Book review: A Philosophy of Software Design

This blog entry is structured in two main parts: The prologue sets the tone, but may be irritating because it doesn’t talk about the book itself. If you get irritated or know the topic well enough to skip it, you can jump to the second part when I talk about the book. It is indicated by a TL;DR summary of the prologue.

Prologue

Imagine a world where the last 25 years of computer game development didn’t happen. A world where we get the power of 5 GHz octacore computers and 128 GB of RAM, but nobody thought about 3D graphics or interaction design. The graphics of computer games is so rudimentary, it consists of ASCII art and color. In this world, two brothers develop a game that simulates a whole fantasy world with all details, in three dimensions. The game is an instant blockbuster hit and spawns multiple cinematic adaptions.
This world never happened. The only thing that seems to be from this world is the game itself: Dwarf Fortress. An ASCII art sandbox simulation of a bunch of dwarves that dig into the (three-dimensional) mountains and inevitably discover the fun in magma. Dwarf Fortress is a game told by stories, not graphics. It burdens the player to micro-manage a whole settlement down to the individual sock – Yes, no plural. There are left socks and right socks and they are different entities with a different story. Dwarves can literally go mad because they miss their favorite left sock and you didn’t notice in time. And you have to control all aspects of the settlement not by direct order, but by giving hints and suggestions through an user interface that is a game of riddles on its own.
Dwarf Fortress is an impossible game. It seems so out of time and touch with current gaming reality that you can only shake your head on first contact. But, it is incredibly deep and well-designed and, most surprising, provides the kind player with endless fun. This game actually works!

TL;DR: Just because something seems odd at first contact doesn’t mean it cannot work. Go and play Dwarf Fortress!

The book

John Ousterhout is a professor teaching software design at the Stanford university and writes software for decades now. In 1988, he invented the Tcl programming language. He got a lot of awards, including the Grace Murray Hopper Award. You can say that he knows what he’s doing and what he talks about. In 2018, he wrote a book with the title “A Philosophy of Software Design”. This book is a peculiar gem besides titles with a similar topic.

Imagine a world where the last 20 years of software development books didn’t happen. One man creates software for his whole life and writes down his thoughts and insights, structured in tactical advices, strategic approaches and an overarching philosophy. He has to invent some new vocabulary to express his ideas. He talks about how he performs programming – and it is nothing like today’s mainstream. In fact, it is sometimes the exact opposite of today’s best practices. But, it is incredibly insightful and well-structured and, most surprising, provides the kind developer with endless fun. Okay, I admit, the latter part of the previous sentence was speculative.

This is a book that seems a bit out of touch with today’s mainstream doctrine – and that’s a good thing. The book begins by defining some vocabulary, like the notion of complexity or the concept of deepness. That is rare by itself, most books just use established words to deliver a message. If you think about the definitions, they will probably enrich your perception of software design. They enriched mine, and I talk about software design to students for nearly twenty years now.

The most obvious thing that is different from other books with similar content: Most other books talk about behaviours, best practices and advices. Then they throw a buch of prohibitions in the mix. This isn’t wrong, but it’s “just” anecdotal knowledge. It is your job as the reader to discern between things that may have worked in the past, but are outdated and things that will continue to work in the future. The real question is left unanswered: Why is it so?

“A Philosophy of Software Design” begins by answering the “why” question. If you want to build an hierarchy of book wisdom depth, this might serve as one:

• Tactical wisdom: What should be done? Most beginner’s books work on this level. They show exactly what goes on, but go easy on the bigger questions.
• Strategic wisdom: How should it be done? This is the level that the majority of good software design books work on. They give insights about your work ethics and principles you should abide by.
• Philosphical wisdom: Why should it be done? The reviewed book begins on this level. It explains the aspects of software and sourcecode that work against human perception and understanding and shows ways to avoid or at least diminish those aspects.

The book doesn’t stay on the philosophical level for long and dives deep into the “how” and “what” areas later on. But it does so with the background of an established “why”. And that’s a great reminder that even if you disagree with a specific “what” (or “how”), you should think about the root cause of your disagreement, not just anecdotes.

The author and the book aren’t as out-of-touch with current software development reality as you might think. There is a whole chapter addressed to current “software trends” like agile development and unit tests. It has a total page count of six pages and doesn’t go into details. But it at least mentions the things it doesn’t talk about.

Conclusion

My biggest learning point from the book for my personal habits as a developer is to write more code comments in the way the book proposes. Yes, you’ve read that right. The book urges you to write more comments – but good ones. It talks about why you should write more comments. It gives you extensive guidelines as to how good comments are written and some examples what these comments look like. After two decades of “write more (unit) tests!”, the message of “write more comments!” is unique and noteworthy. Perhaps we can improve our tools to better support comments in the same way they improved support for tests in the last years.

Perhaps we cannot solve our problems with the sourcecode by writing more sourcecode (unit tests). Perhaps we need to rely on something different. I will give it a try.

You might want to give the book “A Philosophy of Software Design” a try. It’s worth your time and thoughts.