Kristen Foster-Marks
Lit reviewing "developer experience" as a construct and earliest thing I found in initial search is from Fagerholm and Münch(2012):
F. Fagerholm and J. Münch, "Developer experience: Concept and definition," 2012 International Conference on Software and System Process (ICSSP), Zurich, Switzerland, 2012, pp. 73-77, doi: 10.1109/ICSSP.2012.6225984.
It doesn't reference any existing literature on developer experience. Google ngram also shows a HUGE spike in "developer experience" mentions in 2013.
Paul Cantrell
@KFosterMarks
Hmmm, I can’t remember when that specific term entered my world. Certainly for example that idea by whatever name shows up very clearly in the design and marketing of Ruby on Rails, the IDEs of the mid 90s (CodeWarrior, Think C), Turbo Pascal, Beagle Brothers, Smalltalk…
Kristen Foster-Marks
For those who have been in the software development & engineering space for awhile: Does this feel temporally accurate? Do you remember talking about "developer experience" way ahead of 2012? I'm wondering if industry informed research focus with this paper, or if the paper and operationalization of the term informed industry.
Cat Hicks
@trochee @gvwilson @KFosterMarks Also, Zinsser's chapter on business writing is a fave of mine:
"If you have to do any writing in your job, this chapter is for you. Just as in science writing, anxiety is a big part of the problem and humanity and clear thinking are a big part of the solution."
Cat Hicks
@trochee @gvwilson @KFosterMarks Bob Sutton credits the term to Polly LaBarre ! I don't have an OG source but love it.
Greg Wilson
@KFosterMarks I remember a Sun Microsystems rep talking about "programmer comfort" in the late 1980s (more specifically, as something they had that IBM and SGI didn't). I also remember the phrase "engineering ergonomics" from about the same time, but can't recall context. The idea was definitely used by Unix fans as a stick to beat up Windows in that period even if the name varied.
Cat Hicks
@gvwilson @KFosterMarks the use of "ergonomics" to cover everything from chairs to core psychological needs haunts me as a piece of business jargon monoxide 😭
Jeremy Kahn
💚 Will be using "jargon monoxide poisoning" I just haven't found the right place yet
Cat Hicks
@trochee @gvwilson @KFosterMarks Also poignant in a way that I did not realize back when I first read this book, not yet doing research on the isolation of engineering teams, he wrote: "Go to the engineer who conceived the new system," I said, "or to the designer who designed it, or to the technician who assembled it, and get them to tell you in their own words how the idea came to them, or how they put it together, or how it will be used by real people in the real world."
❤️
Paul Cantrell
@KFosterMarks
Hmm, after mulling a bit: I wonder if you’d find origins of this in the way Grace Hopper talked about FLOW-MATIC?
Paul Cantrell
@KFosterMarks Ha, I was hoping you’d do my research for me! 😜 I'm not sure how she talked about it either, and am curious.
I mention it because FLOW-MATIC was more or less the first programming language designed for readability. Predecessors were concerned with efficient coding, efficient execution, and ease of implementation. FLOW-MATIC used English-like syntax with full words — very costly on machines of the time! Clearly she was looking in the direction you're investigating.
Kristen Foster-Marks
Ooooh Paul can you tell me more? Tbh, I'm swimming in investigatory paths to follow up on in through the many responses to my original question, and won't have time to deep dive on each one - how did Grace Hopper talk about FLOW-MATIC?
Paul Cantrell
@KFosterMarks FLOW-MATIC lead to COBOL, which was much more of a design-by-committee monstrosity (and of course hugely important, still used today). But my impression is that FLOW-MATIC is much more Grace Hopper’s mid-50s vision. She was looking far ahead, and saw something others didn’t.
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