, the easier you’ll be able to track the details you need to worry about. You’ll also analyze them quicker, but you will always need some way of keeping track of what you need to do next. There are simply too many details. Effective organization is a key ability of any good software engineer.

Another aspect of paying attention to details is critical thinking. Critical thinking implies a healthy skepticism about everything you do. It is particularly important as you examine the details of your implementation, designs, or plans. It’s the ability to pull out of those details what is important, what is correct, or on the other hand, what is garbage and should be thrown out. It also guides when you should use well-known methods of development, and when you need to come up with a novel solution to a hard problem.

Adaptability

“Enjoying success requires the ability to adapt. Only by being open to change will you have a true opportunity to get the most from your talent.” – Nolan Ryan

Change happens. Get used to it. This is a hard one for me, to tell the truth. I really, really like having a plan and following it, adapting it to my needs, not those of others.

The fact is, in software development, the project you end up writing will not be the one you started. This can be frustrating if you don’t know how to handle it.

To become adaptive first requires a change in mind set. This mind set says that change is inevitable, it’s ok, and you’re ready for it. How do you become ready for it? This is a whole other topic in itself, and I will probably devote a separate essay for it.

Other than the shift in mind set, start using techniques and technologies that enable easy change. Things like unit testing, code coverage, and refactoring all enable easier modification of code.

In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might. – Winston Churchill

For me, the first step in changing my mind set is to not get frustrated every time things change (“But you specifically said we were NOT going to implement the feature to work this way!”).

Passion

I think passion is up there with humility in importance. It’s so fundamental, that without it, the others don’t matter.

Anyone can dabble, but once you’ve made that commitment, your blood has that particular thing in it, and it’s very hard for people to stop you. – Bill Cosby

It’s also the hardest to develop. I’m not sure if it’s innate or not. In my own case, I think my passion developed at a very early age. It’s been there as long as I remember, even if I had periods of not doing much with it.

I’ve interviewed dozens of prospective developers at my current job, and this is the one thing I see consistently lacking. So many of them are in it just for another job. If that’s all you want, just a job to pay the bills, so be it. (Of course, I have to ask, if that’s the case, why are you reading this article?)

One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested. – E. M. Forster

There’s a world of difference between someone who just programs and someone who loves to program. Someone who just programs will probably not be familiar with the latest tools, practices, techniques, or technologies making their way down the pipeline. They won’t think about programming outside of business hours. On the weekends, they do their best to forget about computers. They have no personal projects, no favorite technologies, no blogs they like to read, and no drive to excel. They have a hard time learning new things and can be a large burden on an effective development team.

Ok, that’s maybe a bit of exaggeration, but by listing the counterpoints, it’s easier to see symptoms of someone who does have passion:

  • Thinks and breaths technology
  • Reads blogs about programming
  • Reads books about programming
  • Writes a blog about programming
  • Has personal projects
  • These personal projects are more important than the boring stuff at work
  • Keeps up with latest technologies for their interests
  • Pushes for implementation of the latest technologies (not blindly, of course)
  • Goes deep in technical problems.
  • Not content with merely coding to spec.
  • Needs an outlet of creativity, whether it be professional (software design) or personal (music, model building, LEGO building, art, etc.)
  • Thinks of the world in terms of Star Trek

Just kidding on the last one…

…(maybe)

That’s my list. It’s taken a few months to write this, and I hope it’s genuinely useful to someone, especially new, young software engineers just getting started. This is a hard industry, but it should also be fun. Learning these attributes, changing your mind set, and consciously deciding to become the engineer and programmer you want to be are the first steps. And also part of every step thereafter.

Nobody is born with any of these–they are developed, practiced, and honed to perfection over a lifetime. There is no better time to start than now.

* The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

Encouraging child creativity

One of the most interesting sponsors to my Buy Me a Lego campaign is a company called Kidz Worxx.

They have a unified line of artwork-related items aimed at children. I think this is stuff my sister, who is an artist, would have loved as a kid.

From the site description:

A child friendly, easy to use system for creating, displaying, and preserving childhood treasures.
KidzWorxx is a line of products dedicated to nurturing children’s creativity and individuality. The fascination of self-expression begins that moment any child makes a mark on paper. Children are naturally creative and eager to share what they feel, think, and observe. Encouraging what they create through use of our products gives an important boost to their self-esteem.

They’ve got sketchpads, markers, frames, art storage mechanisms, and a lot more. Go check them out if you’re interested in some different kinds of art supplies for your kids.

What I’m doing to become a better developer

There was a meme going around about 5 steps people will take to become a better developer. I’m not a famous enough blogger to get tagged, but I’ll share my 2 cents anyway. There’s nothing like publicizing something to make you committed: 

  • Read more source code from other projects (especially .Net projects)

Now that I’ve started my own large, non-trivial application, more problems quickly become apparent–how do you structure an application, handle communication? The overall infrastructure becomes vitally important. Unlike DocView in MFC, .Net does not have a standard MVC-style architecture to build on top of.

It makes no sense to iterate over and over to come up with patterns that others have already solved well.

Projects I want to look at: Paint.Net, RSS Bandit, SharpDevelop, Rotor, Mono

  • Become a refactoring fiend

It takes a lot of work, but refactoring code whenever you can/should really pays dividends. I’m doing this in my current personal project, and even though it’s taken a few hours to do some of the major refactoring, it was worth it because implementing new features becomes nearly painless once the structure of the code allowed it. It’s a little harder to do at work, but I have done a little. I want to take this to the next level by always taking the time to restructure the existing code whenever the opportunity presents itself. Thankfully, I’ve spent a lot of time developing unit tests. This will help me use design patterns more thoughtfully, as well as become familiar with some of the more esoteric refactoring patterns in Martin Fowler’s Refactoring.

There are too many good books to name, but those are two of the best ones. I go through books quickly. Some books are worth reading over and over until the concepts become part of you. Of course, for that to happen, you have to actually implement the ideas into your projects. I definitely learned things in Code Complete my first time through that I have made part of me–so much so, that I probably couldn’t tell you what they were. But I know I could do better.

  • Exercise

Huh? That’s not related to programming! au contraire! Self-improvement is a lot more than learning more about your field–it’s training your body and mind to be in better shape. If I feel better, I think better. Now that I have my iPod nano and all the podcasts I could want, I have no excuse not to exercise more than I do. I’ve been getting better, but I have a ways to improve. A healthy body directly correlates to a healthy mind.

  • Build more original Lego models

Another one that isn’t really about programming?! Not so fast. I’ve built Legos for a while, but rarely have designed and built my own models. That needs to change. I have 12,000 Legos–I need to be exercising creativity, design processes, and hard work to achieve some original results. And I want to have fun.

Some other things I want to do:

These are other things I’m interested in trying out this year, but don’t have specific goals in mind yet:

  • Look into WPF — maybe good for UI for my BrickBuilder project?
  • learn more about COM. This has been slowly fading on the priority list. Is there a good reason to learn about COM these days, other than legacy support?
  • Continuous integration — I want to know more about it, but not sure how it would fit into our scenario at work. Once we get our staging server up, it might be a better fit.