Sebastian Bergmann, creator of PHPUnit, reflects on five television series — The West Wing, The Wire, The Newsroom, Halt and Catch Fire, and The Pitt — and how they resonate with his decades of open source software development. He draws parallels between the institutional resistance depicted in these shows and his own experience building PHPUnit, teaching software development, and watching organizations implement testing poorly due to power structures rather than ignorance. The piece explores themes of competence under constraint, ensemble storytelling, and incremental progress within flawed systems.
Table of contents
Who made themHow institutions failCompetence and ensembleWhat I recognise in themConclusion4.1K Impressions