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
17. “Anyone actually calling themselves a ‘software architect’ is a pompous fool.” — DHH
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.”
22. Developing Intuition How to Think Like a Software Architect
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...”
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
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.”
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
101. Thank you. benramsey.com @ramsey