Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down"

Re:Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down" by c00p3r on Saturday March 28, 2009 @09:27PM (#536996)

There is some old classic paper titled The Programmers Stone. In the first chapter there is very good description of two different states of the mind - Packers and Mappers. This study is about packer's brain, because mappers will try to combine expert's opinion with their own map, alter or update it when necessary, or even create a model which fills both opinions. The rest of this Programmers Stone is some kind of nonsense, but this first chapter is a must read.

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Re:Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down" by mahmud on Saturday March 28, 2009 @09:51PM (#537011)

Absolutely phenomenal find there c00p3r. The paper in question is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmer%27s_Stone">here&....

Any more pointers on the psychology of programming would be nice, folks (I know there is google, but I want to crowd-source that searching and vetting ;-)

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Re:Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down" by MaysonL on Saturday March 28, 2009 @11:47PM (#537071)

Weinberg Psychology of Computer Programming recently published in 25th anniversary edition:

http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Computer-Programming-Silver...

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Re:Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down" by c00p3r on Sunday March 29, 2009 @02:23AM (#537167)

The Man-Month is enough! =)

Btw, there is another 33 years old book which is still worth reading - http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Magic-About-Language-Therapy...

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Re:Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down" by mahmud on Sunday March 29, 2009 @02:36AM (#537175)

I found "abstract NLP", specially their use of Chomsky's work, a bit of a voodoo. I have worked through Bandler and Grindger with a pencil for months, and eventually became disenchanted with the faux-science aspects of NLP.

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Re:Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down" by c00p3r on Sunday March 29, 2009 @03:29AM (#537202)

This book is not about NLP, it is about that language is a key, about gule-governed behavior and about understanding and modeling of this behaviour.

The great idea is about using linguistic methods to understand and model a human's mind activities, which are based on language constructions.

NLP itself is just a trend, an attempt to sell these theories to the masses.

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Re:Given Expert Advice, Brains "Shut Down" by c00p3r on Saturday March 28, 2009 @11:06PM (#537052)

About psychology behind programming - there are very interesting parallels - almost everything in psychotherapy is based on the usage of the language and direct communication. This means to choosing a words carefully, paying full attention to the order of the words in a sentence, simplicity an unambiguous of the sentences and adapting to and reusing the client's vocabulary.

The same ideas should be applied to any texts (source code, documentation, marketing) that we're creating, because these texts, and especially the source code, are being written not for the compilers or interpreters, but for the people, same like you.

It seems like XP, Refactoring and other good ideas which are based on readability and simplicity of the source code is just the reflections of the thousand years old ideas. The old sages, sutras, and stories were survived because they are easy to understand, remember and modify when necessary.

There are some hints - not psychology but worth to notice: Ruby as a programming language which was developed by Japanese (East, Symbolic) mind, the 37signals which is trying to adapt Zen principles in project management, and a brilliant philosophy behind Python - simplicity but imperfection.

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