Development and Philosophy

proposal.md

We spend most of our times obsessing about the actual act of programming. Is this method name too long? Should I refactor this code? How do I fix this bug? However, sometimes, large gains can be made by drawing in experience from totally different fields.

I think there's a lot a programmer can learn from the study of epistemology, logic, metaphysics, moral and political philosophy, and aesthetics. In this talk, I'll give an overview of a bunch of interesting thinkers, philosophical problems, and how they relate to the worlds of software development, open source, and startups.

@saturnflyer I don't really have any practical experience with companies larger than ten, though, hence 'startups.'

@steveklabnik "startup" to me has come to mean "we're not making any money, but we believe!" but you'll probably get more attendees with that word in there.

That's reasonable.

Small businesses aren't the same thing as startups.

Feels awfully hand-wavy. Your abstract doesn't convince me that you're going to be able to draw interesting connections between our field and those others.

A creative example or two would go a long way. For an abstract as abstract as this, you gotta deliver some goods up front to prove you're on to something.

That said, I still wouldn't go, since it doesn't have live-coding ;)

An abstract talk about philosophy? Say it ain't so! It's hard to give an example in an abstract, though, as they have only a few sentences of space...

Yup I totally agree. I often get caught up in logic traps and too much thinking, which leads to fatigue. I wish I was able to go to your talk. Hopefully you might put it up on Youtube or something later? I think programmers are coming to this realization, hence things like Lightable (http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/12/light-table---a-new-ide-concept/)

We'll see if it gets accepted anywhere first. :p

+1

epistemology, logic, metaphysics, moral and political philosophy, and aesthetics.

This is a broad set of topics. I think you could even afford to pick just one: Marxism or critical theory + Ruby, perhaps :)