Development and Philosophy

proposal.md

We spend most of our times obsessing about the actual act of programming. Is this method name too long? Should I refactor this code? How do I fix this bug? However, sometimes, large gains can be made by drawing in experience from totally different fields.

I think there's a lot a programmer can learn from the study of epistemology, logic, metaphysics, moral and political philosophy, and aesthetics. In this talk, I'll give an overview of a bunch of interesting thinkers, philosophical problems, and how they relate to the worlds of software development, open source, and startups.

Feels awfully hand-wavy. Your abstract doesn't convince me that you're going to be able to draw interesting connections between our field and those others.

A creative example or two would go a long way. For an abstract as abstract as this, you gotta deliver some goods up front to prove you're on to something.

That said, I still wouldn't go, since it doesn't have live-coding ;)

An abstract talk about philosophy? Say it ain't so! It's hard to give an example in an abstract, though, as they have only a few sentences of space...

Yup I totally agree. I often get caught up in logic traps and too much thinking, which leads to fatigue. I wish I was able to go to your talk. Hopefully you might put it up on Youtube or something later? I think programmers are coming to this realization, hence things like Lightable (http://www.chris-granger.com/2012/04/12/light-table---a-new-ide-concept/)

We'll see if it gets accepted anywhere first. :p

+1

epistemology, logic, metaphysics, moral and political philosophy, and aesthetics.

This is a broad set of topics. I think you could even afford to pick just one: Marxism or critical theory + Ruby, perhaps :)