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Realising software development as a lived experience

Published: 19 October 2012 Publication History

Abstract

This essay discusses software development from the perspective of Empirical Modelling (EM) [4], an approach to computing that draws on the construals of David Gooding [52], Bruno Latour's vexing notion of construction [70] and William James's radical empiricism [63]. It argues that effective software development must embrace semantic principles radically different from those endorsed by the traditional perspective on software that is based on computational thinking. Of paramount importance is the immediacy of the developer's experience of the relationship between software as an artefact on the computer and software as an agency in the world.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    Onward! 2012: Proceedings of the ACM international symposium on New ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software
    October 2012
    258 pages
    ISBN:9781450315623
    DOI:10.1145/2384592
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 19 October 2012

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    Author Tags

    1. agency
    2. construal
    3. dependency
    4. empirical modelling
    5. experience
    6. formalist
    7. hermeneutic
    8. object thinking
    9. observation
    10. radical empiricism
    11. software development

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