“How long will it take to master aikido?” a prospective student asks. “How long do you expect to live?” is the only respectable response.

—George Leonard, Mastery

While reading chapter 3 of Apprenticeship Patterns, I stumbled upon the preceding quote. It resonated with me because I often get so caught up in aiming for perfection that progress becomes halted. Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.  I have heard it said that perfection is the enemy of progress.  

This chapter focuses on the long road we all must travel to master our craft. The author talks about how we have all grown to desire immediate gratification, whether that be in notoriety, wealth, or the development of our skill. If we desire to become true craftsmen we must focus our attention on delayed gratification. Our skills will take time to develop, and the journey will be a test in endurance and patience. The problem presented in the text is of being stuck in a “golden lock” where our aim for further crafting our skill is at odds with our desire for a higher paying job. By taking the path less traveled “Robert frost” we can make all the difference in our development as craftsmen.

We must be patient and compassionate with ourselves along our journey. It is easy to get discouraged when we see how little we know in comparison to veteran developers or even peers. So long as we strive to continuously hone our craft, we can become the masters that future generations of craftsmen look up to. The long road means we do not grow into incredible craftsmen overnight. It takes long hours and is a slow process.  

When we take our time to mindfully develop code, asking questions about why and how code behaves the way it does, or why we approach problems a certain way, we deepen our understanding of not only the development process but our strategies for everyday living. We learn better problem-solving skills, we become more inquisitive into ways to efficiently meet the needs of ourselves, our families, and our communities. This is something I have struggled with as a CS major, trying to balance out good grades with deeper comprehension. Many students fall into the trap of just learning the information required to pass the class with a good grade, putting ourselves at a disadvantage. Our lives have only a finite amount of time, and sometimes we need to decide whether we should slow down and take time to comprehend the deeper truths of software development, even though it may take away from time available for studying the class materials.

If we desire to become true craftsmen rather than just working a 9-5 grind we need to recognize that the path we chose is neither easy nor short. Our field is growing exponentially with the constantly changing technological advances we are experiencing and will continue to experience. This path is not as straight and narrow as other fields, due to the continuous changing of technology. However, if we slow down and dig deeper asking the questions that lead to deeper understanding, we will see the commonalities that all software share, making it easy to adapt to the changing of software development. Traveling “The Long Road” can allow us to bring meaning and pride to our work rather than being another nameless cog in the machine for a corporation.

The tortoise always wins the race.

From the blog cs@worcester – Coding_Kitchen by jsimolaris and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The explicit context of this pattern is that you’re a developer on payroll and you have been tasked with successfully delivering an artifact of software to your employer but unfortunately you have not previously developed software with some requisite technology for the project ahead of you. The solution prescribed in this Apprenticeship Pattern is a bold one that leans on previous rapport with your superiors; it insists on radical honesty where one admits that they do not presently know all of the information necessary to deliver on the project and to appeal to their previously established competency and ability to learn new technologies.

What I find most elegant about this approach is not only the ability to tailor current expectations using honesty but also the renewability inherent in this approach:

“In this way, your reputation will be built upon your learning ability rather than what you already know.”

The implication there is that if you stick the landing on delivering the necessary code, you will have created an evergreen approach to setting expectations and earned yourself the reputation of being not somebody who is valued for their finite pool of knowledge but rather their ability to tap into an infinite pool of knowledge. The authors cite Carol Dweck’s work, particularly how the need to appear competent is a mindset (no pun intended) that has proliferated throughout industrialized societies and is hard to break through. They insist that, while this embarrassment may be hard to overcome at first, your peers will have to notice your rapid progress and moreover they may find that by you forcing the issue they may have new realizations about their intelligence; after all people like to solve problems and feel intelligent.

I enjoyed the juxtaposition the authors make between those who become experts as a result of the perhaps not being as inquisitive or less confrontational with their inadequacies and so-called craftsmanship-seekers who become experts just by virtue of interest. While the first group may not be as ambitious or aggressive in their pursuit of knowledge there is no need to disparage this group and I appreciate that the authors did not decide to punch down where many other snobbier tech experts certainly would have.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Cameron Boyle's Computer Science Blog by cboylecsblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The “Reflect As You Work” pattern in Apprenticeship Patterns has much to do with developing a methodical and concrete approach to introspection within one’s software development career on both a macro and micro level. On the micro level, Hoover and Oshineye make the recommendation to consider your day-to-day practices when programming and to take notes on the practices of more senior team members to see what makes them so effective. On a macro level they describe what amounts to a hotwash or after-action review of the operation (to borrow government idioms) but caveat that a certain level of trust by management is necessary for the approach detailed and that may not always be the case.

One of the exercises in this Apprenticeship Pattern I finally found to have immediate utility in my life is accounting for the things that I do or do not do adequately in regards to programming. The exercise as described by the authors:

“If there is something particularly painful or pleasant about your current work, ask yourself how it got that way, and if things are negative, how can they be improved? The goal is to extract the maximum amount of educational value from every experience by taking it apart and putting it back together in new and interesting ways.”

Like many of the Apprenticeship Patterns and the exercises contained within them, much of the immediate implementation is lost due to the apprenticeship patterns pre-supposing that the reader is currently writing a meaningful amount of code to have established a personal pattern. Despite that fact, I’m able to use this exercise to dissect my personal habits prior to entering college which were things such as poor commenting, not adopting to the bracketing style of the language, not using tests, not using git, and CI/CD. What was pleasant about my past work was my consistent use of the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE to debug and step through my programs. Unfortunately, I’ve been able to write substantially less code since I made the choice to return to college but look forward to using the exercises that I learned about in this apprenticeship pattern to maximize the value in learning from my mistakes.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Cameron Boyle's Computer Science Blog by cboylecsblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

While it is a likely contender for the most self-evident of the Apprenticeship patterns, I have found “Practice, Practice, Practice” to be the most inspiring thus far. The context that the particular pattern describes is a situation I found myself in quite frequently in my previous undergrad; there is a need to get better at your craft, develop your skills but it feels as though you’re constantly in performance mode. While there may be some merit to having a mirror by my side checking my posture and a metronome in my ears pushing me to increase my words per minute, it’s far more likely that the deliberate practice the authors allude to has more to do with firing the synapses dedicated to problem solving rather than strengthening the myelin sheathes governing my ability to put a stick to the head of a drum.

I enjoyed the reference to K. Anders Ericsson’s research on the matter but was predictably bummed out when the authors pointed out that reality is not in fact perfect and that we, as apprentices, do not have a readily available pool of benevolent masters who will take us under their wing. As someone who was raised primarily to throw a baseball and complete schoolwork assignments put in front of me, the idea of mastery never crossed my mind; talent was something I was born without and that my success in life would largely have more to do with my ability to follow orders and do necessary tasks linearly than anything else. As a latecomer to this world of musical craftsmanship I lacked not only the pedigree but also the prior mentorships that allowed my peers to sail through and seek out additional opportunities. I recognize in hindsight the benefits of a mentorship but also know that with mindful practice I was able to catch up to my peers and even succeed where some of them failed.

My ability to successfully achieve competency happened not because of strong mentorships (which I never received) but rather because of slow, concentrated practice much like the katas of the dojos mentioned. My favorite prescription presented by this article is at the “Action” section, to carve out some additional time to do mindful practice, as practice makes permanent.  I have several exercises in mind and once I finish a few more homework assignments I look forward to practicing!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Cameron Boyle's Computer Science Blog by cboylecsblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The “Concrete Skills” pattern in Apprenticeship Patterns can be understood, at a baseline level, to be the process of obtaining skills to achieve acceptance into a group of software professionals. This pattern elaborates on how the acquisition of skills has both intrinsic and extrinsic value in differentiating you as a potential candidate for the position in question.

Upon reading the Context and Problem section of this pattern, my brain immediately conjured up a preconceived notion as to what I should expect from the rest of the article to follow. In many respects that notion was correct; I was anticipating a description of the courting ritual between the gatekeeper(s) and the applicant. In the previously mentioned ritual, the applicant admits to humility but shows sufficient competence and desire to improve to the gatekeepers who either make an affirmative judgment leading to the conditional induction of the neophyte, or a rejection leading to the applicant walking away with redoubled determination to step back into the fiery crucible of honing their craft so that they may be better prepared the next time for the acceptance ritual. I embraced this struggle personally in my desire to create music; having been composed of solely aspiration and perspiration, I fell below the musical competency threshold during the audition process several times but I came back with a vengeance and was able to squeak out acceptance.

In the context of software development, Hoover and Oshineye are designating the in-group as a software development team who has a hiring manger that will be vetting your technical skills rather than several bandmates vetting your musical chops. The authors make mention of the concept they borrow from someone else called “day care”, and this is to illustrate the mentality of the gatekeeper who will ultimately be held responsible for the hiring and subsequent failings of the neophyte in an environment where time is software and software is money. I also appreciated that, aside from the intrinsic nature of possessing the technical skills, the authors made sure to mention that the need to develop these skills is also for the extrinsic value of passing human resource applicant filters and “managers who construct teams by playing buzzword bingo”.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Cameron Boyle's Computer Science Blog by cboylecsblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

As someone who has been a caddy, industrial mechanic, butcher’s assistant, retail manager, letter carrier, web development intern, substitute teacher, and referee over the course of my life, it’s safe to say that I’m no stranger to breaking out the white belt. The chapter sets up the scenario wherein you’re a competent programmer with a narrower-than-desired field of knowledge and although your competency allows you to feel confident in your day-to-day operations, this coziness with your language or technology stack has limited your ability to wrestle with the novel in a meaningful way. The suggested solution is to embrace the unknown and throw away your preconceived notions about what it means to program or write software, actively avoiding the temptation to relate your previous world to the task at hand. The authors call this mindful approach to limiting context “maintaining a not knowing stance”, an ethos that I would argue is truly the heart of science and fundamental for discovering something new. The case here is that we (the readers) are software developers and the personal discovery is the new world of idioms, approaches, and paradigms that we will hopefully be able to synthesize and, upon achieving contextual competence, apply.

The pattern certainly confirms to me what I already know; being humble is an evergreen approach to learning, however the authors chart territory that I do not know in the chapter and that is the premise given at the outset where one hits a level of competence and plateaus there. I’ve not really been able to wrestle with any technology stack or programming language long enough where I feel competent or fluent to meaningfully contribute, let alone act as a guiding beacon for peers. While I may not be ready now to apply what I’ve learned in the pattern, if I imagined myself a competent C++ developer accustomed to the object-oriented programming paradigm, I would then make an attempt to learn a declarative paradigm, perhaps functional programming. Ultimately one’s next foray in software development will tend towards whatever is productive for their endeavors, occupational or personal and should likely reflect the adage of “picking the right tool for the job”.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Cameron Boyle's Computer Science Blog by cboylecsblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

While there were certainly many important concepts presented in the first chapter of Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman and the subsequent chapter introductions, I felt that the increasing level of conceptual involvement made the earliest sections far more fruitful in regards to spurring introspection. It cannot be overstated how well the logical flow of concept presentation is and how the breakdown into sections (Context, Problem, Solution, and Action) allows the reader to take the somewhat abstract elegant concepts and ground them in personal and actionable terms.

An example of how this played out: as I read the introduction to Chapter 2 – Emptying the Cup – I found myself having just digested a well-crafted opening but somewhat hazy about how the previous material would be of substantial use to me. To my pleasant surprise the authors had anticipated this and conveniently delivered me a whole section titled, “Context”. The section read:

“You are just starting out and have only a shallow understanding of how one or two programming languages.”

Indeed, it was so! The “Problem” section then provided what occupational or educational stumbling block I may be facing, followed by a tremendous helping of sagely advice to overcome the aforementioned problem, peppered with technical examples and some relatable anecdotes from the authors themselves. It concluded with a section appropriately titled. “Action,” which provided the hard-hitting actionable steps that, deep down, every person facing a self-improvement regimen knows will create an amount of existential friction surpassed only by its constructive value. Due to all of the above I found myself absolutely loving this book and can imagine it becoming a staple source of wisdom and motivation to come.

Speaking of existential friction, my favorite quote from the assigned reading was actually not in the assigned content but rather the “Audience” section before it. The quote reads, “[E]ven people with a decade or more of experience—particularly those who may be struggling to navigate their careers—will find inspiration and perspective to counter the siren call of promotion to management,” spoke to me because at my last job I spent many a night fighting with inept management only to open my phone on my lunch break and gaze in despair at my Quora feed littered with horror stories of talented principal engineers being given the axe because they had become too expensive to employ, wondering if they should have relinquished their craft and made the jump to management instead. For full disclosure this not some Marxist indictment of the labor aristocracy; I have been both the employee and the manager in my life and may one day find myself on the managerial side of the coin because I genuinely do believe that I am a strong mediator and leader. But the introverted tinkerer within me grasps firmly at any notion that it is possible to succeed largely based on the merit of my toiling and not the bureaucracy of corporate telephone; if this book is to be believed then it seems the inner tinkerer may have a leg to stand on.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Cameron Boyle's Computer Science Blog by cboylecsblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.