Theory of Developer Momentum

While research shows productivity benefits from AI, there are open questions as to whether the developer’s experience is getting worse. Is the flow state going away? Is fatigue increasing? Are we losing our ability to understand our software? Developers can feel their cognitive experience shifting, but it is difficult to articulate what exactly has changed. We need new ways to see and understand what is happening more clearly that don't reduce the developer's experience to output or productivity alone.

This talk introduces a Theory of Developer Momentum, constructed through an empirical study with professional software developers as part of a doctoral research program. Developer Momentum is the developer's experience of progress and forward motion toward the goal of a task. This new theory disentangles the related constructs of flow state, momentum, and motivation, so we can more clearly see the relationships between them and the skilled craft through which progress unfolds.

Because the theory centers the motion of problem-solving toward a goal, the foundational constructs can translate across changing workflows. Whether a developer is prompting and reviewing AI-generated code, orchestrating agents, or writing code by hand, there is a human trying to make progress toward a goal. This lets us investigate how the developer's experience is being reshaped. The theory helps us shift from seeing software through a manufacturing lens that centers the outputs of production, to an ecological lens of seeing and supporting software development as a living activity in motion.

The future of software is not set in stone; it is something we can participate in shaping.

About Arty Starr

Arty Starr has been a software engineer for 20+ years and is a researcher and pioneer of new theories of the developer's cognitive experience that help us recognize how developers' experiences are changing with AI. Her theories of developer momentum and troubleshooting help us see software development through an ecological lens, recognizing it as a living activity in motion and the living capacities of care and cognition that support this motion. Her aim is to bring heart, human-centric values, and agency to the craft of software development so we can build toward the type of world we want to live in. With richer perception and by recognizing what matters, we can light a path to a future of thriving habitats where humans and AI can collaborate well and thrive together.

Arty is the author of Idea Flow, a speaker, thought leader, and artist who loves mixing ideas across disciplines into a fusion of creativity to help make the world a better place through her projects.

More About Arty »