The language you code in could say a lot about your developer culture

In his essay on "Race and Language" Edward Augustus Freeman suggested that language, rather than race (genetic similarities), might be a surer indicator of cultural kinship among peoples. Professor Freeman wrote: "Every word that a man speaks is the result of a real, though doubtless unconscious, act of his free will. ... A man cannot, under any circumstances, choose his own skull; he may, under some circumstances, choose his own language. He must keep the skull which has been given him by his parents; he cannot, by any process of taking thought, determine what kind of skull he will hand on to his own children. But he may give up the use of the language which he has learned from his parents, and he may determine what language he will teach to his children." As such, the choice of language made individually and in the aggregate points to attributes of the language and those already speaking it which the new speaker of the language appreciates.

Perhaps this is why few topics among developers can start a 'religious war' faster than that of programming language.

The use of language is in essence a tool to capture an idea and communicate it to another. In IT we largely look at languages as tools to efficiently solve a problem. By 'solve' we really mean 'communicate an algorithm to the machine'. Just as some spoken languages are better for communicating facts or legal concepts and others are better for poetry or philosophical abstractions, each programming language is more efficient at 'solving' some technical problems than others. One may be excellent for modeling relationships, another for solving concurrency problems.

Looking at language this way is a good pragmatic approach to choosing 'the right language for the job', but it also can subtly mask or neglect other factors in language choice. Namely, the speaker and prospective audience plays a large part in what language communication is captured and how that communication is shaped. The above take on the use of programming language measures its efficiency in processes or cycles or memory consumed. It is the run-time efficiency - or how easily the computer understands and can execute the message. However, when using high-level programming languages, that is really misleading. It is really more of a measure of how good the compiler or interpreter for a given language is at translating the solution into efficient byte-code. So, compilers and interpreters aside, the real audience to gauge the efficiency of the language used is - humans.

Looking at how we use language it seems to lie upon a continuum between communicating to a large or a small audience. On one hand we have the language of media news reports, which linguists will often point to as a general epitome of the common speech of a people. It is intended to be understandable and consumed by the largest portion of a population. Prose is also near this end of the spectrum. On the other end you may find cryptography, where the audience is narrowed to perhaps only one other person. Sonnets, slang and technical jargon are closer to this end. They use conventions and specialized vocabulary which only a smaller subset of the population would have exposure to. Obviously a particular communication can lie closer to one end or the other given both the speaker and the audience. For instance a technical treatise might use highly exclusive vocabulary, but be written utilizing the most standard academic grammar and style. This 'regulated language' ensures that the message, while directed to technical specialists, will be understandable to the widest range of that population. It could even be accessed by outsiders armed with a good dictionary. Slang, on the other hand, often develops out the needs of the speaker... Complex grammar and punctuation is boiled down sometimes to only partial words. This makes the message easier and faster to say. To achieve this, the complexities of grammar and punctuation are replaced by context. One must understand this context, often cultural, to unpack the meaning behind this terse communication. It is particularly difficult for outsiders to master, and often intentionally so.

The intended range of audience has certain temporal effects as well. A loose jargon may make it easy for a small, tight knit group to communicate efficiently. However, it will be much harder to decode the meaning years later, perhaps even by members of that same community. Formal and standardized grammars and punctuation provide a degree of staying power to a language, allowing it to be understood for generations.
On can see this in development shops where one language is the exclusive language of development. On one hand a particular language may have been chosen for its similarity to human language. This may make translating business requirements into code easier. The same language may make it extremely difficult to describe the algorithm for performing a particular calculation. With greater complexity, it makes it more likely that a mistake will be introduced. The wordiness of this complexity can also make it harder to find the mistake. It also assumes that those writing code write well in their natural language. Run-on sentences can exist in code. A run-on piece of code is recognizable by loose cohesion, which is well known to negatively impact its brittleness and maintainability.

As a developer it is important to know the ways of expressing algorithms that is most natural to the language being developed in. This is called Idiomatic Code. However, a more seasoned Lead or Architect may realize that the eventual human viewers of the code may dictate different ways of expressing the same algorithm. This may even call for a completely different language to be used. Perhaps it makes sense to write code in one language, but to write the tests against that code in another. Testing in another language is often a good way to extend the audience of code written to an otherwise smaller audience.

This also brings up the impact of language on developer culture. Code written in a language which is only understood by one group within a team can lead to a closed culture. Think of those developers who almost have a visceral reaction to coding in anything but their favorite language. This language is usually that of a closed culture. Entire myths can be constructed about the superiority of both the language and those who code in it. Ultimately, this can threaten to alienate the developers from others on their team (testers, BA's, designers) as well as the development community at large. Uncle Bob Martin touched upon this in his 2009 talk "What killed Smalltalk could kill Ruby too".

Then there is the case where the language is chosen for you. The experience in this scenario can range from mind-expanding to dehumanizing. Surely the Junior Developer can learn much from being made to code in another language, particularly if that language has been chosen by a group of seasoned veterans across an appropriate section of the team. In this case the developer may be introduced into whole new ways of communicating and problem solving. On the other hand, there is the case where the language is imposed by a corporate decision made years earlier which may have little bearing upon the way your team works today or the problems it is being asked to solve now. This is the fallacy of simply 'buying' a language as a tool among equal tools. When that happens, the choice can become less about the effectiveness of the 'tool' and more about the packaging/marketing (e.g. - IDE's, plugins, reporting tools, support plans, name recognition, third-party-apis and frameworks, etc.). In these cases, the developers may often feel as if they are being forced to use an inferior tool for what seems like an arbitrary reason.

Finding pragmatic ways to introduce other languages where appropriate can mitigate some of the negative cultural impacts and keep communication flowing. It also can make the developers 'smarter' by making them look at and 'speak' about the problem using different paradigms than they are used to. This is much the same as people who speak multiple languages. Becoming a polyglot programmer may just make you a better designer or architect as your pool of ways of looking at a problem will be larger.

What other ways does the language you code in impact your team or say something about you?

Prezi of a collaborative presentation on Virtue and Agility Patterns

I gave a dynamic, collaborative presentation on Virtue and Agility Patterns. Rather than using a slide based presentation, I used a tablet to mark up documents on the screen. This gave more of a feeling of using a whiteboard/chalkboard and allowed me to interact more with the audience.

Afterward, I compiled the artifacts into a Prezi.

All in all a neat experiment in making various presentation technologies work for us, rather than the other way around.

Sex, Lies & Agility Patterns on Prezi

Be sure to view it in full screen (under the More menu which appears at the bottom right corner of the Prezi).

Aristotelian Software Development = Agile Software Development?

I admit it. I am an Aristotelian. What I mean by that is that of the three predominant ethical theories, deontology, utilitarianism and virtue oriented ethics, the latter makes the most sense to me. It is the ethical theory which was promulgated by Aristotle. Jon Dahl gave an excellent introduction to ethical theory and comparison to software development. Initially, he alluded to the fact that determining what makes a good programmer has less to do with external signs, and more to do with the programmers habits. He briefly makes ethical comparisons of software development methodologies. In this sense, he starts to look at the human element of software development. The rest of the talk, however, makes comparisons between ethical theories and specific programming languages. Perhaps this is because he was at a Ruby conference. Ultimately, I think that a closer analogy can be drawn between specific programming languages and philosophical principles from Metaphysics or Ontology rather than Ethics. This is because languages are tools for expressing concepts. Ethics however, deals with humans and human society. The goal of Virtue Oriented Ethics is for the individual to achieve a state of Eudaemonia: human flourishing. Applied to software development we could say we wish the team or project to reach a state of flourishing, or Software Development Eudaimonia. As such, I think that comparison to ethical theories is more appropriate to things such as Software Development Methodologies or Project Management.

I am an Agilist (no surprise there). If you have ever had the good fortune (Eudaimonia is also sometimes translated as good fortune) to be on a highly Agile team, you probably have a sense of this flourishing. Notice how I used the comparative when describing the Agile team. Agility is not a binary state as much as it is a spectrum. Similarly, Eudaemonia can be achieved to varying degrees. The recognition of underlying rules or laws which help a society achieve such a state is codified as Natural Law. In so far that Agile methodologies work because of their recognition of humans at the core of software development, I think Agile comes close to describing a Natural Law of software development. Yet it is one thing to state a Law or set of Laws and another to develop a lawful society. Dahl brings this up when he talks about how the XP rules as they are promulgated are very deontological. Following the rules does not ensure that you will be a good programmer. This is interesting in that the people who came up with XP were good programmers. The generation of their rules probably was a long process of self reflection and attempts to make both their code and themselves better. So while the rules they promulgate may be used deontologically, the rules  themselves were likely developed via a more virtue oriented or utilitarian analysis. A common concern is how to get a team or company to 'become Agile'. Downloading lists of rules is easy, transforming a culture is not. Approaching Agility as attainable by degree seems to lead to better transformations. However these transformations are not simply replacing one deontological set of rules for another. People sense a real change in how they interact.

Therefore I posit that Agility is the Eudaimonia of Software Development. To follow the Aristotelian thought that virtue is taught by role models, perhaps a better use of the XP rules is as good models to others; sort of a goal state for developers working on their own virtue. Yet this presupposes that there are virtues inherent to achieving Agility. What are these virtues? Where would we look to find these virtues?

In his blog, Todd Hoff compares Agile as Aristotelian with Waterfall which he deems Machiavellian. In this, the core element which he recognizes is a scale between Trust and Fear. He presents the Waterfall world as being fear driven, whereas the Agile world requires teams built on trust. I think this a good place to start with analyzing Agile from a Virtue Oriented perspective. In many lists of Virtues, the concept of Trust is apparent. It is usually listed as Faith. In our modern minds, this word often is equated with a naive, unfounded belief. The way we use the word faith throughout our language indicates trust born from an observation of habitual behavior. We can say a dog is faithful, or I have faith in my friends, team members or boss. We say we are faithful to our spouses. This is language of Trust. In many of the classical virtue lists, Trust/Faith is a core virtue. This is similar to what we see in Agile transformations. The failure of many teams to transform to a higher state of Agility is often tracked back to embedded distrust within the culture.

In order to place the virtue of Trust in an Aristotelian context, it should be on a spectrum, with the virtue found at the mean of two extremes. So let us say that on one side we have distrust breeding fear. On the other side we have naive or blind trust, where we have no reason to really trust. The mean then is a Trustful state - where the team members both work to be Trustworthy/Faithful and based upon the actions of other team members they Trust or have Faith in them.

Naive Trust

Trust/Trustworthiness

Distrust/Fear

What then are some other Virtues embedded in Agile which help to promote Software Development Eudaemonia? The XP rules mentioned by Dahl have been noted as being somewhat limited in scope. So,while they may be a good guide for some of the team, they may not be the best model for general Agility. In their broad approach, the Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles are a better suited for guiding general virtuous development toward Agility. In my next posting(s) on this topic, I will go through these documents and highlight traditional virtues which are embedded in the behavior they are trying to model. I will then discuss how these behaviors and particular techniques from various Agile methodologies can help a team or individual increase specific virtues and achieve greater Agility.

What makes Agile work

In my career, I have seen team after team struggle to 'succeed' at implementing Agile. I asked a recent Product Owner who felt that the team had been partially successful, but still had a way to go, what he felt made Agile successful on his team. His answer was enlightening. He said 'the ability to change.' In essence, this is a tautology. Agility is the ability to change. It is why one would chose to implement Agile. It is not however, what makes Agile work. This is unfortunately typical. A team will focus on one practice or outcome of Agile as being the be-all of Agile. In so doing their focus creates false expectations and at the same time prevents them from focusing on making the changes necessary to harness Agile most effectively.

So what is it that make Agile work? Let us look at the Agile Manifesto and the Principles behind it. Over and over again, one concept is referred to: People develop software. (Humanitatem Progressio Progressus) In other words, Agile is successful when it recognizes that Human Beings are the core component of the development process; not tools, not methodologies, not practices, not languages. Once we recognize that Humans, and not just Humans in the broad sense, but specific individuals, we are faced with individuals who each bring specific strengths and weaknesses to the development effort. From here on out, everything else in Agile is simply about helping teams enhance the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses of individuals on them. The primary tool which Agile uses for this is tight feedback loops. Agile fosters communication so that the dangers of weaknesses can be exposed and avoided and strengths can be shared or leveraged quickly.

This brings me to the failure point for every team I have seen struggle with Agile. Something gets in the way of the communication. While I intend to post on technical issues as well, my primary focus for this Blog is to explore the ways communication breaks down on Agile teams and what tools Agile methodologies have to solve this. Where the methodologies do not propose a direct solution, I hope to bring you thoughts from practice and professionals on tactics used to bring Agile teams back on course, keeping the principles and the humanity of software development in mind.