Sometimes you can spend years trying to find a book that you can recommend to someone who’s asked you a question. My latest read, The Software Craftsman: Professionalism, Pragmatism, Pride is one such book. A recent volume in the Robert C. Martin book series, this volume by Sandro Mancuso is not what it appears to be. And that, is a good thing.
When you look at the other books in the Martin series (Working Effectively with Legacy Code, Agile Estimating and Planning, Clean Code, The Clean Coder, Clean Architecture, …) you see topics decomposed and methodologies expressed by which the title’s subject is achieved. That’s not what you get with The Software Craftsman. In my case, that was a very fortunate turn of events.
This is not to say that the journey of the software craftsman is not discussed. It is and in a reasonable amount of detail. But an equal amount of time is given to the ecosystem within which the craftsman practices. These parts of the book are not for the consumption of the craftsman or aspirant, but for the owners of the firms who employ (or should employ) them.
The book does well in describing the trials and tribulations of a member of the craft; from the point where they realized that they aspired to more than the dichotomy of coder / architect; to the creation of the volume itself. It lays bare this false dichotomy within the broader context of the entire point of software development. That being to produce value to the customer and income to the creator. Within that context, there is the easy path of whatever works and the hard path of building a thing that no only does what it is supposed to, but does it in a way which is both high quality and highly maintainable.
At it’s core, this is book about philosophy. In a landscape of Google and go; and compile it, link it, ship it, debug it; this is a thoughtful volume. It makes the point that I’ve never seen in print, that the individual software developer is responsible for their own career development. Not their manager, not their company, but they themselves are responsible. Heady stuff this.
As to the remainder of the book’s material, it’s more a wake up call to upper management. There you’ll find discussion of recruiting, hiring, retaining, shaping change and showing ROI. I know of very few who could look at this volume and come away unmoved.
It might be the separation of authority and responsibility, the hire for what we needed yesterday, the CYA so we get our bonus, or the factory worker mentality encouraged by so many firms today. If you can read this book and not get something out of it, you’re part of the problem.
Truly quality software is designed, built, and tested by passionate individuals working together toward the creation of something which will well serve the customer. Everything else is just code. Any 10 year-old can be taught to write code. I know, I’ve done it. Do you want your life’s critical systems to be build by 10 year-olds? Of course not, that’s a ridiculous question. How about people who are just doing it because they make a better than average day’s wage?
I hope you’re intrigued. At the very least, I hope you’ll reflect on your own views of the responsibilities of a software developer. At fewer than 250 pages, you can read this book in one or two sittings, but reading the book is only the starting point.
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