The Culture of Programming

I read an interesting story in a Sunday supplement about an American couple who retired to Mexico. They purchased a lot on the outskirts of a large city and hired an American architect to design their dream home. They then hired a Mexican building contractor and turned the blueprints over to him. As construction proceeded, they were flabbergasted to find that the building wasn't turning out the way the architect had specified.

The blueprints showed the front wall of the house containing four windows whose manufacturer and part number were precisely specified. The owners discovered that the actual wall contained three windows from another maker with quite different appearance and size. When they queried the Mexican builder, he shrugged and said, "They're windows. The plan says windows go in this wall. What is the problem?"

The owners and architect were from one culture, sharing one set of values, and the builder came from another culture and valued aspects of the problem differently. No doubt he was able to procure the windows for much less money and effort, and in his world these considerations took precedence. The American owners and architect believed that the blueprints implied full and exact compliance. The Mexican builder believed that the blueprints were a suggestion, not a requirement. He believed that his imperatives of thrift and acquisition ease naturally outranked any exactitude in the specifications. He was sincerely trying to fulfill the architect's vision but was applying his own cultural filters his own values to the problem.