Please help me find video presentation about psychology of programming

November 27, 2013 6:25 PM

Some time ago (maybe four years) I saw a video of a presentation about psychology of computer programming by a man who said he was writing a book about it. He also had a blog where he discussed the book. It wasn't a single blog post about the topic, but a specialised blog about the psychology of programming. I can't find either.

The problem is that the search results are muddled not only by other writers writing occassional posts about programming and psychology, but by people writing about mental programming (as in Neuro Linguistic Programming), which is also related to psychology, so the term appears a lot.

I haven't been able to find the video presentation using either google or youtube's own search. Could someone help me find the video thanks to their better google-fu or maybe some personal recollection?

The author's not Gerald Weinberg and the book is not this one.

posted by kandinski to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I love me a good internet search mystery, but since this is not my field, I think I have no idea whether what I'd find is right or not. That said, here are some search ideas:
(1) Try Google's blog search. Here's one I just did with the keywords Knuth Weinberg Psychology of Computer Programming (the idea being to find people who had written about these seminal writers, to see if (a) the blogger is who you are looking for or (b) the blogger mentions who you are looking for). (Note that search is limited to 2007 and later, which may or may not be a limit that helps.)
(2) Use the Books in Print database (I can access it through my public library and I think most public libraries have it--if not remotely then you could go to the actual library).
(3) Maybe Goodreads could help?

(The latter two to help you find the book written by the person who made the video, and thus the person's name, which will help you find the video.)
posted by gubenuj at 8:05 PM on November 27, 2013

Does "Leveraging Psychology in Software Engineering" ring a bell? These are the power point slides from a talk by a guy name John R Fox, who has a website for his book Digital Work in an Analog World: Improving Software Engineering Through Applied Psychology. The site has a link to a blog, but the blog only has two posts.....
posted by TheCavorter at 9:34 PM on November 27, 2013

Another possibility: http://prezi.com/sgufox0kriso/psychology-and-software-engineering-facts-and-fallacies/
posted by TheCavorter at 9:39 PM on November 27, 2013

Perhaps you are thinking of flow, and the presentation is this TED talk from the principal investigator? Flow is a common concept among programmers, though they may not use that particular word to describe it.
posted by pwnguin at 11:30 PM on November 27, 2013

Response by poster: Thanks, guys. But no, not found yet.

This was a video of a guy in some kind of facial hair talking about the mental states of programming. He was at some kind of local users group meeting, and he was funny. I'll keep looking.
posted by kandinski at 3:31 AM on November 28, 2013