The new entry of The Wandering Book by Michael DiBernardo is a very interesting one. In the first part of it he praises the Software Craftsmanship community (our strive to learn and improve, the way we try to make our software as simple as possible, etc), but it is actually the part “under the line” that caught my attention.

My concern is the conflict between what we are preaching and how that is interpreted in the context of how we appear to others. Because seriously – if someone is pontificating to me about simplicity, elegance in design, attention to detail – how much can I appreciate what he is saying if he is wearing a 6 year old ironic t-shirt and khakis that are several sizes too big for him?

Michael has a very valid point there!

Software Developers are notorious for their out of the norm (to be diplomatically correct here) dressing habits. If we are to raise the bar in software development and try to be professionals we have to think of all the aspects of it. The little things, that our customers can see from us as professionals will surely reflect on how we interact with them. I am not saying we should wear suits and ties, but we surely need to work on our presence.

Imagine going to the doctors and he is wearing a think geek t-shirt about some sort of zombie rights and khakis… Would you let him perform open heart surgery on you?