Organization, team, and code

There are some similarities between the Church-Tradition-Scripture and organization-team-code.

Firstly, I need to clarify that, Church teaching doesn’t change, and so Holy Scripture doesn’t change. These are the main differences compared to organization and code.

Now, let me discuss the similarities. Just as the Holy Scripture, the source code doesn’t explain itself. Because the source code is not designed to explain itself. Some of the codes may be plain and easy to read, some may not; they require more background on business logic and the intention of the authors. The main difference is that the Holy Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, which has no errors, while source code may come with mistakes and bugs.

Since the source code doesn’t explain itself, the software engineers play a very important role in knowledge management, not only software engineers, but all the related team members such as the project manager and product manager. The software engineers have direct access to the source code. Most of the time, they need to build the features, fix the bugs, write the tests, review the codes written by other engineers, and write the documentation within the code or outside the code. They have the knowledge about the code, business logic, and they know why the codes are written so. Maybe it is a quick fix, temporary solution, known issue with trade-off, etc.

Then, if someone says the source code is the only truth, and you can just read the source code without knowledge transfer from the authors, this is just like people who adopt Sola Scriptura. At the end, you will use your own understanding, changing the source code so that it fulfils what you need.

• Coding