Alistair Cockburn Alistair Cockburn
The photo was taken in my front yard, Salt Lake City, the day Mark visited. Other wonderful computer people who have visited our house, met our kids, and been in the coffee shop(s) where I do most of my writing are WardCunningham, KentBeck, MartinFowler, PeteMcBreen, SteveAdolph, AndyPols?, PaulBramble?, LukeHohmann.
Closer up I look like this: 
or sometimes like this
For reading, see GreatBooksListAlistairCockburn. For commenting, go to the Crystal Wiki, http://alistair.cockburn.us/crystal/wiki/TitleIndex
Unlike BobHanmer, I try to avoid mowing my own lawn. Relatives, teenagers, and now finally my own children are happy to perform this hot, sweaty service for mere money. ("hey, kids, what's with this Pokemon thing? That lawn don't need mowing four times a week?!")My wife has finally recognized that it is generally safer to keep me away from the carpentry and electrical projects.
I'm a poet, but few people think of that as a profession. I recently completed my Dr. Philos. degree at the University of Oslo (2003) on the topic of People and Methodologies in Software Development. A scratch version of it is posted at http://alistair.cockburn.us/crystal/books/alistairsbooks.html
Professionally, I'm an OO software specialist and collaboration facilitator, having done hardware design 8 years (real-time flight simulators), software research 8 years, taught consulted in OO technology for 8 years, was in charge of the IBM Consulting Group's object-oriented development work until founding Humans and Technology in Salt Lake City, in 1994.
Busy moving my web site to http://alistair.cockburn.us, or mailto:arc@acm.org. Part of the holdup is finding time to type in all the content!
I have my doubts that a 40- or 50-year old programmer can contribute double or triple what a 25- or 35-year old can. But that's what their salary would require. Between that and the next point, I think that drives most of them out of programming. It certainly is driving me out.
Also, I find that older people are fed up with learning every new technology that comes along (and doesn't really simplify life, just changes it). Back in 1975 a middle-aged codger told me, "I just picked the right language (APL) to start with, and I'll wait for you C.S. guys to stop changing your minds, and catch up." I hit that point after I learned my 8th operating system, and ran into Smalltalk. LifesTooShort. -- AlistairCockburn (46)
If I may politely ask, Alistair, to what are you being driven towards, if away from programming? (Hint: I'm looking to compare notes with a kindred spirit)
Toward understanding the NatureOfPeople and how that interacts with their work. As a by-product, improving the environment in which people work, making it more in tune with the people's constitutions. More enjoyable AND more efficient (which, as it turns out, makes it more enjoyable).
I stumbled across the notion of a ConversationYouCantStayAwayFrom. Whenever one of these starts, you pause at the doorway and linger, hoping to take part in it. For me, it started when I was designing hardware (1976) (what a non-human activity that was: just slide the assignment under the door, please, and I'll spend the next two weeks checking the wire list). I went past a doorway and heard/saw them discussing a look-ahead typing interface... I paused and wanted to take part, but had nothing to say. My next chance was some direct manipulation UI design I was doing on a piece of software (1986), where I lingered, making it more pleasant to use.
By 1987 I was in formal specification of communication protocols and had defined my interest as "human interface aspects of formal specification" (self-contradictory though that may seem, it isn't). After interviewing half-a-dozen project teams in 1992, it was clear that the human aspect of running projects was being suppressed but was important, and that CRC cards drew upon unnamed cognitive aspects of people doing design.
Once I left IBM in 1994, and didn't have to apologize any more for what I was doing, I got drawn steadily farther into cultural, sociological and cognitive issues in software development, and enjoyed the conversations steadily more. Every encounter on the street, in the coffee shop, on a project feeds the study. I can't stay away from this conversation, and it gets more interesting as I proceed.
I'm nearly off into esoterica by now (see below), but these each have concrete impact on project outcome. Next on my study list, whenever I manage to crack out the time, are NLP and Cranio-Sacral and related massage therapy techniques. All part of the same game. In the meantime, I still do CulturalBridging translating and facilitating, which is the only thing near as fun as writing software.
I was bred, through the University, as an Engineer (with capital E), and can't exorcize from my system the love of solving design problems, finding a path to a solution that finesses any number of impossible constraints. But it's clear to me, I am not, never was a Programmer (with a capital P); I only ever designed hardware or software as a mechanism to solve some other problem that was on my mind, or simply to exercise the problem-solving. Nowadays I only program enough to keep my reflexes sound enough to be safe on a project. My heart was always in this other conversation. A serious JustaProgrammer is either a person to whom programming is their ConversationYouCantStayAwayFrom, or a person who hasn't yet found their ConversationYouCantStayAwayFrom. LifesJustTooShort, so it is important to discover that conversation and live there. -- AlistairCockburn
I was at NorgesBank, the Norwegian equivalent of the US Treasury and Federal Reserve combined. That was interesting and informative. Periodically, here on wiki, I lose my cookies (pardon the phrase) and so lose my UserName, and then have to figure out all over again how to get my name set up (hint: read UserName).
Feb'00 discovered ConvectionCurrentsOfInformation (which made it into the AgileSoftwareDevelopment book and my OOPSLA '01 keynote). Starting to work on naming barriers, finding examples and making images to convey the cost of impeding the ConvectionCurrentsOfInformation. "Teaming" came up as a word that captures the issues of trust, integrity, cooperation, etc. Looking perhaps for a synonym. Was shocked to discover that LateralThinking plays a key role in ProjectManagement. If I didn't already have 5 books in the pipeline, I'd immediately sit down and write a book called "Teaming and Lateral Thinking as Key Aspects of Project Management" or some such. sigh. add it to the list.
This page mirrored in ComponentDesignPatterns as of April 29, 2006