Category Archives: Craftsmanship

The Software Craftsman Chapter 13 & 14 Blog (5/2/2017)

Thanks to chapter 13, this is now going to be my quote of the week (maybe month): “bad tests are worse than no tests at all”. Am I the only one that’s blown away at how beautifully true that is? I hope not.

Anyways, I enjoyed the author’s take on creating an environment and culture of learning within the workplace in this chapter. It’s quite simple really; people tend to be more passionate and driven about their work when they don’t feel as though it is “work”. Remember as a kid how you always hated to do chores or clean your room? Well, if you hated doing those things, will you be excited or looking forward to having to do it every single day? Probably not. Now take that example and apply to developers in the workplace. If developers don’t like or enjoy writing tests, most likely they are not going to look forward to doing it. Even if they end up having to do it, you can almost guarantee that they are going to put minimum effort into it. Creating a culture of learning fixes this problem because if you can get developers to love what they are doing or learning, they are going to love doing their “job”.

On a smaller side note, chapter 14 was a fun chapter. It describes all the possible types of developers you might encounter that opposes the idea of new tools or practices and ways of going about convincing them to give the new tools/practices a chance. I feel as though I am going to subconsciously assign all my colleagues one of the titles mentioned in this chapter when I get my first real-world job as a developer (hahaha)

Random but relevant ending remark: You know, in a strange way, it kind of feels heroic to be a software craftsman. They’re like the Superman of Software Development…

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tan Trieu's Blog by tanminhtrieu and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The Software Craftsman Chapter 3 & 4 (3/28/17)

Comparing “The Software Craftsman” book to the “Clean Coder” book, there is a good amount of material that overlaps from one book to another. Chapters 3 and 4 introduces the idea of what software craftsmanship is and the attitude behind being successful at it.

The most important and useful piece of information from these two chapters was the idea that “clients don’t pay professionals to learn; use your own time and money to get better at what you do.” We as professionals get paid for the skills we have to offer so it makes sense that it is our responsibility to keep our skills sharp and up-to-date. If not, we slowly start to become irrelevant and people will no longer rely on us because our skills aren’t as sharp as it used to be. If you want to be paid good, then you better have a good skill set to show for; don’t expect a promotion if you have nothing new to offer to your employer. Think about it, why would anyone pay you more money for doing the same amount / quality of work?

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tan Trieu's Blog by tanminhtrieu and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.