Developing Intuition (Keynote at CoderFaire Atlanta 2013)

It’s one thing to program software. It’s another thing to design it. Software architects find themselves at the intersection of these points, sifting through business requirements, system constraints, and team expertise to design and deliver high quality software. While many software design concepts such as patterns come into play, the hard parts are the things we can’t learn in classes or books: designing for the problem domain.

As a result, software architecture is both a scientific discipline and an art. It often requires you to reach beyond knowledge of patterns and practices, relying on your own intuition to design a solution. In this talk, Ben Ramsey explains how intuition plays a crucial role in his own approach to designing software. He gives practical pointers on how to tap into intuition as part of your software design process and how to combine it with rational thinking to be a better software designer.

Transcript

1. Developing Intuition
   Ben Ramsey • CoderFaire Atlanta
   

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17. “Anyone actually calling
    themselves a ‘software
    architect’ is a pompous
    fool.” — DHH
    

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19. “It implies that they can
    just sit back and think up
    what others need to do
    without getting their
    hands dirty. Hogwash.
    You need to implement
    to design.”
    

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22. Developing Intuition
    How to Think Like a Software Architect
    

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78. “If you just sit and observe, you will see
    how restless your mind is. If you try to
    calm it, it only makes it worse, but over
    time it does calm, and when it does,
    there’s room to hear more subtle
    things...”
    

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79. “...that’s when your intuition starts to
    blossom and you start to see things
    more clearly and be in the present
    more. Your mind just slows down, and
    you see a tremendous expanse in the
    moment. You see so much more than
    you could see before. It’s a discipline;
    you have to practice it.”
    — Steve Jobs
    

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95. “The difference between science as it
    stands now and the Buddhist
    investigative tradition lies in the
    dominance of the thirdperson,
    objective method in science and the
    refinement and utilization of first
    person, introspective methods in
    Buddhist contemplation.”
    

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96. “In my view, the combination of the
    firstperson method with the third
    person method offers the promise of a
    real advance in the scientific study of
    consciousness.”
    — the Dalai Lama
    

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101. Thank you.
     benramsey.com
     @ramsey
     

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