Professional Software Development:Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel BryantCTO, Instant Access Technologies

d.bryant@iatltd.com@taidevcouk

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

Thinking, Fast and Slow

An awesome book!

Exploring how we think…“Bias and decision heuristics”

amzn.to/KidCCy

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

Your Thinking: A Tale of Two Systems…

System 1:fast, instinctive, emotional, subconsciousSystemic errors

System 2:slower, deliberate, reasoning, consciousLazy, and causal (not statistical)

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

Heuristics / biases affecting software developers

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

Availability Heuristic

“If something can be recalled, it must be important”

Ever notice that MongoDB are at every conference?

…and every application seems to use MongoDB?

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

Substitution Heuristic

“…a computationally complex judgment will be substituted

for a more easily calculated heuristic”

Observe what happens when you ask…

‘Is Scala a good choice for your current project?’

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

Anchoring Bias

“Common tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered when

making decisions. ”

How does your manager ask for estimates?

…is it an unbiased question?

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

Thinking Professionally

• Availability– Constant learning and evaluation– Spike, prototype, experiment…

• Substitution– Matt Raible comparison matrix (bit.ly/OxUzad)

• Anchoring– ‘Clean Coder’ PERT Estimation (amzn.to/1dr0SSW)

10/04/2023 @taidevcouk

Thanks for Listening!

This is a beta lightning talk…… was it interesting? Please let me know!

Contact me: d.bryant@iatltd.com@taidevcouk