Software development as social activity: distributed cognition or hermeneutic pratice?

Abstract

How shall we render understandable the social-practical processes of software development? First, I am going to present the theory of Distributed Cognition (dCog), because, given its privileged position within Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) literature, this is the most likely candidate for a philosophical theory of software development. Next, I am going to demonstrate with a case study that the processes, which I call hermeneutic activities, lie outside the domain of this theory. These hermeneutic episodes are characterized exactly by the lack of a commonly shared functional description level, but the existence of such a level is indispensable for the theses of dCog to hold. According to my argumentation, the hidden premise that assumes the existence of such a level is not only problematic, but is also inconsistent with the other theoretical roots of dCog. In order to see this, we have to turn our attention toward the practices of interpretation that are taking place in situated hermeneutic activities. In my analysis, I am going to lean on the other branch of dCog´s theoretical roots, predominantly on the works of Suchman, Winograd, Dreyfus, and Norman.