Improving Wetware

Because technology is never the issue

Rejecting Software Engineering

Posted by Pete McBreen 28 Jun 2007 at 19:48

Eric Wise wants to become known as a software craftsman. His view is that craftsmen attempt to select tools, patterns, and practices and with them craft beautiful, working software.

His post has interesting parallels to the book Software Crafstmanship.

Hiring Good Developers

Posted by Pete McBreen 21 Jun 2007 at 19:47

Some thoughts on finding good developers to work on your projects.

To attract good developers you have to let them know what kind of application you are building, because there are two important questions that developers need to be answered about any development job - will this build my skills and reputation, and is this the kind of application I enjoy creating.

If you just list the technology in the project listing it is a negative because it implies you just want a coder to follow directions, so immediately you go to the bottom of the list of possible clients.

So to attract good developers, sell them on your idea of what you want to build. Specify the technology if you must, but that will cut down the number of people who will be interested in doing the work. You will also have to find some way of signaling that you have the budget to afford the type of people you want. It would also help if you could let people know the timeline and commitment involved - is it a small part-time task or full time total involvement year long task.

Craftsmanship and Certification

Posted by Pete McBreen 06 Jun 2007 at 19:40

It seems that once again some people are pushing to create a certification program for software developers.

This time they are promoting the idea that prefessionalism requires a certifying body with recognized certifications just like accountants etc. Luckily the author of the article is alert ot the problems of credentialism, so maybe the movement will be stillborn, but we need to stay vigilant to ensure that our craft does not get stuck in teh stone age due to some corporate welfare scam of IT credentials mandating that everyone who wants to work in It needs to know about mainframe JCL.