Programmers’ Stone: Additional Materials
Programmers’ Stone: Additional Materials is a curated set of follow-on notes and reference pointers that sit alongside the main text. The original page was a simple link list. This updated version keeps the same headings and core intent, but reframes each section as a place-holder for modern companion pages that will be published separately.
Part of The Programmers’ Stone — return to the main guide for the full series and chapter index.
Stoned! Sites
This section will list sites and projects that readers have found to be aligned with the themes of the Programmers’ Stone: practical craft, deep understanding, and the ability to see through procedural theatre. As new pages are published, each entry will be summarized briefly here and maintained as a living index.
User Reports
This section will collect short reports from readers who have applied the ideas in real work. The aim is not hype. It is to capture concrete outcomes, what changed in thinking, and what did not work. If you have a case study worth sharing, it will be edited for clarity and published in a consistent format.
Additional Materials
These topics were originally presented as a few supporting items. We will publish updated standalone pages for each of them and keep only a brief description here.
Knowledge Autoformalisation
A practitioner’s account of turning informal know-how into a usable representation without killing it with bureaucracy. The focus is on extracting structure while keeping the original intent intact.
Extreme Programming
A short companion note on why certain lightweight engineering practices work well when the team is thinking clearly and communicating honestly, and why they fail when adopted as ritual.
Unsolicited Testimonial
A personal report on the impact of the material over time. In the modern version, testimonials will be treated as anecdotes: interesting, but always secondary to the arguments and the observable reality of work.
Links
The original page contained a set of external links. Those links have been removed here. Instead, this section will point to topic pages hosted on this site that explain why each external tradition or document matters, what is still true, and what has aged poorly.
TRIZ
A structured approach to invention and problem solving that complements the Stone’s emphasis on insight and leverage. The modern companion page will cover where TRIZ is genuinely useful, and where it is often misrepresented as a fully procedural “algorithm for creativity.”
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
A landmark argument about why open collaboration can outperform centralized control in software. The modern companion page will connect the thesis to today’s tooling, ecosystems, and incentives, including the ways collaboration can be gamed or diluted.
Mining Usefulness
A reminder that “compliance” is not the same as value. The modern companion page will translate that idea into present-day project realities: metrics, dashboards, audits, and the gap between activity and outcomes.
The Jargon File
A snapshot of hacker culture as a linguistic and technical tradition. The modern companion page will treat it as cultural history and a source of attitudes that still shape engineering behaviour.
Design Patterns in MFC
An example of recognizing recurring structure in frameworks and toolkits. The modern companion page will update this to contemporary UI stacks and describe what “pattern literacy” looks like today.
References
The following works influenced the ideas behind the Programmers’ Stone. They are not required reading, but they provide historical context and alternative ways of thinking about software, organizations, and human cognition.
The Dilbert Future — Scott Adams
Satire that resonates because it records real workplace behaviour. Valuable less as comedy than as observational documentation of recurring organisational patterns.
The Mythical Man-Month — Frederick P. Brooks
A foundational guide to software project reality: communication overhead, schedule fallacies, and why adding people to a late project makes it later.
Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams — Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister
Argues that software productivity depends primarily on environment, attention, and psychological safety rather than process enforcement.
The Olduvai Imperative — Peter Degrace & Leslie Hulet Stahl
Moves from CASE tools into deeper questions about what software creation actually involves. Most useful as a conceptual provocation.
Feynman Lectures on Computation — Richard P. Feynman
Explores computation and information from first principles. A model of clarity and intellectual honesty rather than a programming manual.
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software — Erich Gamma et al.
Introduces pattern literacy: recognizing recurring structure and communicating design intent without overspecifying implementation.
The Goal — Eliyahu M. Goldratt
A narrative introduction to constraints thinking. Encourages identifying bottlenecks and system limits instead of optimizing activity.
It’s Not Luck — Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Extends the constraints approach into broader organizational decision making.
Journey of the Software Professional — Luke Hohmann
Describes professional growth in software development and the role of reflective practice.
Hackers — Steven Levy
History of early hacker culture and the values that shaped modern computing.
Computing: A Human Activity — Peter Naur
Argues that programming is an act of understanding carried out by people, not a mechanical production process.
Narcissistic Process and Corporate Decay — Howard S. Schwartz
Explains organizational dysfunction as a self-reinforcing psychological system.
The Fifth Discipline — Peter M. Senge
Introduces systems thinking, feedback loops, and mental models in organizations.
Laws of Form — George Spencer-Brown
A minimalist logical framework that influenced many technical thinkers.
The Psychology of Computer Programming — Gerald M. Weinberg
An early and still relevant examination of how programmers actually think and work together.
Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer — Michael White
Shows the intellectual world surrounding Newton and the non-linear nature of discovery.
Decline and Fall of the American Programmer — Edward Yourdon
A snapshot of industry anxieties about commoditization and management fashion.
Originally written in the late 1990s and refreshed for publication in 2026. Modern companion pages for each section will expand the examples and update the technical references.