Martin Fowler - Craftmanship And The Crevasse

CraftmanshipAndTheCrevasse

Dan North's recent blog post on software craftsmanship has unleashed a lot of blog discussions (which I summarize below, if you're interested). There's a lot in there, but one of his themes particularly resonated with me, hence this post.

Before I get to that, however, I just want to push one element off to the side. I've long felt that debates about metaphors for software development are tedious. While MetaphoricQuestioning has its place I'm fundamentally uninterested in whether software development is a craft, an art, a trade, or a dessert topping.

The point that matters to me isn't about the craftsmanship metaphor, but more a characteristic of the movement that seems to have sprung up in the last couple of years. From my outsider perspective, the primary force that's energized the software craftsmanship community is a reaction to the change in the agile movement. In the early days of the agile virus, the dominant strain was Extreme Programming, which has a lot to say about technical practices. Now the dominant agile strains are Scrum and Lean, which don't care very much about programming - and thus those people who primarily self-identify as programmers feel a large part of their life is no longer important in the agile world.