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Interesting. When I started my career as a software developer I was all about gut-driven design/development: I did what felt good and discarded excess. After so
by lmarcos 5y ago
Interesting. When I started my career as a software developer I was all about gut-driven design/development: I did what felt good and discarded excess.
After some years of professional experience I became a data-driven person. I felt as if I had the true wisdom the team needed; I discarded any comment that was not backed up by data. This stage didn't last much, it just didn't feel right (oh the irony). Now I'm all about gut-driven development again. Difficult to explain to other engineers with less experience why I'm like this. In fact, I believe one must become a data-driven development before one can actually discard the approach.
- kqr 5y agoWell, it's not a dichotomy. - There are some areas where humans can develop good intuition on their own. For example, I believe that with experience, you'll learn to distinguish a good variable name from a bad one. You can go with your gut when naming variables. There are some areas where human intuition will pretty much always be very wrong. Figuring out what the customer wants is one of them. IIRC good developers guesses right about what the customer wants about 30 % of the time. This is abysmal. This is where you need to let data drive your decisions. There's lots of psychological research on this. Meehl has his classic studies on clinical versus actuarial reasoning. Kahneman has had his adversarial collaborations with that other guy who promotes intuitive decision making. The key is to continuously test your abilities to know your limits and don't get overconfident when your gut tells you you're right.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago> Kahneman has had his adversarial collaborations with that other guy who promotes intuitive decision making. Gerd Gigerenzer, I believe. I'm with Gigerenzer, as his research tends to replicate a little better ;)