Peer Review and Problem Solving

Peer review, open communication and collaboration are probably the hardest nuts to crack and the foundation of successful team. Some years ago, a colleague of mine suggested that the increased communication encouraged by OO design and interfaces is more important than the OO itself as a determinant of success.

Curiously, she has a background in communications and media before completing a postgrad computing degree. Some of the most successful people I know in this field have three year degrees or a background outside of computing. Not to mention the fathers of the field like Dijkstra, Barry Boehm and David Parnas, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at ASWEC 2005 in Brisbane two years ago.

My current reading extends to Karl Popper (falsability and scientific progress), Kuhn-Popper "debate" on established order in science versus recurrent critique, where the philosophy is stretching my own thinking beyond its usual bounds (Bertrand Russell, Piaget in the stack of books).

I encourage peers to read and try to understand books in problem solving and Hofstadter's GEB, for instance, in order to extend themselves intellectually and to learn new approaches to problem solving (eg. induction, depth first, work backwards) to add to their own personal toolkit of problem solving techniques.

Gerald Weinberg introduced the concept of egoless programming in The Psychology of Computer Programming, originally published in 1971 and re-released in 1998. Weinberg recognized that people tie much of their perceived self-worth to their work.