Software is for People

Comments

This story is still being worked on, but I'm very open to comments. Please feel free to email me, or leave comments in this section.

Software is a story, for people

If you asked most people, including computer programmers, what software is, most would say something like "it's instructions for controlling a computer." Some might include "it's a set of 1's and 0's that are processed by the CPU." Wikipedia says software is "that part of a computer system that consists of encoded information (or computer instructions), as opposed to the physical computer equipment (hardware) which is used to store and process this information." These are all partly true, but they are missing the main point.

Only part of software is code

The main point of software is to automate things that people already know how to do. That is, software is to help people accomplish their tasks. But first those tasks have to be understood.

Software is a story

Modern society tends to think of stories as historical or fictitious accounts usually meant to convey trivia or entertainment, or both. But throughout the ages the main purpose of a story has been to instruct. That is, the storytellers are passing on things they know about how to do (or not to do) something.

Instruction Manuals

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Credits

I wasn't the first to talk about user stories. I first heard the term from Extreme Programming (XP.) http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?UserStory. Note that XP uses this term in a fairly narrow sense which is somewhat different than what I'm talking about.

About the storyteller

James Stansell has been telling stories for over 25 years to an audience who largely didn't know they were even listening to stories. All but a few needed a translator to "hear" the messages. That translator is a computer.

The story you have just read is an attempt to bypass the electronic translator.

Administrivia

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