This week I decided to read “Craft over Art” from chapter 3. This chapter simply teaches us that as a craftsman, our prime focus should be to build something that serves the need of others instead of using a project for self-interests or to impress colleagues. This reminds me of most of the projects we are working on in class right now, especially the Thea’s Food Pantry. The focus is to build something that will serve the Worcester State Community.

I believe the benefit of doing something that serves the need of others is that we are doing something for real people. Seeing customers benefit our work, being happy with the product, use it and see it being successful is a great feeling of achievement. We see customers happy, satisfied and using something useful that will probably be there for a long period of time. Working directly for a client can also be stressful as there is a timeline that needs to be met, there are requirements, specifications, policies to follow and it is not always easy to satisfy every customer.

This is where I am bringing the beauty aspect. While reading the book, I understood that focusing on the usefulness rather than the beauty might only apply to a craftsman as he is still in the learning process, embracing his ignorance, taking the long road. Focusing on the beauty aspect of a project can be stressful, distracting and take away the usefulness which should be the priority. However, I believe in a more professional world, for a reputable company, being able to deliver both the value of a product and adding the refining beauty aspect is definitely advantageous. From my perspective, In the future, when I develop projects for customers, I will focus on the value and the usefulness it will bring to the community. However, one client is different from another. One community is different from another. Depending on where I work, if after getting to know the mission of the tech company I will work with and studying the type of customers we usually have, I find that beauty is something they want on top of the usefulness, I will want to deliver that and meet their needs. I think beauty is used nowadays to attract people even when the product itself is not well developed, has flaws and will not be durable. It is unfortunate that art to attract money is put first over craft to serve a community.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Software Intellect by rkitenge91 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.