It seems that The Wandering Book is travelling at higher speed now. We recently had a very insightful entry from Gustin Prudner and, to my surprise, today there is a new one; this time by Bobby Wilson coding fellow at Entryway:

In his entry he states:

There are ideas but there aren’t rules. Craftsmanship is an introspective process with an emphasis on building quality and value, but the discipline is up to you.

The thought of having different disciplines in different studios/workshops helps to create an environment where new ways of crafting great software can be learned. I would call that schools of practice (or thought).

Every studio/workshop has it’s unique approach to building their software, interacting with their customers, etc.

I was thinking about this last year, and I was pondering with the idea of creating an event inviting different craftsmanship studios/workshops to gather together and share their way with the other studios present. This way we could be able to learn from each other all sorts of techniques (from coding practices, billing techniques, customer collaboration, and a long etc).

The idea is still in my head, and I would love to make it happen anytime soon (maybe by the end of this year). Would you and your workshop/studio attend to such an event?

We have another wonderful entry to The Wandering Book, this time from Gustin. Gustin runs a small studio in Floyd, Virginia called Entryway. They follow a set of core values deeply ingrained into their culture embracing Software Craftsmanship to their daily lives as a business.

In his entry in The Wandering Book, Gustin, describes his thoughts on the Craft of Software. I was very pleased to read his entry and see that he, like many others, has created a culture of betterment around him, trying to nurture the environment around him with energy and his values.

I loved though one particular part of his entry:

A software crafter is often on the verge of obsession. Craftsmanship is caring enough to change the little things that may not be noticeable to a customer, whether it is for aesthetic reasons or for the future maintenance of code. It is the forethought toward the future evolution of market, client, and software.

Moreover Gustin has been the first person to write on (and have the courage) more than 2 pages on The Wandering Book which actually pleases me as we can see the brilliant result!

Here you can see Gustin’s original entry in The Wandering Book, or you can read it on his personal blog as well.

The 4th value in the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship reads:

Not only customer collaboration,

but also productive partnerships.

Being “in tune” with our customers has always been one of the most important aspects of my professional life. I have always tried to understand, really understand, the need of a customer; get to know where it itches.

When I was in Nigeria for 2 years developing the Value Added Services platforms for a mobile operator I spend my days running from operations to customer care up to marketing and back to coding (I actually spend more then one night coding). I was trying to understand all the perspectives of the software we wanted to develop and deploy so that our public, the mobile phone users of the country could enjoy the best service. I even responded to more than a call at the customer care centre and talked to users that had a problem with a given service.

Usually I would say I have a gift for understanding, and taking my time to understand, my customers needs.

The other day though I got totally blown away buy a level of professionalism and empathy that I had not experienced before.

My mother has recently been operated from a cancer and she is recovering at home. Her GP organised a special service from the so called Unidad de Paliativos (eng. Palliative Unit). Basically there is a doctor that comes to your house once a week and looks after you making sure everything is fine.

The day of the visit the doctor did not come alone for the visit, but had an apprentice with him. A learning doctor that assists him while he visits his patients.

The way this doctor acted and spoke during the visit left us all speechless (not in the literal way). He had a way of talking and understand my mothers concerns and situation that was beyond what I can possibly explain; as my mother said it was a finest hour (actually she used the german term Sternstunde).

I am not able to transmit the power of this doctor and his way of dealing with his patients, it was a far to awe inspiring experience. What I am possibly trying to express is deep respect and a desire to learn from this experience.

At the moment I am not sure in which way I am going to digest and apply this experience in my craft, but I am sure it will change the way I interact with my customers.

Coming back to the 4th value of the Manifesto I think it is just a starting point from which we have to explore the interactions and relationships with our customers.

productive partnerships sounds a bit cold and abstract, nevertheless it is a good starting point for a workshop/studio to expand upon and make it part of their school of thought.

What do you think? Do you have any experiences to share?

The other day I was looking around IRC (it was a long time since I had logged into IRC) and to my surprise I could not find a #software_craftsmanship channel!

Long story short (this should be just a little update) I have decided to log into irc.freenode.net whenever I can and be in the #software_craftsmanship channel.

This should give us a lot of opportunities to share ideas and thoughts (even help each other with smaller issues) in almost realtime.

I hope to see you around!

Enrique

Doug Bradbury has added this entry to The Wandering Book recently:

Doug Bradbury's entry in the Wandering Book

I love the point he makes about software development being physical;

The learning must get into your bones and muscles for it to be of use to you

One thing that most forget is, as Doug reiterates in his entry, that you need to practice your coding skills in order to become better.

Knowledge will only bring you as far, but practice will let your knowledge sink in and you will become better at what you do.

Enrique

In the upcoming Qcon Conference in London David Harvey is giving a talk on Software Craftsmanship with the title, you guessed right, Danger: Software Craftsmen at Work.

The abstract of his talk reads as follows:

Many – maybe all – of the ideas and practices being paraded under the banner of “Software Craftsmanship” are far from new. Skill, knowledge, expertise, pride in work are fundamentals of any creative endeavour: their re-packaging, and associated manifestos, positioning, posturing and advocacy, is building walls between developers, organisations and customers that we’ve been trying to break down for the last two decades. This talk will explore the contrarian position that craftsmanship is not enough, and that Software Craftsmanship is at best a distraction, at worst a danger.

The talk was mentioned by Jason Gorman on the Software Craftsmanship Google Group and had some ripple effect in the mailing list.

Personally I am not adverse to this kind of reactions. We have seen the same type of reactions in the early XP mailing list, heard the same comments about Agile Software Development till it all became mainstream. It is normal that some people feel the way they feel when it comes to changes.

One thing that struck me though is the sensation that the people who believe in Software as a Craft, also known Software Craftsmanship, are building walls around them.

What strikes me here is that the people that regard themselves as Software Craftsmen, or let me rephrase this, the Software Craftsmen I know, are very helpful and always try to help others, sharing coding exercisesand share their experiences.

Heck some of the companies even go through the hardships of making Apprenticeship Programs in order to mentor their staff. Something that is a major investment for any company in time and money.

In this past year I have seen the communication between developers multiply, each trying to help one another with ideas, pointers (not the C type), sharing code, and even agreeing to mentor.

Software Craftsmanship is definitely not about building walls, rather we knock the walls that are here at the moment to build bridges that bring us closer together.

Enrique

This morning I woke up with a mail from Micah telling me that he had uploaded the pages he wrote in The Wandering Book. I checked the site and I was totally amazed by what I saw.

Micah's Wandering Book Entry

As you can see yourself he used a wonderful font for writing his entry, but above all he challenges the reader with a thought…

Can there exist Master Craftsman who knows only software?

I leave the answer to yourself, but I can only agree with him.

Enrique

Yesterday finally both of my new apprentices have accepted the role as an Apprentice at Eden Development.

I am very excited to be able to guide them on their long road to mastery. During the course of their apprenticeship I will be posting my thoughts on their progress, the tasks I have assigned to them and in general things related to their apprenticeship. Once their respective blogs are up and running (we are setting a space for that at the Eden Development web site) I will also add the links in here so that you can follow it up in context.

As I mentioned on twitter before; meet my apprentices, Aimee Daniells and Spencer Turner. Both are very passionate about building software and bring a unique set of skills to our workshop.

On Wednesday I gave them their first task:

I want you to write a wiki server in the Ruby language test first (i.e. TDD done right) using only the standard Ruby library but without using any available gem or testing framework (that includes the unit testing framework that ships with the Ruby language).

Both of them (separately) came to the conclusion that they would have to develop their own test framework. But…

Apprentice: How do I develop the testing framework without using a testing framework?
Mentor: Code just as much of the testing framework that will allow you to start testing it

More to it soon…

As some of you might know already my journey has taken me now to Eden Development a software craftsmanship workshop in the heart of Winchester.

Eden Development is lead by Chris Parsons, a very passionate craftsman whom I really appreciate, not only as a craftsman but as a friend as well.

This does not mean that NexWerk as such does not exist anymore; NexWerk is still my place where I will be muse about the craft, but mainly things about The Wandering Book and other software craftsmanship related things that are not necessarily in direct connection with Eden Development.

We are currently settling into our new workshop and we are all very excited about that. You will be able to read about it on the Eden Development web site.

I am also taking on new apprentices at Eden, which is a very exciting new challenge. You will be able to read their blogs about their apprenticeship and any other related things in the Eden Development website soon (you’ll have to be patient as we are overhauling it at the moment).

Another thing that has been going on this weeks (months I could say already) is the setup of Katacast, a place where craftsmen will share katas with a broader audience. If you have any kata that you would like to share don’t hesitate to communicate either to Corey Haines or to myself.

The Wandering Book is still on the road, and as far as I can pinpoint it on its way to Micah Martin. I hope it reaches there soon so that we all can enjoy the new pages he will add to it with his words of wisdom.

I hope to be able to post more often, so watch this space!

Michael Norton (doc) has written a very inspiring and at the same time humbling blog post about his experience with the wandering book.

It is nice to see how the wandering book evolves with the insights and teachings of fellow craftsmen who take time to reflect and write into it, sharing their insights with everyone who wants to read.

I can’t wait to see his addition to the book (which I hope will happen soon), I am sure it will be great!

Thank you again to everyone in our community for sharing the experiences in this, our book.