What is Cargo Cult Programming…and Why is the Term Problematic?

I recently read an article that mentioned how dangerous “cargo cult programming” is, a term I wasn’t familiar with. Peeling back even a little bit of history, it’s easy to see how this term was derived from…well, racist misunderstanding of culture and history.

What does this term describe? Copy/paste development characterized by a coder “ritualistically including code or structures without having an underlying understanding”. Which is a bit funny, because so many technical guides, articles, and classes focus exactly on this: do things this way, and we’ll maybe learn about “why” later. 

Regardless, let’s look into how this terminology came to be and why it’s problematic. 

WWII: Enter John Frum

Maybe you’ve heard a story that goes something like this: in World War II, vast military infrastructures descended on remote islands, bringing with them huge amounts of equipment and cargo. “Primitive” locals then created rituals to “summon” this wealth for themselves, even building replica wooden airplanes or carving wooden radios. 

This is where the phrase “cargo cult” originated, and the story is often shared, even today, without much context or skepticism. People still believe that these rituals were a result of “primitive societies” being overwhelmed by the wealth of the western world. 

As this idea was popularized by lazy journalists in the 1970s, it became a sort of pop phrase adopted by the wider culture. Physicist Richard Feynman coined the term “cargo cult science” in 1974 to describe scientific processes that lacked rigor -- it’s likely that computer science borrowed the term from this. 

We all know that even brilliant scientists aren’t immune from the myopic veil of their culture. Feynman is no exception. 

One such figure born out of this era is a mythical American man named John Frum -- someone who appeared before the chiefs of Tanna in Vanuatu and offered guidance, promising to return someday. 

Even today, John Frum’s expected return is celebrated annually on February 15th on the island, sometimes drawing journalists or tourists. A parade of people dressed in American-style military uniforms carrying bamboo-carved guns famously celebrates the day. 

Basking in your own Reflection

The problem is that naive western interpretations of this phenomenon wrongly focus on this idea that “primitive” people became obsessed with the abundance of western goods. That narrative was a comfortable one because it reinforced our ideas about consumerism and materialism, but it isn't an accurate view.

Modern anthropologists assert that the term is pejorative because it insists that the focus of these societies is the acquisition of goods when it was much more about social relationships. It’s a reductive term that implies their religious beliefs are a “cult” while wrongly implying that the focus was on “stuff”. We can easily relate to a society that is eternally waiting for stuff…that says more about our culture than theirs. 

To be clear, John Frum is sincerely believed to be a religious figure, but his message wasn’t one of waiting around or trying to “summon” more planes like oh-so-many lazy articles will insist. Rather, it is about self-determination -- the legends say that John Frum met with the chiefs and told them to keep their own kastom (a word to describe their culture in general: how people marry, dancing, drinking, other traditions). It wasn’t about worshiping the west or their goods despite surface-level misunderstandings that persist even today. 

Let’s also remember the wider context around this phenomenon: a sudden influx of modern concepts and culture into a much smaller and more isolated society. This was a volatile mix of colonialism, Christianity, and war that was obviously transformative. 

As Brooke Jarvis observed in their sadly archived article about the subject (which I suggest reading in entirety!), the remembrance of the early 20th century was simply that “missionaries came and made a big mess”. 

There’s still a belief that “cargo cults” are primitive societies sitting around waiting for planes to land again. Yet that’s not a fair, comprehensive view and that’s not how they tell their own history. John Frum is not a symbol of reliance on the outside world, but a symbol of how this society transformed and preserved their own tradition. 

It’s also important to understand that Melanesian societies tended to have a political system where prestige was measured by gifts. The more you can give, the more people are in your debt, and therefore you were seen as wealthy and powerful. Influxes of goods disrupted this economy, not because of the foreign value system, but because of their own. 

Scientists are Bad at Things, Too

Long after anthropologists began debating the merit of this term and the wide misunderstanding of this culture in the west, software engineers like Steve McConnell would still coin terms like “cargo cult software engineering”.

Inspired by Feynman (who coined the term “cargo cult science”), he quotes him here: 

"In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head for headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he’s the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land." — Richard Feynman

Except that understanding is completely wrong. Steve McConnell is someone that was an editor of a magazine. He’s written books. He’s been quoted by the New York Times. 

The very process he derides, “copying things without understanding them”, is exactly what he did in using “cargo cults” as an example! This isn't a fair picture of their society; it wasn't about summoning planes, really...and even if it was, is this a fair example? Or did he use it to essentially mock a society that suffered massive changes in the wake of the largest industrialized conflict in history?

He copied the idea from a well-known scientist without understanding it. As he says later on in this article:

“We should not be debating process vs. commitment; we should be debating competence vs. incompetence. The real difference is not which style is chosen, but what education, training, and understanding is brought to bear on the project.”

In other words…he should have brought more education and understanding to bear when deciding to quote Feynman instead of accepting the story at face value. He isn't an anthropologist, so why does he think he is qualified to tell the story of a society like this? That's a lack of education, understanding, and training. The very thing he warns against.

I get that his ideas about software engineering don’t really need the example of the cargo cult, and that’s kind of my point. It’s an inaccurate story presented for the sake of example. 

People that read this little story about cargo cults probably accept it without question; Feynman is considered one of the greatest physicists of all times, after all. McConnell is a famous computer scientist. Surely they have done their research, right? Apparently not; and this is due to a cultural bias that originated in the '70s and that McConnell (and plenty of others) failed to research in their own work. Feynman was influenced by the ignorant journalists of his time while others used his examples with equal carelessness.

Smart people live in a box of cultural bias, too, and the terms they coin are a reflection of that. Being a comprehensively good scientist means questioning even well known names in the field -- if they can base their examples on a story that's so questionable, what other perspectives do they have that are based on rumor and myth?

Why does it Matter?! It’s just Vocabulary!

There’s a few reasons why things like this actually matter. 

First, computer science is supposed to be a science, right? That means caring about the truth, not being inconvenienced by it. That means questioning assumptions and being skeptical.  

Second, there’s an idea that engineers, mathematicians, and scientists are objective beings that are better able to understand the world around them than others. This idea that scientists or engineers “think in an objective way” is just…not how the human brain works. We live in societies crafted by culture, we are emotional beings by our nature, and we absolutely have bias baked into every nook and cranny. 

Pretending that bias doesn’t exist by cloaking it in faux-objectivity is not healthy for an individual and it is not healthy for society at large. Acknowledging bias and emotional attachment makes us stronger engineers because it encourages us to question our own faults and assumptions -- not just about software, but about the world in general.

It also encourages us to have a more comprehensive view of people that “coined” terms or pioneered tech. Don’t accept their perspectives just because they have a famous name. They might be talking out their ass, copy/pasting information they’ve heard before without really checking. That doesn’t mean their work has no value, just that they are human beings with all the flaws of their culture. 

The culture of the industry in general is one of adulation around “geniuses” and “pioneers” in the field, but if these people are going to warn of the dangers of ritualistically accepting information at face value, well…maybe we should not have so much praise for them “coining” terms based on the very thing they warn against: copy/pasting information without understanding it. 

The last facet of why it matters is because the way we view other cultures matters as human beings. If you believe that “primitive” people will worship western goods as gods, that implies that there’s something “inherent” about greed and materialism. That affects your worldview and reinforces a flawed narrative that “everyone knows more stuff is better”, along with flawed notions that less developed societies crave western-style consumerism and culture.

John Frum is not a symbol of an American, really, but a symbol of endurance against colonialism and toward preserving the kastom that colonialism wanted to erase.