The Shape of Code

Software systems are built by people, who are usually a member of one or more teams. While a lot of research effort has gone into studying the software/hardware used to build these systems, almost no effort has been invested in studying the activities of the people involved.

The study of human behaviors and cultures, in the broadest sense, sits within the field of Anthropology. The traditional image of an Anthropologist is someone who spends an extended period living with some remote tribe, publishing a monograph about their experiences on return to ‘civilisation’. In practice, anthropologists also study local tribes, such as professional workers.

Studies of the computer industry, by anthropologists, include: Global “Body Shopping” An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry by Xiang Biao, and Cultures@SiliconValley by J. A. English-Lueck.

Reporters and professional authors sometimes write popular books for a general audience, which might be labelled pop anthropology. For instance, Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine.

These academic/reporter publications are usually written by outsiders for an audience of outsiders. They are not intended to provide insights for insiders (Kidder’s book strikes me as reporting on the chaos that ensues when dysfunctional teams have to work together, which is not how it is described on its back cover).

If insiders want to learn about their community, some degree of insider knowledge is needed; exploring culture from the point of view of the subject of the study is known as Ethnography. Acquiring this knowledge can take years, an investment that will deter most researchers. Insightful insider commentary is most likely to come from insiders.

These days, insiders who write usually have blogs. Gerald Weinberg was an insider of times gone by, who wrote popular books for insiders about consulting in the software business; perhaps the most well known being “The Psychology of Computer Programming” (which really ought to be titled “The Sociology of Computer Programming”).

Who might be the consumers of research by anthropologists of software system development (assuming that a non-trivial amount eventually gets done)?

There are important outsiders, such as lawmakers looking to regulate.

Insiders only ever get to experience a sliver of the culture of software communities. The considered experiences of others can provide interesting insights, in particular learning about how teams working within other application domains operate.

Those seeking to change company culture ought to be looking to anthropology as a source of ideas for things that might work, or not.

History deals with the outcomes of past human behavior and culture, and there are a handful of historians of computing.