How Computer Programmers Work

How does a successful programmer work? The tasks of game programming and industrial safety critical programming appear to be quite different. Through a meticulous empirical examination, this book compares and contrasts the two forms of programming and shows how there is more to programming than technical skills. Developing software is difficult, and the greatest difficulties often have to do with the way people think, speak to each other and work together. Examples demonstrate that awareness of tradition and context is essential to software development, by way of using hermeneutics and rhetorics and drawing on cultural studies as well as computer science, software engineering, and Agile development. Part of a programmer's work is to figure out what the real goals of the work are, and how these are effectively pursued. This is essentially a process of understanding; a process that can be analysed with classical learning. This book shows how.