Programmers a-voiding “complexity”

It seems taken for granted that programming is a complicated activity dealing with complex phenomena. Much of software engineering is devoted to reducing complexity. Unfortunately, there is no indication that this methodological response has been successful. This paper provides an ethnomethodologically informed ethnographic study of programmers ‘as-andwhen’ they ‘do’ programming. It is shown that programming is a conversationally oriented activity, in which complexity is inconspicuously dealt in a ‘seen-but-unnoticed’ fashion, as “claming back slack” in a plan, “transferring agency and ‘eidos’ to code” and “justifying implemented requirements”. Thus, this paper represents a first step towards re-conceptualizing programming in itself as a “co-operative system” in which ‘complexity’ is handled in a way of which the current software engineering approaches have had no awareness. On top of this, new methods for realizing co-operative systems can be devised.