[Jtsummers]

The talk about boids made me think this would go in a different direction.

Programmers and our employers exhibit flocking behavior. See how Ruby on Rails brought so many people to the Ruby language. How Python had a similar surge earlier in the 00s, and later with the explosion of use (numpy and similar) in data science applications. Additionally, things like Ruby on Rails helped make the web application commonplace. See JavaScript and AJAX for that as well.

Perl established an effective code repository (CPAN) that enabled their userbase to grow via a similar flocking mechanism. Go has no central repository but has an easy to use mechanism for adding dependencies based on git repositories. That ease of access to published modules allows people to adopt the technology once a peer (someone working in a similar domain) publishes something. And it encourages people to contribute back in some fashion (publish new modules or update the existing ones). In Perl's case you saw a lot of people from outside IT making use of it (the same is now true for Python with data science) because the heavy lifting was done and they could focus on gluing things together.

Exploiting this flocking behavior, then, becomes important to anyone wanting to push a new technology out. Even if it's the best thing and would produce the best software ever, it won't always succeed on its own merits.

(random thoughts, no real thesis here)

[jacques_chester]

The simple model for this kind of thing is Polya's Urn.

Take an urn with green and red balls (or blue and orange, if you're colour-blind).

Pick out a ball. If it is red, put it back and replace a green ball with another red ball. If green, put it back and replace a red ball with a green.

Even starting with a perfect 50:50, and choosing completely randomly, a Polya process will eventually show that your probability of picking one colour becomes more or less certain. The urn "locks" into a particular path. While in theory it could return to 50:50 or swing back to the other colour, the odds of doing so rapidly become astronomical.

John Sterman's Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World has a really excellent discussion. Worth looking for.

[Jtsummers]

That book actually just made it onto my Amazon wishlist (for other reasons). I know I'm unlikely to succeed in my current company, but I'm trying to increase my understanding/fluency in systems thinking in order to improve the company's understanding. Realistically, this means I'm building a skillset for my next job.

That particular model is interesting for what I described. Essentially, if someone wants to program they'll be drawn to one of the projects/people already out there which are already using some language. They'll then use the same language and become a person or produce a project that the next person may be drawn to. The original thing that drew them to the language is still there, and they're another point to draw someone else to the same language.

Thanks.

[jacques_chester]

Exactly, this is path dependency in a case where value comes from network effects. I have occasion to apply this material in thinking about my work and I'm hoping to get to apply more of it as time goes.

Sterman's is the best all-round book on systems thinking I've read. Not too hand-wavy, not swimming in calculus, plenty of interesting case studies and practical advice that show deep experience. It's in a sweet spot for me.

Edit: as a note, it always seems to be substantially cheaper on Book Depository than on Amazon. I suspect that bots are, hilariously, in a feedback loop bidding up a book about feedback loops.

[Jtsummers]

This [0] is something I came across while looking up information on systems dynamics/thinking in general. That's how the book ended up on my list. I haven't gone through it yet but I probably will over the next few weeks now that my life/schedule has settled down a bit.

I've also been reading Weinberg's General Systems Thinking (bundle with it and some other books at Leanpub[1]). I can't say I've seen anything new in it yet, but it (like many books) is connecting dots for me that I hadn't connected before. Reading through it, I wish I'd seen some of its content when I was younger, it could've made some things easier over the years.

[0] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-87...

[1] https://leanpub.com/b/generalsystemsthinkerbundle