Hello!
I’ve had a bit of assigned reading to do for my capstone course, ans as such, I thought it would go the way of most readings of that ilk; incredibly dry and ungodly boring. But surprisingly I had a pretty good time with Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye.
The text captures something that I find to be incredibly important to the process of becoming a career programmer, the ability to be flexible. Much of my time spent learning to program has consisted of how to do things, but never why or when we should do them. Sometimes it feels like I have a fairly full toolbox, but I don’t have the required knowledge to apply my tools in ways they weren’t explained to me in. I’ll admit, this is more of a personal failing I feel, but the point still stands.
Chapter 1 and the introductory paragraphs to Chapter 4 really stood out to me the most, as Chapter 1 goes into detail about what it means to be a craftsman, and an apprentice. It highlights the experiences one might go through, and what one might expect to get out of an apprenticeship, but the most compelling out of that chapter was the focus on the need to continue learning. In order to be a good apprentice, and get anything meaningful out of the experience, it takes a want to learn how to become a master, and the willingness to continue to developing your craft, and focusing on how you can improve your mindset and workflow. Chapter 4 stood out to me with it’s anecdote about Dave’s experience with certifications, and his discarding of them as he learned from a group of Perl hackers. Not only was it quite amusing, it highlights ths importance of a flexible mindset. None of us are ever done learning, and in order to ever become a master, you cannot be satisfied with jist maintaining the status quo.
Overall I found the selected chapters to be genuinely pretty inspiring, and it put into perspective where my head is at in terms of my software development journey, and how I might go about improving them. This might be optimistic, but this book might end up being one I read in my off time, a rare feat for an assigned reading of this nature.
From the blog Camille's Cluttered Closet by Camille and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.