I believe we people make lots of unconscious choices when we design or write programs, and the bigger the stress and hurry, the less conscious we are about our choices.
Where do the choices come from? I believe we mimic patterns and principles we see around us.
With every new thing (technology, language, tool etc) we learn, we not only learn the details of that very thing, but also the more universal principles and patterns behind it. And this unconscious learning is what builds our “unconscious pool of patterns“ that helps us create software under stress by doing some of the supposedly trivial choices for us and letting our conscience concentrate on the more unique problems.
That‘s why I want to use “the Mouse Oriented Operating System” as little as possible, for example. (I‘m using it now, but that‘s my customer‘s choice, not mine :-). I don‘t want to pollute my brain with bad principles. I want to stand on the shoulders of a giant instead of a dwarf :-)
Originally published on 2005-02-25 at http://www.jroller.com/wipu/entry/you_are_what_you_feed under category Art of programming