What is it about?
What do software writers have in common with novelists and storytellers? What can software developers learn from professional writers? We explore some ideas about storytelling by the Italian novelist, editor, and literary critic Italo Calvino and discuss how these ideas from Literature can help software developers.
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Why is it important?
Software is a social construct, meaning it is the result of a social process - teamwork - requiring sharing ideas and reaching consensus about the understanding of these ideas, or requirements. Storytelling can help in narrating ideas and requirements, and simplify the reaching of consensus about their implementation by professional developers. Calvino was a master storyteller, and his ideas are useful for software developers.
Perspectives
Software development is about reading and writing code, which is by its nature a socially creative activity by several people. Programs are not just aimed at computers to run: they are texts - stories - shared among software engineers and developers, as software systems are typically not written by individuals alone but by teams of people who have to reach some consensus on the meaning of their work.
dr. Paolo Ciancarini
Universita degli Studi di Bologna
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Software design as story telling: reflecting on the work of Italo Calvino, November 2020, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3426428.3426925.
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