The Shape of Code

Economics obviously has a significant impact on the production of software systems; it is the second chapter of my empirical software engineering book (humans, who are the primary influencers, are the first chapter; technically the Introduction is the first chapter, but you know what I mean).

I have never been happy with the chapter title “Economics”; it does not capture the spirit of what I want to talk about. Yes, a lot of the technical details covered are to be found in economics related books and courses, but how do these technical details fit into a grand scheme?

I was recently reading the slim volume “Dead Man Working” by Cederström and Fleming and the phrase cognitive capitalism jumped out at me; here was a term that fitted the ideas I had been trying to articulate. It took a couple of days before I took the plunge and changed the chapter title. In the current draft pdf little else has changed in the ex-Economics chapter (e.g., a bit of a rewrite of the first few lines), but now there is a coherent concept to mold the material around.