Appendix B. Naur, Ehn, Musashi

Peter Naur and Pelle Ehn wrote the two most compelling and accurate accounts of software development I have yet seen. Neither is as well known as it needs to be, and Ehn’s book is out of print. I am happy, therefore, to present extracts from their articles, for wider readership.

Peter Naur’s “Programming as Theory Building” neatly describes the mental activity of creating software and explains the “metaphor building” activity in Extreme Programming (XP).

Pelle Ehn wrote the wonderful book Work-Oriented Design of Software Artifacts, in which he considers how Wittgenstein’s idea of language games informs our view of software development.

Miyamoto Musashi, the 17th-century samurai champion, never wrote software. The ...

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