My talk was titled “A Philosophy of Software”, and covers a number of the conclusions I’ve come to recently about the nature of what we do in software development. I believe our discipline is mis-named, and new metaphors (such as the craft metaphor) are progressing the field in interesting and helpful ways.

Watch the video in full here.

My apprentices are James Hunt and Richard Patching, both excellent and talented developers who joined Eden straight from university in 2007 and 2008 respectively. They’ve gained a lot of experience and skills already, and I’m really looking forward pushing them far beyond their comfort zones to be the best software craftsmen they can be.

They’ll both be blogging about their experiences: this blog will carry their posts also in the future. Mentoring others is not something I’ve done explicitly before, so I also intend to blog occasionally about lessons learned.

James and Richard’s first task was to present a software kata implementing the Binary Chop algorithm in Ruby and RSpec, using Test Driven Development to find a solution. They have two weeks to prepare. I’ll let you know how it goes…

Recently I had the great fortune of discovering a movement of like minded people, whose ideas, ethics, principles and practices were extremely similar to my own, and everything that I’ve attempted to build into Eden.

The Software Craftsmanship movement has existed for only about a year, but during this time has brought together a community of several thousand people with a common philosophy about software.

So what is it? Amongst many things, it is the realisation that creating software can be very helpfully described using a craft metaphor. A few highly skilled craftsman can create wonderful applications with higher quality and faster delivery than ten times the number of average programmers. It focuses on teaching and training very highly skilled individuals rather than enforcing a process to counter the mistakes of mediocre developers. There is much more focus on relationship and personal commitment to delivery.

For more, I encourage you to read the manifesto and especially Pete McBreen’s prescient 2001 book.

Now, I’m not a fan of cargo cults. I’ve seen many come and go. The reason this isn’t bandwagon jumping is simply that we now understand to a greater degree who we are and where we belong. I’ve been espousing this metaphor since starting Eden five years ago – I even wrote a paper entitled ‘The Master Craftsman’ shortly after founding the company. The ethics almost entirely match our existing statement of values.

That’s not to say we don’t have much to learn. This is exciting because we’ve been walking a similar road for a while, and it has often felt like a lonely journey. It’s fantastic to realise there are many others walking with us. I am especially grateful for those ahead of us, who can teach us, mentor us and help us to improve. We have been given a new, useful language to help describe our company, our ethos and our aspirations, along with a well trodden path ahead of us to make the way forward easier.

Software Craftsmanship is now even more part of our company because of a wonderful meeting of minds that happened a couple of weeks ago. Corey Haines and I spent a bunch of time together at BizConf in August, and he introduced me to Enrique Comba Riepenhausen. We chatted via twitter a few times and agreed to meet up in London one Wednesday. By the end of the week we’d offered him a job, and he’d accepted. Enrique has been involved with the craftsmanship movement from the early days and I’m humbled and privileged that his journey has brought him here.

What metaphors have shaped the way you think about who you are, and where you belong? Do you agree with the analogy? We’d love to hear what you think.

We’re going to be blogging more about craftsmanship in the future: watch this space for updates.