TITLE: Normative AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: February 24, 2019 9:35 AM DESC: ----- BODY: In a conversation with Tyler Cowen, economist John Nye expresses disappointment with the nature of discourse in his discipline:
The thing I'm really frustrated by is that it doesn't matter whether people are writing from a socialist or a libertarian perspective. Too much of the discussion of political economy is normative. It's about "what should the ideal state be?"
I'm much more concerned with the questions of "what good states are possible?" And once good states are created that are possible, what good states are sustainable? And that, in my view, is a still understudied and very poorly understood issue.
For some reason, this made me think about software development. Programming styles, static and dynamic typing, software development methodologies, ... So much that is written about these topics tells us what's the right the thing to do. "Do this, and you will be able to reliably make good software." I know I've been partisan on some of these issues over the course of my time as a programmer, and I still have my personal preferences. But these days especially I find myself more interested in "what good states are sustainable?". What has worked for teams? What conditions seem to make those practices work well or not so well? How do teams adapt to changes in the domain or the business or the team's make-up? This isn't too say that we can't draw conclusions about forces and context. For example, small teams seem to make it easier to adapt to changing conditions; to make it work with bigger teams, we need to design systems that encourage attention and feedback. But it does mean that we can help others succeed without always telling them what they must do. We can help them find a groove that syncs with them and the conditions under which they work. Standing back and surveying the big picture, it seems that a lot of good states are sustainable, so long as we pay attention and adapt to the world around us. And that should be good news to us all. -----