Why Is How Backwards

Just to be a killjoy...actually they're both merely descended from ProtoIndoEuropean (see note) kw*, as is more obvious ignoring accidents of spelling and looking at the similarity between older forms hwy and hwo (same thing with who, what, when, where)

Note: This language no longer exists and all attempts to reconstruct it are strictly theoretical.

When you start with a goal (a what) and work towards implementation of it, you are supplying a how. When you start with an implementation (another kind of what) and figure out what goal it satisfies, you are supplying a why. Therefore, WhyIsHowBackwards.

When technology and implementation urges drive the shop, then after a while you find yourself with a lot of why questions. You're looking for something called requirements. It could be fun to watch a shop suddenly gain this awareness.

As BenKovitz said in his excellent book on PracticalSoftwareRequirements, "everything is what and everything is how". Now we see that everything is also why, at least everything of consequence. But that's stating the obvious.

In providing a service, like building custom software, we deal with whats and hows and whys all the time. Every kid knows the game of iteratively applying the why question to each successive response. Analysts know that game, too, plus when to stop. When raised to the nth power, why is always too personal a question. Just because.

But right at that line where too personal meets not too personal, some interesting changes can occur.

-- WaldenMathews

A challenging and stimulating observation. Quite neat. Now some reflections...

When raised to the nth power, why is always too personal a question.

With respect to "how" there is presumably a similar "exponentiation", and a limit, in the other direction - raise the "how of the how" too many times and you hit "just do it". (Or you miss it. Maybe that's what AnalysisParalysis is.)

But right at that line where too personal meets not too personal...

Which suggests an intriguing notion that the programming business is concerned with an in-between question for which we don't have a word yet, a kind of "whow" (or is it an "hwy").

Which suggests an intriguing notion of mixed products/derivatives: What about

Why do we do it how we do it? =Why(How)
How do we reach a reason ('why') to do it? =How(Why)

Don't know how this works for higher orders. Maybe this converges against some whow as suggested above. -- GunnarZarncke

The word is "what". It seeks neither method nor rationale, just a clearer understanding of what was put forth.

In this age of object orientation, we've decided to think of whys, whats and hows as products. Things. I wonder what would happen if we thought of them as actions. Arcs instead of nodes. y=Why(x), x'=What(x), z=How(x). The three (ad)verbs of analysis? -- WaldenMathews

Why and How reduce to What, Why == What reason, How == What method -- RichardCollins

As do When and Where, When == what time, Where == what place.

True, but it would be quite a stretch to say that Why and How are just variations on What. The real juice is in the reason and the method. My point was that you can ask a question about neither, and just bore straight into the details of existence. That's pure What. -- WaldenMathews

Or playing with words:

If you relate an object or process (This) to the three , what you come up with Depends on whether "This" is the Subject or the Predicate:

This is Why -- Why is This?
This is How -- How is This?
This is What -- What is This?

Just staying inside of previous discussion but if we need to extend:

This is Where -- Where is This?
This is When -- When is This?
This is Which -- Which is This?

It is a declaration or a question, depending on where the This is.

The meaning of a statement which using the same words in different order will also be different. This is an important distinction, and can be observed in the ComputerLanguages? utilized currently.

Using the same words in different order will also be a different meaning of a statement. It can be observed in the ComputerLanguages? utilized currently that this is an important distinction. :-)

Applying this to Software Development.

I will assert that in traditional software development, we try to separate Why from How by using What. The users understand why something is done, but are asked to only communicate what is done, and told they do not need to understand how it is done. The developers are told they do not need to understand why something is done, only what is to be done, and then determine how something is to be done. A more holistic view is that why something is done by the users will influence how it is done in software and how something is done in software will influence why it is done by the users. The what is done is merely the intersection of why and how.

-- Wayne Mack

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