Research and Advances

Cognitive bias in software engineering

Developer's thought processes are a fundamental area of concern. Cognitive scientist have discovered that people's intiative inferences and probality judgments do not strictly conform to the laws of logic or mathematics, and that people are willing to provide plausible explanations for random events. This article examines the role these phenomena might have in software development, ultimately concluding that what are cast as one-sided software development guidelines often can be recast beneficially as two-sided trade-offs.

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Research and Advances

Cognition and software development

Not long ago, programmers controlled computers by arranging wires on a control panel built into the side of a large floor-standing machine. Today palm-sized pointing devices are used to drag and drop visual images on machines smaller than a notebook. Dramatic differences like these make it easy to forget that software development still revolves around the needs of the computer at the expense of the needs of developers and end users.

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