Scientific Study of Software Practices

[Chris Morris]

In today's final IsTDDDead hangout, all 3 involved seemed to be indicating that doing a scientific study of what works and doesn't work within software development is so impractical as to be impossible. 

A co-worker linked to this slideshare which at least seems to criticize us for not trying: http://www.slideshare.net/gvwilson/bits-of-evidence-2338367

I'm curious what philosophical thinking these things touch on?

Personally, I'm wondering how much scientific feedback we're getting all of the time from all of the projects going on -- and while I get that that's not repeatable, in a lab, etc. and 'non-scientific' -- is there still not value in the combined experiences of those in a community?

--
Chris

http://livingsocial.com | http://clabs.org

[Steve Klabnik]

The biggest one is 'positivism', at it strongest, logical positivism:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/comte/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

I've been meaning to write a blog post about this. In the meantime,
someone else already has:
http://www.existentialprogramming.com/2008/03/logical-positivists-were-test-infected.html

It's not just me that notices this connection:
https://twitter.com/substack/status/207233076873539584

It's worth noting that there are very few people who are logical
positivists today.

[Chris Morris]

Cool, thanks for the links.

I hadn't even noticed the correlation between testing being about verifying software and the larger discussion of trying to verify the ability of testing practices to produce better software. 

(I now have the same feeling in my brain I get when first looking at a recursive function. Does this earn me any philosophical merit badges?)

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[William Denton]

On 4 June 2014, Steve Klabnik wrote:

> It's worth noting that there are very few people who are logical
> positivists today.

This came up in the latest Rationally Speaking podcast, which is a discussion
with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein about her new book, PLATO AT THE GOOGLEPLEX.

http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs109-rebecca-newberger-goldstein-on-plato-at-the-googleplex.html

It's very interesting, and the physics/philosophy discussions they have, about
how philosophy fits in and what it is, may have parallels to software.

I haven't read the book yet, but it's got Plato and Google in the title, so
that's certainly some philosophy and software. Anyone read it?

Bill
--
William Denton ↔ Toronto, Canada ↔ http://www.miskatonic.org/