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Software Craftsmanship
The back of the book claims that it will present an alternative method of software development, "a craft model that focuses on the people involved in commercial software development." McBreen offers his "software craftsmanship" model up as an alternative to the mainstream "software engineering" model that dominates much of the literature. It is a position that I am personally sympathetic too, so you'd think I'd be favorably disposed toward the book. Instead I found myself angry at the author for his strawman arguments, illogical conclusions, unfounded assertions, and irrelevant asides.
The book starts off well enough. McBreen points out that, historically, software engineering literature and theory have been dominated by huge projects from the military and government and small, complex, esoteric projects from academia. Neither of those extremes reflect the reality of developing applications for most developers today. McBreen offers up a method of working patterned on craftsmen of old, with a basic breakdown of master craftsman, journeyman, and apprentice.
All of this sounds well and good, but how about some details for what this means in practice?
First we have to wade through some arguments against licensing the profession. (Although craftsmen of old did that all the time, maybe he doesn't want us to extend the metaphor too far.) And then we have to read about how to be a good user. (The back of the book says it is written for programmers, so why do I need a section titled "Stop Choosing Developers Based on the Lowest Bidder"?)
As you're reading chapters like "Becoming a Software Craftsman", "Learning from Software Engineering", and "Design for Testing and Maintenance" you slowly begin to notice that none of this has anything to do with software engineering per se. After all, what is software engineering? McBreen gives a definition on page 7 taken from the IEEE:
Software engineering is the application of a systematic, disciplined, quantifiable approach to the development, operation, and maintenance of software; that is, the application of engineering to software.
He promptly forgets about this definition in his zeal to set up strawmen for his software craftsmanship model to knock over. "The software engineering view states that COBOL is a dead language with no future." "Unlike software engineering, software craftsmanship takes a long-term view of things." "A key difference between software craftsmanship and software engineering is the emphasis that craftsmanship puts on learning and coaching." "Software engineering, therefore, has to deal with the problem of developing software where incremental development and evolutionary delivery are not feasible strategies." He suggests that journeymen review the work of apprentices and that master craftsmen then review the reviewed work: "Although the software engineering paradigm might consider this type of secondary review to be a waste of time, it is an essential part of practicing any craft." "You cannot do software engineering on a low budget...software engineering projects take a lot of time...software engineering denigrates anecdotal evidence."
Where does he get this stuff from? Did I read that right, he thinks formal software engineering would complain about too many code reviews? I must have missed that issue of IEEE Software.
He seems to think software craftsmanship is somehow vastly different from this thing he keeps calling "software engineering" but anyone even vaguely familiar with software engineering literature will have a hard time spotting any actual differences. On page 113 he seems to be against "code walkthroughs" although I fail to see how they are any different from "A master craftsman...[inspects] everything that the journeymen and apprentices create." On page 124 he rails against software engineering's use of "best practices." He doesn't seem to understand that "best practices" are nothing more than anecdotal evidence and an attempt to gather and disseminate information of "master craftsmen."
This symptom is worst in the concluding section, "What to do on Monday", which is intended to be a set of things you can do to end your slavish attachment to software engineering and start out on the path of software craftsmanship. What revolutionary things does he advocate that software engineering must clearly be diametrically opposed to? He suggests we carefully evaluate the portfolio of interview candidates; pay talented staff extremely well, perhaps even more than managers; we should design for testing and maintenance; pay more attention to usability over glitter on user interfaces; create a learning environment to encourage perpetual learning.
What does any of that have to do with software engineering vis a vis software craftsmanship? Is there some reason I can't pay my developers extremely well and still have a systematic, disciplined process?
McBreen's entire premise is flawed because he doesn't seem to understand what software engineering is. His argument seems to be with a specific process, not with software engineering itself. He offers some useful advice but none of it is earthshaking and none of it is really an alternative to "software engineering." Indeed, none of what he talks about is especially new, either. It is basically the same "surgical team" model that Fred Brooks described decades ago, something he alludes to but never outright acknowledges and explores.
McBreen makes a lot of smaller missteps along the way that damage his credibility but they are really too many to enumerate. At the end of the book, you not only don't have any clear idea of what makes software craftsmanship different from a well-run software engineering shop, you also have no clear idea why you spent $29.99 on a 180 page book softcover book.
Interested readers can purchase Software Craftsmanship from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
When you got up close, however, you noticed the paint was peeling, the widow sashes were rotted away, doors couldn't open or close because they didn't hang true, and at some point someone had cheaply redone the kitchen in a style that was very much not Victorian
Bejaysus! did Microsoft build your house?
this sig steers like a cow. and i can prove it
when programmers unionize.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
This is also why stuff like Extreme Programming and other strategies become popular. There are many ways to quality - all of them are task specific and slow. There is no magic pill.
Don't read slashdot much, eh?
sulli
RTFJ.
I have read this book.
While I liked it, and found it a nice framework in which to hang many thoughts on, I would recommend 'the Pragmatic Programmer' by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas over this book. McBreen actually quotes that book so often in this one that I often wondered, "so, what was the point of this book then?"
What books WOULD you recommend, if this one sucks rocks?
We can buy trashed houses and fix them up to our hearts content... will these new Software Craftsmen also be open source advocates?
It would be pretty hard to repair the shoddy 'windows' on our 'house' if they are all licensed by Microsoft.
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
There is only one book that preaches a methodology that I have found useful (and I have read several), and it is more of a programmers cookbook than a strict methodology. Design Patterns from Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides. It gives you exactly what you need as a programmer: the ability to communicate volumes of information about your system to me with a few key words. For example, if you tell me that your logging system is a Singleton object, I immediately understand its' place in your system and how to use it.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
Quite the contrary - there isn't a single personal attack in the review. The content of the book and its assertions are pretty much torn apart, but there isn't any slam directly on the author...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I've seen a lot of apps - especially web-based ones - that look great and are coded like crap. The problem with somewhat simpler languages, especially scripting languages, is that the ease of learning the basics often leads to some very undereducated programmers.
I don't consider myself a "professional" Perl programmer, though I've had several years experience, but even I can see when a large system is made up of a lot of little shyte.
Another thing one might notice in particular, is on group-programmer projects. The interface coding might be very nice, and then when one goes the the back-end modules that query mySQL DB's, etc... it's obvious that it was a different and less experienced programmer.
When I start seeing things like:
$stuff[1], $stuff[2]
$blah
etc
it scares me. If code isn't going to be commented, at the very least the variables can be intuitively named so as to make sense, and using arrays of hard-to-determine crap for no reason is just bad (at the least, use named hashes, or just normal vars).
you must be trolling. you only want good reviews? get over the "any press is good press" phobia.
and not "Advertisment."
What were you expecting?
It sounds like whoever wrote this review just got done with Philosphy 100 at the local community college and is eager to show off his/her stunning analytical abilities by bringing up every single fallacy mentioned in the class. It probably gave him or her a sense of accomplishment or something.
Also, it may be hard to believe but having worked with Pete on the project that was "Crashed and burned" I can testify to the fact that the article is in fact non-fiction.
Contrary to what the author of this review is saying, I really do think that software engineering is different from software craftsmanship. Although you can take many of the things said about software engineering and come up with an application of them similar to an application you could come up with for software craftsmanship, but in practice you wouldn't. This is because the underlying philosophies are very different, and they exist for different purposes. The philosophies/purposes break down like this:
Software Engineering: make the development of software a controllable business process.
Software Craftsmanship: make the best software.
The basic notion of software engineering is to create a *process* which is so perfect that no personal weaknesses in your programmers can hurt the company. A subtle side effect of this is that it also tends to prevent any extremely great individual contribution from having a large impact. That is, the goal is to make all of your coders cogs in a machine. The business owners and managers would much rather have this setup because it makes it easier for them to sleep at night.
:Wq
Not an editor command: Wq
Robert
Bruce Weide of the Computer Science Department of the Ohio State University has been working for several years on a way to introduce software engineering principles to first year computer science students. It's an interesting read (albeit one that was forced on me for my classes) and is available for download here in pdf format.
I always find it amusing to read about people who try to compare programming (or software engineering, or whatever) to things such as house building, or even more general like "master craftsman", apprentice, etc. One of the biggest problems facing developers today is the overwhelming complexity of the software being created and the environments they are being created in and the pressures of getting said software done in a particular timeframe.
If one MUST use some real world analogy, then imagine wanting to build a dresser. You come up with the requirements, must have four drawers, have certain dimensions, be made with a certain type of wood and be stained to look a particular way. So you start buying lumber. But wait, no one carries just the right type of lumber you want, so you run out and cut your own tree down and make the lumber yourself. You decide to dove tail the drawers, but the dove tail rig you have doesn't quite fit, so you kinda work around it and get "good enough" dove tails. Uh oh, you never checked with your wife on those dimensions, she wants something 6 inches wider, gotta take those drawers apart and make wider ones, do you cut more trees down, or do you patch an add on to the existing pieces? That last one put you behind schedule, so now you don't have time to actually check your work completely as you go and your carpenter friend Bob has a baseball game to go to, so he can't help with that tricky scroll work you need to do, guess you'll just go online and just copy what someone else has done. etc, etc.
Not to mention that few software projects have such simple requirements. This dresser has to actuall fold the clothes for you, let you know how many socks are present, pick your wardrobe for the day AND it has to look pretty, interface nicely (dooh, made those knobs too small to grab), etc, etc.
And lets not forget one of the biggest project killers, you decide to build this dresser with four of your friends, each doing a different part. And dang it if those drawer openings are too small. And the trim around the edges are 1/4" smaller than the trim used for the mirror, and those pilot holes are 3/8" but your using 5/16" screws.
You get the picture. Nothing like this happens in the real world, software is a completely different beast and to contrain it by using realworld analogies might push a few books, but it's not making software engineering or the software being produced any better.
I run a small software group writing control code for semiconductor processing equipment. I read a lot of literature and what works for my group is:
- code reviews on every check-in
- lots of refactoring
- incremental releases
- constant testing
- individual 'craftsmanship'
So what do I tell my group? I tell them "any piece of code you write you should be proud to show at a job interview."
And I lead by example.
2. That the /. review(sic) is incomplete, biased and (imo) less useful than the reviews on Amazon/BN.
His credentials seem ok, the excerpts looked interesting and relevant and I think his approach is a viable one (which is not to say it's the only or best one for any given circumstance).
Modern software engineering(sic) doesn't seem equal to the challenge that many (cough-MS) organizations developing software emphasize absolutely as many features as can be crammed into the deployment space, with reliability criteria seemingly like "if it's not so unstable that the customer will ask for his money back, we ship it".
Ok that's the current market and goodness knows people keep buying and writing bloated, buggy software is by no means limited to commercial/priprietary, it's become all too common in free/oss projects also. (See my related views about that).
The mantra that seems to drive the market is "More features". Personally I beleive the best programs result from the alternate view: "The best program is the smallest program that fits the need".
So wherever the statement "If buildings were constructed the way software is constructed, the first ant to come along would destroy civilization overnight" remains true, I think the applicability of "software engineering" is (nil).
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
Come on, it's more of an art. What's better than constructing an elegantly written piece of code. Granted, most programs are closer to a "Cathy" comic strip than a Piccasso, yet there is something so nice about the occasionally beautifally crafted script.
There is no magic bullet or even way of thinking that is overnight going to make IT projects run on time and on budget.
Software Engineering has a substantial creative component to it that is far more akin to music or art than to other forms of engineering.
And just like music or art;
* a few of us are REALLY GOOD
* some of can perform the programming equivalent of playing "Three Blind Mice" on the piano
* and some of us SUCK.
Trouble is, in the IT industry, as opposed to other creative industries, there is little salary difference between the three.
...and buy a copy of the "Extreme Craftsmanship" book that is sure to come out next year.
We took to calling our ERP software that we we're responsible for supporting and customizing "The house that love built." It had a long history of many owners and installed base in critical production environments. Despite the desire to burn it to the foundation to fix it, we were limited by time and money. We had plenty of ugly interfaces that put the toilet next to the refrigerator, load-bearing posters, and if we ran out of floorboard, we weren't above painting the dirt.
I sometimes wish we were working on an old house, as our house was flying down the street at the speed limit, and no one was willing to stop to make the required repairs.
How much can craftsman programmers learn when their walkthroughs are confined to the sample home (development environment)? They rarely go near a lived-in home (production environment) and may have never talked to an actual homeowner (customer) in their entire career.
When you got up close, however, you noticed the paint was peeling, the widow sashes were rotted away,
If my house were full of bereaved women wearing decomposing ribbons, I wouldn't be worrying about the peeling paint...
I dunno, that didn't look like a personal attack to me. Sure, one could interpret it that way, but think about it: all the reviewer has to go on is the material. If the material asserts that software engineering is X and then later on the material presents software engineering as z, theta, and epsilon, each of which is !X, then the only conclusion one can come to is that the material does not present a consistent description of software engineering and the author of the material either doesn't know, or changed his mind several times and didn't edit well.
Oh, go on, check out my job.
This may seem slightly off-topic, but bear with me, and the relevance will become clear...
My family owns a home-improvement business (I don't work there now, but did summers during college) and often deal with builders who work on the principle described by the author.
On more than a few occasions when I worked there, I would go to hang rain gutters (on new homes) and find all sorts of messes: Corners not square, roofing materials cut way too short or way too long, roof vent holes that have had shingles nailed over them, and even more idiotic and egregious mistakes than this--All of them perpetrated by either apprentices under supervision, journeymen or mastercrafstmen. Usually, it was the result of a project that was behind schedule and needing to cut corners to catch up.
My point? It doesn't matter what "Quality Assurance" system you have in place if you set unrealistic goals and/or hire the cheapest labor you can get your hands on.
Who did what now?
I haven't read the review and I'm not going to. The idea that software is a craft is right on. Managing a successful software project is much more about getting the right people on the job and trusting them to write good code, than it is about engineering practises. Software is invisible to anyone but the active coder. That's the whole point of good APIs -- they are very small, understandable interfaces to the invisible code.
Since the code can't be seen, then it can't be engineered. I suspect that software will remain a craft until code visualization tools progress to the point where I can look at a visualization of someone else's code and understand it in a general sense almost immediately.
simon
home page
Notes of interest:
- JWR
Nothing like this happens in the real world, software is a completely different beast and to contrain it by using realworld analogies might push a few books, but it's not making software engineering or the software being produced any better.
This type of thing happens in the real world ALL THE TIME. Talk to anyone who has had a home built for them. Critical people or equipment doesn't show up on time, structure is far more fluid than people ever suspect, and what was presented to the customer via blueprints and models still may not be what they were expecting.
Engineering is knowing when to say good enough. A component performs as specified in the requirements. That is, if they say they need a hinge that will hold an aluminum door they don't build it out of titanium. For cranking out code, this is really an art. XP touches on this (and goes to far IMHO) about focusing on the task at hand rather than building large frameworks, object models, etc. There is a balance there, but for most construction these days the spec is 'good enough'.
Craftsmanship is taking the time to make sure every stud in the house is square. This is not an engineering requirement - the requirement is to support the wall. This is about polish and taking extra time to 'do things correctly'. It takes time, usually is not budgeted, and is a godsend to the folks having to maintain it down the road. These things also tend to live far beyond everyone's expectations. Think of some of the deep space probes landing on asteroids - craftsmanship. The mars lander comes to mind when you mentioned bolts.
Craftsmanship is also about using the right tool for the job. As I learned some basic carpentry skills, my grandfather would comment 'Any power tool used improperly can be a sander'. This applies to the real world as well as software. Let him that has not done an ugly hack throw the first stone - but duct tape and bailing wire are staples of engineering jokes because they are about getting the job done, but not in an elegant manner.
When I build stuff for others, solid engineering is enough. For my personal projects, I expect craftsmanship.
Course, I have not seen the book, so I may be way off track here...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Your breakdown into three programmer types is nothing new. It is widely documented that out of a group of ten programmers two will be as productive as the other eight put together. So why aren't these 'star performers' treated (and paid) like the stars they are?
.'
One reason is because the people making the money descisions are under the illusion that software is not a create industry. They think it is 'Engineering' in the sense that anyone who can add the numbers can do it. But if that was true than we would already have self-programming computers. Seen one recently? When was the last time you actually used a '4GL' in a real-world scenario? Not a good example maybe; that doesn't really qualify as self-programming anyway. More like 'canned programming'.
Nonetheless, take a close look at those people who are 'really good' programmers. In my experience you will often find they are also musicians or skilled at some other creative endeavor in a much higher percentage than the average public. This tells me that one of the things it takes to be a top programmer is the same thing it takes to be a great guitar player -- innate talent. Either you have it or you don't. And if you don't have 'it' no amount of schooling will make you more than adequate.
But that leads to the second reason why you don't see the salary difference: Good programmers are often not seen as team players. They tend to be 'Prima Donnas'. They get angry when people don't listen to them as they go against the political grain in an attempt to do something the 'right' way. In other words they usually just aren't as likeable as the 'other eight'. And the fact that events usually prove the star programmer was right all along only leads to more friction.
The third reason for the salary difference is just plain silly: Performance reviews. I have yet to see a supervisor who was comfortable giving a star performer a star review; something on which a significant salary raise might be predicated. But without the good review the raise doesn't happen.
This might be because the supervisor is acting on personal feelings "She is good, but she has been difficult to work with this year." It might be because the supervisor feels uncomfortable giving extreme reviews in either direction. It might be because the supervisor fears that the star performer will be promoted away (or worse, over them) if it were clear how good they are. And I am sure a hundred other reasons as well.
I certainly know how hard it is to show up with a good attitude every day knowing that only the quality of your code is the difference between you and Joe Schmuck, who can't program his way out of a paper bag. But even more than the money I just want them to start LISTENING TO ME! I can't tell you how many times I have been hired as an expensive consultant, given them my professional opinion and then watched them do it the wrong way anyway. Over and over. Always smacking into the very same brick walls I warned them about.
So, if you are a supervisor for programmers I hope you take this rant to heart. You might also want to take my handy test: 'You might be a PHB if . .
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
...are like $#@holes. Everyone has one, and they all stink. So I agree with this critique.
I'd like to add my two cents, so here it is:
Every year or so, some wingnut comes out with a "brand new paradigm" of software development, which is supposed to totally shake up all established practices and change the world overnight. And, it's all hogwash, but inexperienced programmers and the wannabes who take the six-month-special course in a back alley in NYC hoping to make it big in "Computers" all jump on the bandwagon and make life miserable for the rest of us. I've been programming in one language or another since 1991 (although I've been using computers since 1983 or 4); I started studying it formally in 1995, and I've been working full time as a programmer since 1998. And, in all that time I have never seen anything come out that does a better job than plain, old software engineering.
You know what I think?
I think that in this age of "bigger, better, faster, more" people who can't make a name for themselves by building/doing something USEFUL try instead to become "visionaries". So they pull some weird new way of programming out of their asses, serve it up to us like it's filet mignon, and sell books about how to change everything you're doing yet again. This constant change prevents companies from building stable software. How can you work all the bugs out of anything, when every five minutes you're changing all your processes? As if the huge amount of turnover, outsourcing, and downsizing doesn't make long-term software development hard enough.
The worst thing is, managers assigned to IT teams frequently don't know enough about software engineering to understand the difference between one paradigm and the next. So they end up running willy-nilly from one to another, changing boats midstream in a doomed, Frogger-like attempt to not get sunk in the next layoff. Any new book that catches the manager's eye mesmerizes him.
Heaven help the gullible manager who ends up with an aggressive little ivy-league grad that wants to make a name for himself. Then the manager's gonna be led by the nose. After all, what does a manager respect more than pedigree? It doesn't matter that the kid's balls haven't even dropped yet, that he has no experience on any real project, that the closest he's come to load balancing is two PCs in his dorm room, serving static web pages to one user who keeps hitting "refresh"...
GOD.
When, oh when, will people learn?
We've already figured out how to manage software projects. We've understood what works and what doesn't for at least a couple of decades. The field is fairly well researched, so there is plenty of material available about software engineering, and all you have to do is go look it up. There's NO NEED to keep trying to change the process.
Feh. Snort.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
If all programming tasks were as exciting as defending a small village from rapacious bandits then I'm sure you would have no trouble finding brilliant programmers. Unfortunately a lot of software is not very exciting. I find it unlikely that there is a single programmer out there that writes commission accounting systems for fun.
As a hobbyist you have the opportunity to pick and choose your projects. A working programmer often has to solve business problems that aren't unique or exciting.
The point I was trying to make (and apparently unsuccessfully) was that the basic foundations of software engineering are quite different than those in the real world.
I know... I'm just going through the process right now and the real world seems as horked up as some of the ugly software projects I've worked on. Call me cynical, but I've got friends in differing areas of engineering - aerospace, mechanical, electrical, genetic - and all of them have nightmare stories of projects that were loosely defined, under funded, impossible deadlines, etc. I'm not saying software engineering sucks less or more - just that these same problems woefully apply to others fields as well.
God help me, I was right there saying amen until you said this does not happen in the real world. I could be exceptionally unlucky, however.... (grin)
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
(the subject is flamebait and overstated, but it did get you to read this, didn't it?)
According to Peter Norvig and Greg Sullivan, most of the patterns in the Gang of Four book are there to show users of common OO languages the canonical ways of getting around design flaws in those languages.
Norvig says 16 of 24 patterns either vanish completely or are significantly easier to implement in a dynamic OO language like CLOS or Dylan; Sullivan implements a tiny OO language in Scheme and uses it to implement all 24 patterns, with similar results.
Go read the papers before modding me down, huh?
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I have read Software Craftsmanship. I have also read extensively in the general field of software development methodologies, software engineering, and project management. On thing that this book does, that is very rarely dealt with is the personal responsibility that one has as a software developer. Most methodologies are designed, in essense, around the idea of minimizing the human impact on the bottom line. Software Craftsmanship deals with this question to a superlative degree.
One thing that I found lacking is the issue of why exactly craftsmanship is a better model than software engineering. There is some discussion of this, and although I agree with the conclusion, it was not very well supported. My feeling is that engineering works for physical structures where humans intuitively understand the rules and the use of the structure follows the same rules as the creation of the structure, but in software, you make up the rules themselves and the rules are different for the process of creation and the actual use of the software!
Another two books which deal with the question of personal responsibility are Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck and Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn. If you are interested, I have compiled a list of resources for people interested in creating software.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
I certainly agree that a small team of talented developers are more productive than horde of average programmer. What I'm looking for in his book is some hard research on why this works better, some real world cases and some partical advice on how to make this work better. I find little of these in this book. Instead the author is just self absorbed in his craftsman analogy. The main theme: a bunch of apprentices would work with a craftsman to create quality product that the craftsman would personally sign off. That's a way too simplistic idea to improve software development by putting people in the apprentice-journeymen-craftsman role.
Big regret to have spent money and time on this book.
... it would be the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. It has stairs that just dead end, doors that go nowhere, and unfinished rooms. This crazy old lady uses her vast amounts of money to pay carpenters to build a house for her. So, they turned a 6 room country farmhouse into a weird, rambling mansion. That old farmhouse is still in there at the center of the mansion, surrounded by hundreds of useless rooms so you could barely recognize which rooms were original.
The carpenters had their pet projects, and some of the carpenters were obviously still in the apprentice phase. If the old lady didn't like how something turned out, she would just fire the carpenter on the spot, and hire somebody else. No wonder lots of those special projects never got finished. There was no architect, just low skill carpenters banging on nails.
I have actually worked on a software project like this. It was thoroughly unmaintainable, with much of written be people who did not understand basic software design principles. A manager fired some guy just because the software crashed when the manager used it. So, the manager had to hire somebody else to replace him. No wonder there was so much unfinished work in that software.
No design documents, no unit tests, no overall design, no modularity, and nothing was easily reused. There was no architect, just coders banging on keyboards. The core parts of the software have been rewritten so many times, and added onto so many times that you would never recognize the original code.
I am glad I don't work there anymore. It was a nightmare job for reasons besides the code.