A Conversation About Software Craftsmanship

Marcin Kraszewski from Devskiller's Yellow Duck Podcast invited Sandro Mancuso to talk about Software Craftsmanship.

The Discussion

We started talking about agile and scrum methodologies to uncover what other dimensions craftsmanship brings to the table.

As Agile became synonymous with processes it became evident that developers needed to do more to provide quality work.

Craftsmanship came as a balance to Agile and brought professionalism back to software development. “It is not about beautiful code”, says Sandro, “extreme programming is a different thing.”

There are times when you don’t need to apply all of the principles of craftsmanship, so the extent of this ethos depends on the context, but when the costs of a bug are high, being a craftsman becomes a necessity.

Marcin Kraszewski, asks further questions:

• Is there such a thing as over-testing code?
• Did we have an “agile hangover”? Sandro laughs.

The only way you improve the way you code is to inspire the change by example. It’s the good developers that need to show the appeal of craftsmanship, rather than having non-technical coaches propose processes that they are incapable of performing themselves.

In this episode we also talk about the benefit of non-technical managers, focusing on actions that foster a career and the companies that see software development as an investment.