ME:: learning debt because of 'broken coding scene' :-) ; Catherine Hicks:: OSF ¦ “It’s Like Coding in the Dark”: The need for learning cultures within coding teams
Discovered: Jun 23, 2026 13:45 (UTC) ME:: learning debt because of “broken coding scene” :-) ; Catherine Hicks:: OSF ¦ “It’s Like Coding in the Dark”: The need for learning cultures within coding teams
QUOTE
- Read the whole thing: Catherine Hicks:: OSF ¦ “It’s Like Coding in the Dark”: The need for learning cultures within coding teams
- This report presents data from a qualitative research project with software engineers and developers. Twenty-five full-time code writers completed a “debugging” task and an in-depth interview on their learning, problem-solving, and feedback experiences while onboarding to an unfamiliar, collaborative codebase. This report applies a learning science lens to inform an understanding of how to help code writers can thrive and collaborate.
- Themes from these interviews revealed an important learning tension: the work that code writers needed to do to understand code often did not feel like what was rewarded in the evaluation of their work. Code review often did not recognize code writers’ effort when it did not result in lines of code. Despite stated ideals about knowledge sharing (e.g., documentation and collaboration), this work was often contradicted with negative cues from colleagues about what was “truly” valued. This tension was exacerbated by code writers’ fears about “not looking like an engineer,” and their desire to perform to the expectations of their environments.
- Code writers navigated this by divesting from their own learning and from the “invisible” work of knowledge transfer, leaving future collaborators without guidance in their own ramp-up to unfamiliar code. As a result, code writers frequently expressed a poignant loneliness, even in highly resourced teams.
- This maladaptive cycle can be understood as Learning Debt. Research from learning science describes how environments that discourage sharing mistakes and valuing “in-draft” effort lead to long-term costs in people’s motivation, wellbeing, and learning. Under this discouragement, even formal processes which are ostensibly meant to maintain productivity and provide support (e.g., code review, conversations with senior code authors) can reinforce these negative norms.