Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading (Virginia Woolf on the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky)
A Fool’s Errand?
Sometimes you start a project you know you can’t pull off. It’s an outrageous stretch, but for some reason you just have to do it. It’s flowing in your veins. You will burst if you don’t get it out. Even if you can’t get it quite right, it’s so true, good, and obvious you have to get it out.
This article feels a bit like that. My only play here is to act like only a character in a Russian novel would: get up on the stage and make a flailing, passionate speech. “Fyodor has a lot to teach software engineers, whether I can convince you or not!”
Herman Hesse once described reading Dostoevsky as a “glimpse into the havoc”, so let’s do it!
People Are His Domain
I’ve said in one of my other posts, that no matter how deeply buried in technical problems we are, our software engineering careers are ultimately about people.
Dostoevsky takes us to the deep end of how people are wired. Dostoevsky understands humans and human nature the way that a Principal Engineer is expected to understand their craft and domain. He understands them so well that it can be infuriating. Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov didn’t like it and found Fyodor’s novels peopled with “neurotics and lunatics”.
The litany of characters paraded in front of us is dizzying. The polyphony of voices, characters, and alternate names is simply a circus. And yet it connects so deeply into our longings, interpersonal relations, and psyches in ways that open up horizons in terms of working together, leading, following, inspiring others through their challenges.
Sometimes the biggest sinner is the saint and sometimes the saint is the biggest sinner. We at times realize that flaws and virtues are deeper and more complicated and can’t be oversimplified. Sort of like the software jungles we immerse ourselves in.
I’m not the only software developer who has come to this conclusion. In 2022 Fernando Hurtado posted Why read Dostoevsky? A programmer’s perspective. He speaks about how “Dostoevsky’s genius lies in his deep understanding of human nature and of spelling out truths about it in ways that inspire reflection.” He continues on observing that in discovering Dostoevsky, “I feel like I’ve found a mountain of knowledge hiding in plain sight”.
Could It Be So?
What if the deep psychological dive that Dostoevsky gives us is a training ground? What if understanding the “complex system” par excellence, human nature, is what best prepares us for technical leadership, debugging, navigating team dynamics, and fostering user empathy in software development?
there were things believable and not to be believed, but some so true that they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, and the insanity of gambling were there to know (Ernest Hemingway on Dostoevsky)
And then I realize my explanation is insufficient. I throw up my hands and exclaim “Dostoevsky is so very relevant!”
Conclusion
So you want to read some Fyodor? Give it a try, it may change you. Where does one begin? Perhaps try Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment.
I promise, in some mystical way, it will make you a better Software Engineer. I can’t explain it well, but I hope you will feel the passion. Perhaps it will improve your craft because you will understand, fear, and love people more. Perhaps what you learn is transferable in some other way.
But do expect some agony. Isn’t agony how we get “there” anyway?