On Pragmata

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Hebrews 11:1, King James version

As a young person I was very religious, and became amazed when I discovered for myself the sometimes terrible results of translation. I was intrigued by the words hypostasis, which was translated as "substance," and pragmaton which are "things."

What better word for the subatomic and quantum realm than "hypostasis"? It is not stasis, but it underlies and provides the foundation for the world. And the hope of seeing it, and of auditing pragmatically the unseen features of the world, is the very mission statement of science. This verse more accurately describes the modern endeavor known as science than it does any mainstream concept of faith.

"Evidence of things not seen" in Greek is pragmaton helenchos ou blepomenon. "Evidence" works, but more literally it is "pragmatic audit of the unseen." Because of the typical fundamental differences between people that may be described as pragmatic and others who are religious, I was also attracted to investigate this Greek work for what, precisely, is to be audited by faith.

The Greek word pragma (πραγμα), plural pragmata (πραγματα), whose root meaning is 'that which has been done, an act, a deed, a fact', and whose connotations and more extended senses cover a wealth of meanings, including: action, affair, annoyance, business, circumstance, concern, expediency, government, innovation, job, matter, necessity, nuisance, object, objective, occupation, office, one's place, role, or work in life, powers that be, private affairs, res, thing, trouble.
"Pragma." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 5 Mar 2007, 15:54 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 3 Jan 2008

It is little wonder that this word did not come over to modern English except as the root of pragmatic. It is a bit of a catchall, and it stands to reason that cultures already have their own terms for stuff like this. Such as "stuff." Or "things."

In the context of software development, however, this list of meanings for the word pragma begins to look familiar. Especially in middleware development, where I have spent most of my software development career. In fact, dividing the list up into related categories, I came up with four distinct groups:

1. Corporate (in the sense of collective) endeavor
• business, concern, government, powers that be
  
2. Personal endeavor
• job, occupation, one's place, private affairs, roles, work in life
  
3. Field of context
• action, affair, circumstance, matter, object, objective, res, thing
  
4. Devils
• annoyance, expediency, necessity, nuisance, trouble
  

These are the elements that need attention in order to be effective in the world. This is rather remarkable for a single word -- it outlines the forces in my life, and in the lives of my customers, very broadly, but effectively. How do we meet the demands of the devils, or overcome their influence, in dealing with the affairs of people and interacting in groups?

Emergent Properties and Unintended Consequences

It becomes clear on this examination that "pragma" does not refer to any one of these alternatives so much as their relationships and context. It denotes concern about the details (where the devils are, of course). It is less a word than a concept, and so the fact that is not an English word per se is perfectly appropriate for our purposes.

Leaving the realm of religion and philosophy, a pragmatic audit of the unseen makes a lot of sense in the practical world. It suggests an awareness of emergent properties and an attempt to analyze the probability of unintended consequences.

"Is IT impossible to get right?

"The reason I ask is because of a survey by Tata Consultancy Services. The survey found that 43% of the 800 or so IT managers TCS talked with say their business managers, and even board members, accept problems with IT projects as the norm, as a "necessary evil." And those problems, according to the IT managers, include missed deadlines (62%), cost overruns (49%), and higher-than-expected maintenance costs (47%)." John Stoat in Information Week

Whatever the answer to Mr. Stoat's question, the point I took away from this is not that IT is an evil -- undeniably -- but that it is a necessary one. So necessary that all those problems simply have to be put up with, even in the estimation of the hard-nosed class.

The same question could be asked for the same reasons about business in general: It is impossible to get right? Maybe so, but you've pretty much got to give it a try. And another.

As it happens, there is good reason why business in general, and information technology in particular, are almost impossible to get right. They are as complex as the world is. We cannot hope to solve all the problems and answer all the questions. We cannot know what we do not anticipate.

What we can do, is this: work out a pragmatic pattern for working with the complex relationships between individuals, companies, governments, their stuff, and Murphy's Law.

Pragma Software lives in this domain. I develop tools that use patterns to solve the problems faced by small business owners. If the devil is in the details, then the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Dig in!