Software is "Philosophy Made Manifest"

What does the name "Philosophy Made Manifest" have to do with software development? Here is the answer:

Though I have worked most of my adult life in software development, my original academic background is in Linguistics and East Asian Studies. Since this seems like a bit of a leap, I have often been asked what, if anything, I gleaned from those studies that helped me in my career.

My answer is: a surprisingly large amount. In fact, sometimes I think these things give me a big advantage over computer science or software engineering graduates.

The influence of Linguistics on my thinking about software development probably deserves its own post, but to explain "Philosophy Made Manifest", the most relevant area of my past studies was the philosophy portion of East Asian Studies: Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and others.

When you first dip into the surface of these systems of thought, some of the stuff sounds pretty far out there, especially from a modern western point of view, but once you get past the surface, it turns out that these philosophies are the end result of a long line of astute observers and thinkers who were concerned with very real and practical problems: how to live harmoniously with other people, how to set up effective government, how to live a happy and productive life, and many others.

In order to succeed as a student of these philosophies, you have to get good at figuring out the how these people in far away times and places understand the world. And to make their ideas relevant, you have to get good at seeing beyond the foreign trappings of the ancient vocabulary and forgotten social customs, to get at the heart of what they have to say about the unchanging realities of human life.

Once you've mastered this, you can then translate these ideas into more immediately applicable forms, ones that speak to the vocabulary and social customs of the here and now.

Which, perhaps surprisingly, leads us to software development.

Effective software development is not only about the clever use of technology, it is a profoundly human activity that requires an understanding of how people work together and how users, business leaders, developers and others think about the world.

At its core, software development is synthesizing a philosophy of some problem domain, based on these different world-views, and implementing it as a concrete, practical tool that supports and enables the activities of that problem domain.

This is how software development is "philosophy made manifest".