A Programmer's Guide to Humans

What makes software development complex isn't the code, it's the humans. The most effective way to improve our capabilities in software development is to better understand ourselves.

In this talk, I'll introduce a conceptual model for human interaction, identity, culture, communication, relationships, and learning based on the foundational model of Idea Flow. If you were to write a simulator to describe the functions of the human brain, this talk would describe the architecture. That's right – we're going to breakdown the components of human consciousness into machine models!

Learn how to understand the humans on your team and fix bugs in communication, by thinking about your teammates like code!

I'm not a scientist or a psychologist. These ideas are based on a combination of personal experience, reading lots of cognitive science books, and a couple years of running experiments on developers. As I struggled through the challenges of getting a software concept from my head to another developer's head (interpersonal Idea Flow), I learned a whole lot about humans.

As software developers, we have to work together, think together, and solve problems together to do our jobs. Code? We get it. Humans? WTF?!

Fortunately, humans are predictably irrational, predictably emotional, and predictably judgmental creatures. Of course those pesky humans will always do a few unexpected things, but once we know the algorithm for peace and harmony among humans, we can start debugging the communication problems on our team.

About Arty Starr

Arty Starr is a recognized Flow Experience expert, researcher, speaker and thought leader, and author of Idea Flow, how to measure the friction in software development. Arty's PhD research is developing a theory of momentum in software development, and she is creator of the FLOWS platform designed to help developers thrive and find joy through more time in the flow state. The company she founded, FlowInsight, is on a mission to bring back joy to our everyday work.

Arty is also a 2D/3D animator and artist, and has spent the last couple years building 3D apps in AR. She loves to share about her experiences with these technologies.

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