Conceptual Clarity: The Foundation of Successful Software
The Essence of Software: Empowering Users and Developers with Conceptual Clarity
In The Essence of Software: Why Concepts Matter for Great Design, the author argues that programmers have a robust language and established criteria to distinguish good design from bad. However, no such language or set of criteria exist in the user-facing sense, specifically design that dictates how software is experienced as a form embedded in a context.
The concept of internal code design is crucial primarily for what engineers call "maintainability," performance, and reliability. But the key decisions determining whether an application is useful and fulfills client needs reside elsewhere—in the type of software design where functionality and user interaction patterns are shaped.
It's also worth comparing with domain-driven design, which stems from a set of core concepts in the application domain, with the author’s approach to software design more supported on the user interface where key concepts are defined above the business layer.
These concepts were once central in computer science, but over time they became less fashionable and faded away. Defect elimination—whether through testing or program verification—became synonymous with software quality.
However, if the software has the wrong design, no amount of defect elimination will fix it, short of returning to the start and rectifying the design itself.
Clarity & Simplicity in Design
In his 30 years of teaching experience, the author has become increasingly convinced that the determinant of success in software development is not whether the latest languages and tools are used, the management process followed (agile or otherwise), or even how you structure your code. It's simply whether you know what you're trying to do. If your goals and design are clear—and it's evident how your design meets your goals—your code will also tend to be clear. And if something isn't working, it will be clear how to fix it.
Personal Story
A while back, while trying to implement a feature on the frontend of a codebase, I found myself running in circles. After a few weeks and with the help of a colleague with much more experience in that part of the codebase (thank you, Weslley!), I realized that the reason I was struggling so much to implement the feature was simply that I didn't have a profound understanding of how the user interaction worked in the codebase variants I was working on. It wasn't a language or framework problem but purely ignorance of how the application functioned. My mental model as a user didn't align with the application's conceptual model.
About the Author
The author is a professor at MIT and has a public personal website where one can find more about his research in this topic: https://www.csail.mit.edu/person/daniel-jackson
As he describes in one of the chapters, this book is the result of his explorations to date. As he puts it, the problem of software design is not solved, but "a book should aim to start a conversation, not end one".
I encourage you to read the book and join the software design discussion.
Thank you for reading this post!
If you're finding value in Turing Respawns, I'd be grateful if you'd share it with a friend or colleague. It's a simple way to help our community grow and explore the human side of tech together. Plus, as a thank you, you'll both enjoy free access to all articles.