Webb Stacy
Abstract
Developer's thought processes are a fundamental area of concern. Cognitive scientist have discovered that people's intiative inferences and probality judgments do not strictly conform to the laws of logic or mathematics, and that people are willing to provide plausible explanations for random events. This article examines the role these phenomena might have in software development, ultimately concluding that what are cast as one-sided software development guidelines often can be recast beneficially as two-sided trade-offs.
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Index Terms
- Cognitive bias in software engineering
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Reviews
Scott R. Tilley
Cognitive scientists have observed that people's intuitive inferences and probability judgments do not strictly conform to the laws of logic or mathematics and that people are willing to provide plausible explanations for random events. This paper describes several well-established judgmental biases and gives examples of how they might apply to the everyday life of a software engineer. Most of the examples have not been empirically investigated or tested, but are merely proposed as possible explanations. This paper sets out several interesting examples of cognitive biases and presents an intriguing argument for viewing normal development guidelines as two-sided tradeoffs. Using examples drawn from testing and debugging, two traditional software engineering roles requiring program understanding expertise, the authors explain how software engineers—like most people—tend to seek evidence to verify theories, but not evidence that could falsify them. Further examples using object-oriented development strategies as examples are also provided. The paper is well written, well structured, and easy to read. It is more of an essay than a research paper, which is fine, given its stated goals. The authors discuss the roles of cognitive biases and mental representations in software engineering and offer singular advice for debiasing. I enjoyed reading the paper. It provides a broad perspective on the cognitive aspects of software engineering, which I found refreshing.
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