Comment by movpasd

Regarding the tension between symbolic representation and Naur "theory", I'd actually say they come from two different traditions, each providing two different theses. When writing them out I think it becomes a bit clearer how they interact and that they're not actually contradictory.

Thesis A is something like: the value of the programmer comes from their practical ability to keep developing the codebase. This ability is specific to the codebase. It can only be obtained through practice with that codebase, and can't be transferred through artefacts, for the same reason you can't learn to play tennis by reading about it (a "Mary's Room" argument).

This ability is what Naur calls "theory". I think the term is a bit confusing (to me, the word is associated with "theoretical" and therefore to things that can be written down). I feel like in modern discourse we would usually refer to this as a "mental model", a "capability", or "tacit knowledge".

Then there's Thesis B, which comes more from a DDD lineage, and which is something like: the development of a codebase requires accumulation of specific insights, specific clarifying perspectives about problem-domain knowledge. The ability for programmers to build understanding is tied to how well these insights are expressed as artefacts (codebase structure, documentation, communication documents).

I feel like some disagreements in SWE discourse come from not balancing these two perspectives. They're actually not contradictory at all and the result of them is pretty common-sensical. Thesis A explains the actual mechanism for Thesis B, which is that providing scaffolding for someone learning the codebase obviously helps, and vice-versa, because the learned mental model is an internally structured representation that can, with work, be externalised (this work is what "communication skills" are).