Notices by Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)

Science only exists if people see it. I pour time and effort into writing things like open access preprints, far more swiftly than the slow scientific publishing process, with the hope that these will reach someone who needs it. Sharing and amplifying work like this really directly helps me.

Here's our citation for now: Hicks, C. M., & Hevesi, A. (2024, November 21). A Cumulative Culture Theory for Developer Problem-Solving. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tfjyw

@anthrocypher

Software is global infrastructure, a pathway to economic opportunity, a symbol of human intelligence, a weapon or a tool depending on how we use it, a geopolitical force. Who gets to define what it means to be "good at software"? In my view, one powerful way forward is to begin to expand our minds to let go of old stereotypes about what programming "thinking" is, and begin to describe social as not secondary, nice to have, or distal, but as the mechanisms of our solutioning.

@anthrocypher

This is.....a scary amazing one to share. I mean, it's not every day you write a paper that you start with a Le Guin quote. But how we describe human abilities MATTERS, and it matters that we learn to see the implicit constraints and assumptions that trap this field, the beliefs that lead us to think we can exclude vast groups of people from technological collaboration and creativity based on the uneasy evidence of a poorly-defined laboratory task from the 1960s.

@anthrocypher

This is a wide-ranging review, because the models that we use to explain our own abilities and performance are deeply rooted in social, scientific, and industry histories, all of which mutually inform each other, not always knowingly.

It's our hope that for those unfamiliar with the ideas of social learning and collective, cumulative culture, this can serve as an exciting introduction. For those well familiar, a validation of the evidence of their importance.

@anthrocypher

For the last three years, I have thought often about why individual-level "explanations" of developers' ability, potential & productivity trouble me, and why I think they ultimately keep us from the things we most deeply want to understand and cultivate: software development problem-solving *cultures*

With @anthrocypher , we came together as a scientist and an expert practitioner to propose a different model: a cumulative culture theory of developer problem-solving

https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/tfjyw

Despite a growing interest in describing software work as "sociotechnical," or otherwise adding in a social "layer" to technological conversations, there is still a chasm between what we call "technical" and what we call "social."

This does not match the reality of how human beings work together to solve problems at scale. We are a species that works on the level of the planet and across generations. Software solutioning is part of this legacy and uses these abilities of ours.

@anthrocypher

We propose that despite a conventional emphasis on individualistic explanations, developers’ problem-solving (and hence, many of the central innovation cycles in software) is better described as a cumulative culture where collective social learning (rather than solitary and isolated genius) plays a key role in the transmission of solutions, the scaffolding of individual productivity, and the overall velocity of innovation.

@anthrocypher

Recently I gave a talk and used one of my fave terms from research, "maladaptive high achievement," I love pulling this one out because inevitably there's someone whose eyes widen at the idea that "high achievement" could EVER be maladaptive.

Indeed! We consider it maladaptive all the time! When it doesn't serve the other human needs/or sustain long-term progress.

Anyway just something to consider if you're ready to burn yourself out in the service of feeling in control, right now!

"We can earn human rights by making sure the economy is perfect forever" it's not gonna work.

It's not even the real story but even if it were it wouldn't WORK. Life is hard.

We need to have a society that protects people WHEN things get hard. We need to learn from people who do this.

@gdinwiddie @sue oh my goodness, hierarchical intentionally designed selection--> but then random selection, my DREAM I am so excited to have this as an example!

@gdinwiddie @sue @rebeccawb it does really surprise me how averse to double blind review many software/eng research communities seem to be. Many obvious disadvantages from this that other fields have strongly organized around preventing.

Dear friends, if today is hard and what your soul needs is a comfort-motivation-distraction, if you want to listen to a thoughtful conversation about how we can value each other better and support each other more in tech, we just released a new Change, Technically episode with @sue

We discuss organizing around problems instead of sorting by tools, why education doesn't magically fix everything, and more. It's a long, gentle listen this time. ❤️

https://www.changetechnically.fyi/2396236/episodes/16081177-what-really-matters-in-software

"People can feel guilty for events they have little control over (Doosje et al. 2006). Although they can spin idealized fantasies of their abilities, they can also give accurate self-appraisals at moments of truth (Armor & Sackett 2006). Storyteller rather than totalitarian regime seems an apt metaphor for the self."

Source: "The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention", Cohen & Sherman, 2014

https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115137

"Greenwald (1980) likened the self to a totalitarian regime that suppresses and distorts information to project an image of itself as good, powerful, and stable. However, unlike a totalitarian regime, people can be self-critical. They sometimes denigrate themselves more than outside observers do and believe that others judge them more harshly than they actually do (e.g., Savitsky et al. 2001)."

It is possible to think, yes, I would like for technology to be developed in a different way for society, but also to think, it matters to me that my mother-in-law, who struggles to walk to the bus, who wants to be able to be online to look at pictures of the children she helped raise as a daycare worker, and who sends us small ridiculous memes at an unbelievable daily rate, also has a place with technology.

What we call "technical solutions" are so often mere technicality, not solutions.

It's also possible to think "maybe our comparisons shouldn't always be to sites that have a ~65/35 gender usage bias* hot damn" but that will never be a thing people listen to idk

*x/twitter has a male engagement dominance problem that matches REDDIT, that's wild

I hate that being out in a mask feels significantly more threatening than it did last week. I have to remember the lessons of intervention science: it is horrifying that things can change so fast and based on such small cues and social signaling. But it also means that things can change. I am also a social signal for someone else and my agency exists and changes the system as well.

It was hanging over us as a possibility but it is still shocking to see my entire world change so hard overnight. My friends who are scientists for the federal agencies cancelling trips and planning all nighters to get as much work out as possible. My wife running a campus-level diversity program meeting with folks to plan for a future without funding. My wife & teacher friends all beginning to create defense leagues trying to plan to protect their undocumented students.

I decided to make a new sewing pattern, walked my dog, and lo and behold I found free fabric put out by a neighbor (actually it's curtains but if you're a sewist you know what that means....FREE FABRIC)

I love free things and I love this approval from the universe to start my dramatic coat project, towards which these curtains shall be a sacrificial toile

I guess I'll go back to my work of **checks notes** writing a chapter about the psychology of trauma and coalitional support, trying to find words that might break through in an industry that pretty sweepingly rejects the entire idea that people's psychological well-being matters?!?!?!?!!?? And that within a global context of commitment to contempt for human experience and future?????