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The real value of formal specification and verification is taking a hard look at the code from two very different points of view - In the early days of program verification we were debugging the specification as much as the code. [Stuff I figured out] key =#57

Unlock Your Creative Potential with Thoughtful Guidance

Creative Nudges™ is dedicated to inspiring and supporting artists by offering insightful comment cards designed to overcome creative blocks. Rooted in Mary Shaw’s expertise, our platform blends practical advice with rich background information to help you thrive in your creative journey.These creativity nudges capture some of the insights that I offer in technical discussions to remind people to take a fresh point of view, identify dissonance, look for structure, and more.
I clustered the nudges by topic (design, engineering, etc), and distinguished observations about the nature of the world (blue declarative statements) from advice on what to do in practice (green imperative statements). Each nudge is elaborated on the back (yellow) with a source and sometimes more detail.
Just for fun, I converted the “things” to a deck of cards, to break the constraints of fixed layout and to see how people would rearrange them and play with them.
André made me do this. Marian backed him up. At ICSE24 in Lisbon, André asked for 25 of the “things” I say that help people focus. Marian suggested that these could be pithy sayings, insights, precepts, adages. hints, aphorisms, epigrams, slogans, maxims, whatever. I started a list, then exceeded expectations, with closer to 70 than to 25.
Echoing “Hints for Computer System Design [Lampson 83], “these are not novel (with a few exceptions), laws of system design, precisely formulated, consistent, always appropriate, approved by all the leading experts, or guaranteed to work. They are just hints”. These nudges continue a tradition that includes the Perlis epigrams, Bentley’s programming pearls [Bentley 88], and Petre and van der Hoek’s designers’ practices [Experts 16].

You may get a “nudge” at random by refreshing the home page. If you are looking for a particular “nudge” use the search box above . If you want a booklet with all the “nudges” you follow the instructions on the booklet page or buy the booklet at the store page. You can buy a deck of Nudge Cards” or many decks of “Nudge Cards” at the store page.

Note: This site is currently (12/4 )under development, and will change over the next few weeks,