Folklore in Software Engineering: A Definition and Conceptual Foundations

2026-01-29

AI Summary

This study addresses the pervasive yet ill-defined informal narratives in software engineering—such as “10x developers” and “technical debt”—which lack systematic conceptualization and thereby hinder knowledge transmission and reflective practice. Through a literature review, thematic analysis, and semi-structured interviews with twelve practitioners in Sweden, the work proposes the first operational definition of “software engineering folklore” as informally transmitted, traditional, and emergent narratives and heuristics within professional communities. It further develops a conceptual framework that elucidates how such folklore shapes professional identity and collective knowledge. This foundation enables future ethnographic inquiry and reflective practice, facilitating the discernment of valuable experiential insights while critically deconstructing harmful myths.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Software Engineering
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Knowledge Engineering
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Web

Application Category

• Semantics and Knowledge: Provenance, trust, security and privacy, and ethical issues in managing semantic data
• Social Networks and Social Media: Socio-technical web-based systems
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Community question answering

Abstract

We explore the concept of folklore within software engineering, drawing from folklore studies to define and characterize narratives, myths, rituals, humor, and informal knowledge that circulate within software development communities. Using a literature review and thematic analysis, we curated exemplar folklore items (e.g., beliefs about where defects occur, the 10x developer legend, and technical debt). We analyzed their narrative form, symbolic meaning, occupational relevance, and links to knowledge areas in software engineering. To ground these concepts in practice, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 industrial practitioners in Sweden to explore how such narratives are recognized or transmitted within their daily work and how they affect it. Synthesizing these results, we propose a working definition of software engineering folklore as informally transmitted, traditional, and emergent narratives and heuristics enacted within occupational folk groups that shape identity, values, and collective knowledge. We argue that making the concept of software engineering folklore explicit provides a foundation for subsequent ethnography and folklore studies and for reflective practice that can preserve context-effective heuristics while challenging unhelpful folklore.

Problem

• folklore
• software engineering
• informal knowledge
• narratives
• myths

Innovation

• software engineering folklore
• informal knowledge
• narratives
• thematic analysis
• reflective practice