A Cumulative Culture Theory for Developer Problem-Solving

Understanding how developers problem-solve within ecosystems of practice, tooling, and social contexts is a critical step in determining which factors dampen, aid or accelerate software innovation. However, industry conceptions of developer problem-solving often focus on overly simplistic measures of output, over-extrapolate from small case studies, rely on conventional definitions of “programming” and short-term definitions of performance, fail to integrate the new economic features of the open collaborative innovation that marks software progress, and fail to integrate rich bodiesof evidence about problem-solving from the social sciences. We propose an alternative to individualistic explanations for software developer problem-solving: a Cumulative Culture theory for developer problem-solving. This paper aims to provide an interdisciplinary introduction to underappreciated elements of developers’ communal, social cognition which are required for software development creativity and problem-solving, either empowering or constraining the solutions that developers access and implement. We propose that despite a conventional emphasis on individualistic explanations, developers’ problem-solving (and hence, many of the central innovation cycles in software) is better described as a cumulative culture where collective social learning (rather than solitary and isolated genius) plays a key role in the transmission of solutions, the scaffolding of individual productivity, and the overall velocity of innovation.