What Do You Mean? - Kevlin Henney - KanDDDinsky 2018

"It's just semantics." How many conversations about philosophy, politics and programming are derailed by this thought-stopping comment?

Semantics is all about meaning. If there is one thing we struggle with and need to get better at, it is the search for and clarification of meaning. The world in which a software system lives is filled with meaning. The structure, concepts and names that inform the code, its changes and the mental models held by developers are expressions of meaning. The very act of development is an exercise in meaning — it's discovery, its formulation, its communication. Paradigms, processes and practices are anchored in different ways of thinking about and arriving at meaning.

But just because we are immersed in concepts of meaning from an early age, and just because the daily work of software development is about wrangling meaning, and just because it's just semantics, that doesn't mean we're necessarily good at it. It takes effort and insight. Let's talk about what we mean.

[monetize_this]

Enjoyed Kevlin's talks as always, but couldn't believe is remark about 'our' current calendar being off by 2.

The Roman calendar was 10 months over 304 days
This is a classic case of new, or unexpected change due to improved knowledge about the world and measuring/quantifying with increased accuracy.

[ervinpeters]

Thank's Kevlin, nice description (abstract model) of the creative and communication aspects of the human bio computer. I'm thinking about the questions of the bootup process, how semantics and meaning becomes concious or determines the unconcious and physical states.

[patrickproctor]

Eh... C and C++ still both let you access the very raw assembler and cache line levels of the processor. You just REALLY have to know where to look, and you're a particular kind of bastard at that point.