Evening talk and discussions with Kevlin Henney

Although a great deal of the enthusiasm for Agile development initially grew from software developers, the perception is that much of the current focus in Agile circles has moved to organisational aspects, product management and soft skills. Craftsmanship has long been a quality and a metaphor applied to software development, but more recently software craftsmanship has emerged as a more explicit movement and branding focused on reclaiming and re-emphasising the importance of the detail, of how to code and how to do it well.

There are many different perspectives on what the craftsmanship metaphor implies and what benefits and liabilities it may have. This session lays out and explores the motivation, implications, pros and cons of a craftsmanship view of software development.

Kevlin Henney is an independent consultant and trainer. His development interests are in patterns, programming, practice and process. He has been a columnist for various magazines and web sites, including Better Software, The Register, Application Development Advisor, Java Report and the C/C++ Users Journal. Kevlin is co-author of A Pattern Language for Distributed Computing and On Patterns and Pattern Languages, two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series. He is also editor of the 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know site and book.