[mooreds]

I have taken a couple of permaculture courses and am also a developer. The biggest synergy between the two is system thinking. In both domains, you are thinking at multiple levels of abstraction, bouncing back and forth between the high level design and low level implementation.

Highly recommended: Thinking in Systems: http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/...

And the permaculture podcast covers a variety of interesting topics: http://www.thepermaculturepodcast.com/