Programmer's Stone

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The Programmer's Stone is a theory and course on how to think in order to be an effective computer programmer put together by Alan G. Carter and Colston Sanger in 1997.

The central notion of the Programmer's Stone is that there are two methods of thought, mapping and packing; that mappers make highly effective programmers, whereas packers do not; and that packers can be taught mapping and hence become effective programmers.

Carter originated the course from trying to explain the well-known phenomenon of some programmers being ten or even a hundred times as productive as others, by several measures, and the thinking patterns this would require.

After the Programmer's Stone, Carter developed the notions found in it into a personal cosmology called Reciprocality, which is considerably less tested in the real world and has been said to verge on pseudoscience. He later revised and re-presented the same set of ideas in the form a book entitled The Third Age of the World: Magic and Science in the 21st Century, which is available online.