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?

Water washed you upon the shores of this earth
were you walked erect with the gusts of wind caressing your hair
now in flames you go from us never to be forgotten.

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?

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.

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?

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'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

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

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

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…