Software craftsmanship


What I liked most about the podcast is the realistic approach that Bob Martin, with all his years of experience, takes on our work context. The tools, the way how we work evolved, how should we do it, how we make it to the professional field, the professional relationship with our customers, etc. I liked how he takes the fact that programmers used to look at cascade developing as a sort of bible or default go to in order to make code and then when we evolved to extreme programming, like the best practices of SCRUM, sometimes abusing some practices like pair programming, ignoring others, like debugging and making mistakes since nothing is set in stone.

The truth is that, as “Uncle Bob” says it, we arrive to our first job without knowledge about the real word. The college gives us a general idea, but only practice is what gives us the true knowledge. We are no longer in a controlled environment, you do not know what can go wrong and how to act. In this case, I think that the dynamic programming approach that a software architect has, plays an important part, since it is a senior with the experience entitled to teach the younger ones what he she knows , and is someone that has not stopped working on code. That last part is important since the speed that the programming world is evolving makes it hard to keep track if you do not practice.

Another thing that I liked is how Martin does not consider the programming language as an essential tool for a programmer.  We have the IDE, the version control, bug tracking and even unit testing but not the programming language. Since there are lots of programming languages I think he considers more important the procedures and tools that help you write a good reliable program in an easier way, that the means to an end that represents the language. In this last part of the podcast he makes the relation between all this options and knowledge available to one of my favorite parts about our field: that you must not stop to learn whenever you can and be updated about what happens outside, since it is such of vital importance in order to be a good programmer. Quite a great podcast that shows a complete picture of the programming environment.

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