Slides from a workshop exploring the role of imagination in software development

1. Charles Tolman
Imagination in Software Development
© Charles Tolman 2014

2. Structure
• Why Imagination?
• Historical Philosophical Background
• Relation to Software Development
• Brain Hemisphere Function
• Exercises
• Discussion
© Charles Tolman 2014

3. Why?
• Need a better answer to the question: How to improve judgement?
• Continuing surprise at the difference between programmers.
• Need to balance prevailing primary focus on process… results… money.
Frustration with ‘disconnect’ between developers & managers.
Glass 2002 “Facts & Fallacies of Software Engineering” Fact 13. p39.
• Naur’s Theory Building view - importance to maintenance & development.
• Wanting to increase awareness about internal thought processes.
© Charles Tolman 2014
Why look at Imagination?

4. Historical Background
• Thirty Years War 1618 – 1648
Catholics vs Protestants.
Subjectivity of religious faith.
• Descartes 1596 – 1650
I Think Therefore I Am. The quest for certainty.
The attempt to eradicate subjectivity.
• Goethe 1749 – 1832
The need for a Delicate Empiricism during observation.
The importance of Exact Sensorial Imagination - not ungrounded fantasy.
An Educated subjectivity.
• The Phenomenologists of the 20th Century
Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Gadamer
A sea change in looking at how we know anything.
© Charles Tolman 2014
, Descartes & GoetheWar

5. Software Development
• SW dev marks the transition from EXTERNAL to INTERNAL problem solving.
It is a significant shift that has largely gone unnoticed.
• We will not get far keeping to a purely outward results-oriented approach.
cf Alexander’s ‘Mirror of the Self’ test:
“…which of the two objects seems like a better picture of all of you, the whole of you:
a picture which shows you as you are, with all your hopes, fears, weaknesses, glory
and absurdity, and which – as far as possible – includes everything that you could ever hope to be. In other
words, which comes closer to being a true picture of you in all your weakness and humanity;…”
Nature of Order: Book1: p317.
• Naur’s ‘Theory Building’ view of SW dev. Naur, 1985 “Programming as Theory Building”
The need to keep the ‘Theory’ alive in a team of programmers.
• Jack Reeves on ‘Code as Design’ – the need to see both the parts & the whole.
1992 http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_design.html
• SW quality depends upon the quality of our internal problem solving process.
We need to develop self-awareness about these processes.
© Charles Tolman 2014
The Inner Dimension

6. Brain Function
• Primary resource is “The Master & His Emissary’ by Iain McGilchrist.
• Right Hemisphere [RH] deals with the Immediacy of Lived Experience.
• Left Hemisphere [LH] unpacks/abstracts experience.
• RH presents lived experience to the LH.
LH abstracts & ‘unpacks experience’.
This is reintegrated with the experience.
To generate knowledge.
• Imagination comes into being in the interaction between the hemispheres.
Split-brain patients have problems with dreaming, imagination, creativity.
• But explicit cognition is dependent upon the LH.
• Trying to understand cognition using analytic techniques is difficult.
• But by using an experiential approach we can try…
[Be aware there is controversy about brain hemisphere characterisations]
© Charles Tolman 2014
The Master & His Emissary

7. The Exercises
• Listening to a short story excerpt.
“The Dark Room” by Rachel Sieffert.
• A minute of individual reflection followed by discussion in small groups (5 mins).
• A film of the same excerpt.
“Lore” by Robin Mukherjee. Director Cate Shortland.
• Listening to the story excerpt again.
• A minute of individual reflection followed by discussion in small groups (5 mins).
• Plenum
• Design Exercise - individually.
• Discussion in small groups (5 mins).
• Plenum.
© Charles Tolman 2014
Story : Film : Story : Design

8. The Exercises
• Think about the need to cause updates of a static image display to happen while the user is
adjusting an image parameter such as a filter setting.
• Input device can be a pen & tablet or mouse. Output device is any display device.
• It takes a noticeable amount of time to process the image – say 200ms.
• The user can change the control parameters faster than the process time – say 20ms.
• Focus on the basic architectural issues that are needed.
• How do you ensure:
i. The image gets updated while the control parameters are changing.
ii. Once the control parameters have stopped updating – the final image
must show the correct result to match the final values of the parameters.
© Charles Tolman 2014
Design

9. Concluding Thoughts
• Being a good programmer requires self-development
and part of this is developing a controlled imagination.
• The picture of the inability of the ‘master’ to be a teacher is a fallacy.
• Our job is about being able to map the unknown
and to help our clients do so as well.
• We need both the abstract left brain thinking
as well as gestalt right brain thinking.
• Although this is a ‘soft’ subject compared to the groundedness of C++14
In reality we need to develop BOTH aspects TOGETHER.
© Charles Tolman 2014

10. Useful References
• ‘The Master and His Emissary’ by Iain McGilchrist.
• ‘Taking Appearance Seriously’ by Henri Bortoft.
Probably the best introduction to Goethe’s method and Phenomenology
and a very good historical overview of the pertinent philosophy.
• ‘The Nature of Order’ by Christopher Alexander.
A lot to read but a master work giving insight into Alexander’s world-view.
© Charles Tolman 2014

11. Flipchart Notes from Workshop on 12th April 2014
• STORY
Vivid images – more vivid hearing story than reading it.
3 processes: Visual Picturing; Emotional; Logical Probing.
Sense of being in the characters and in the narrative.
Some people filtering images because of dislike of descriptive text.
Focus on the feelings.
Environment is important – image of book cover from slides affected internal images.
Certain motifs – i.e. getting home – carry more emotional weight.
• FILM
Weaker because more concrete.
Better than listening to a description for those that dislike descriptive text.
More manipulative of the emotions – More emotion give by the film.
Logical process happening comparing to previous experience of listening to the story.
© Charles Tolman 2014

12. Flipchart Notes from Workshop on 12th April 2014
• DESIGN
Past experience affects ideas.
Working from analogous ideas.
Explicit expression (writing down) needed when performing analysis.
Ideas experienced as a story, but sequentially instead of in parallel as when listening to
a story.
Probing the design needs it made explicit on paper.
A process of initial analysis followed by abstracting the core ideas.
Wanting to push back and question the requirements. Can some of them be changed?
• PARTICIPANT FEEDBACK
Be wary of simplistic brain hemisphere characterisations.
• Many thanks to all who participated.
© Charles Tolman 2014

13. Thank you
Blog
charlestolman.com
Email
ct@acm.org
© Charles Tolman 2014