Ten years ago, I published the Whyline, a system that allowed developers to get answers to “why” questions about program output. While the idea was a powerful one, behind the work were several even more powerful ideas about scholarship, theory, interdisciplinarity, and interaction. Some of these were inherent to the research and others have only become apparent over the past decade. In this talk, I’ll share these big ideas, show how they shaped my research, and argue that they have never been more important to grand challenges in software engineering research and practice.