Self, Team, Product

The motto of my work on software design is, “Software design is an exercise in human relationships.” I didn’t know what this meant when I wrote it, but as Tidy First? takes shape I’m beginning to understand.

Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg rolled out a new motto for Facebook: “Meta, Metamates, Me”. Aside from being cringy & culty & exploitable, this is exactly backward of how I’m approaching writing about software design. (There’s lots more to say about the history of self-abnegation propaganda in tech, but I digress…)

Book writing is an exercise in scope slashing. I always start writing about a topic that is too small to fill a whole book, realize it’s way too big for a book, slash it back to a topic that is too small to fill a while book, then… The most times I’ve been through this loop is 4 before I got a book-sized topic.

https://www.reactiongifs.us/let-me-explain-the-princess-bride/

Software design is good example. I wanted to write about coupling & cohesion, Newton’s Laws of Motion for software development. That proved too large a topic, so I slashed scope to incremental design. Again, too large, so I slashed scope to this moment that occurs 10 times in every developers day: I have to change this code, it’s messy, do I Tidy First?

What does this have to do with human relationships? As it turns out, I can see 3 circles of relationships affected by software design:

• Self. How do I treat myself as a programmer? At times I’ve had an abusive relationship with myself. This code sucks? Well I’m just going to have to power through it. It’s like walking with too-tight shoes. Tidying is geek self-care. Do I value myself enough to make my work easier?

• Team. How do we treat each other as programmers? Software design choices affect other people. If I change an API you use, I’ve just caused you pain. Maybe it’s worth it in the long run & maybe not, but if I want to be effective as a designer I’d better be prepared to acknowledge & address the relationship effects of my “technical” decisions.

• Product. How do programmers treat non-programmers? The classic recurring relationship is between Product & Engineering (& also Design & Data). Software design decisions affect these often-fraught relationships. How can we establish boundaries & then care for each other through (& in spite of) software design decisions?

So this work is looking like a trilogy. Tidy First? is about our relationship with ourselves. The next book will be about teams of people sharing a technical design space & ethically & thoughtfully nurturing their relationships. The last book will be, given reasonably healthy relationships among a team of reasonably healthy geeks, how can they extend care to a larger, not-so-obviously aligned, definitely not so geeky community.