The Psychology of Computer Programmers

Because our goal is to create software-based products that are both powerful and pleasurable for human users, understanding the psychology of the user might seem a natural prerequisite. This is, of course, true, but it obscures another more important, but far less obvious, point. Determining the solution and getting that solution implemented are two very different actions. I'd rather have a partial design actually built than have a better design sit in useless, dusty majesty on the shelf. To get our designed products actually created and into the hands of users, a far more important prerequisite is to understand the psychology of the builders the programmers.

Nothing will change unless we can influence the software developers. Even if the programmers agree that the user should be better treated and they usually do that doesn't necessarily mean that they will do what is necessary to actually accomplish this goal. You are not going to get them to change just by asking them. In order to effect a real solution, we need insight into their thinking so that we can figure out how to motivate them to create interaction that is good for users. For the interaction designer, understanding psychology is very important, but it must include the psychology of the software engineer as well as the psychology of the user.

The implication of this is clear: Programmers are somehow different from ordinary people. Their stereotypical behavioral differences have been the subject of jokes for years: the social awkwardness, the pocket protectors, the bookish manner. Those are just the easily noticeable and easily ridiculed surface differences. The really substantive differences are not only far subtler, but they have a more profound effect on the cognitive friction rich interactive products that programmers build.

Many observers of the computer industry have taken pains to point out these differences. Robert Cringely calls programmers "stinking gods among men," referring simultaneously to their superior attitudes and their hygiene habits.

Po Bronson is another shrewd observer and talented writer. He has cast his sharp eye and sharper wit onto the high-tech world. In a parody of Steven Covey, he has developed what he calls the Seven Habits of Highly Engineered People. They are remarkably revealing in their hyperbole:

1. They will be generous in their selfishness.

2. Blindness improves their vision.

3. They'll not only bite the hand that feeds them, but they'll bite their own hand.

4. They will try very hard to maintain the image that they care very little about their image.

5. They'll keep fixing what's not broken until it's broken.

6. "I didn't answer incorrectly, you just asked the wrong question."

7. They consider absence of criticism a compliment.