-k.

On the way into work this morning I was catching up on some podcasts and listening to the software engineering radio’s interview with Dick Gabriel.

The interview is predominantly about the origins and future of lisp. An engaging subject considering the current resurgence of functional languages, but what hooked me and had me reading his site was his assertion that we need to move away from purely scientific and engineering approaches to educating the next generation of software engineers to one more like that used to educate artists. Where a large part of the focus is on studying great works of past masters. Learning to critique your own and others work striving to gain a greater depth of understanding.

Software education today is embodied in Computer Science and Software Engineering programs, supplemented by informal mentoring on the job. I find this approach unsatisfactory. Software development is a performance exhibiting skills developed by an individual—often in groups of teams in order to achieve the scale of software required. In this way, software development is like putting on a play, which requires the skills and performances of a number of people working in tandem on stage and behind the scenes. Such skills can be developed in isolation through practice with other amateurs or even by putting on plays in public without any training at all. But how much faster could talent be developed in a educational program that recognized that writing software has enough of an arts-like performance component that the program was tailored to it? Master of Fine Arts in Software - Richard P. Gabriel

For me software development is a highly creative activity. I have no formal education in software engineering. I’ve spent a large part of my professional life studying others work, trying to see the form behind the function. I’ve striven to create my own blend of form and function. I’ve watched my development patterns change over the years as my influences, languages and environments have shifted. Each change adding a little more to the depth knowledge and opinions I carry around with me. I’ve always felt fee to experiment, to make mistakes. I’ve never really fallen into the single pattern of development trap. I wonder if this trait is more prevalent in people with informal educations?