FalsehoodsProgrammersBelieve

ThoughtStorms Wiki

There's quite a good genre of things programmers "believe" that are false.

Typically these are assumptions that go into software. And of course, it's useful (and salutary) to read about just how many there are, and how many of these incorrect assumptions we make in our own work.

https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

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But despite the entreaties of tech companies to collapse our identities, our families, and our online lives into streamlined, computably hard-edged shapes that fit neatly into their database structures, we continue to live fuzzy, complicated lives.

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— Cory Doctorow @pluralistic@mamot.fr (@doctorow) August 2, 2023

I have some sympathy for both sides. CoryDoctorow's rant (from which this is taken) is righteous. OTOH, if you never assume anything, you'll never write software at all. "Assumption" is just another name for the model or generalization that a program embodies. It's not even about making a program "tractable". "Infinitely complicated reality" will lead to infinitely complicated (and unwritten) software. There MUST be some simplification of real world messiness when we make software. For that to be possible in the first place.

And of course this contributes to AlgorithmicDespotism. When we make false assumptions, and then write them into software, this imposes them on the world in a way that would be impossible with mere people.

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