Software Craftsmanship

I liked this episode of SWE Radio. Uncle Bob Martin is an interesting guy to listen to, and I think that the host of the show makes a good job as an interviewer, extracting the fundamental opinions that Bob has on a lot of issues. Martin esentially presents a very interesting take on the process of creating software. He says we should craft software.

Martin presents and defends.. what I guess you would call a movement called Software Craftsmanship (I know, it's kind of bad that the name tries to appeal to a relatively young industry and yet it excludes an entire gender). He explains that basically, ever since agile came about, the software industry lost an important focus on software quality. That it is overly concerned with agile processes and meeting business goals. He believes this is wrong, in the sense that the situation is contradictory: software quality helps meet business goals in the long term.

To solve this issue, he says, the software industry should be composed mainly of software 'craftspeople' (he actually says 'craftsmen' /: ). A community of professionals, something that sounds like a guild (he references the law industry and the medical industry), that craft products and should be proud of how they do it.

Even though I think that this is a good idea, I also believe that our software industry is so so varied that it would be hard for everyone involved to follow this movement closely. Especially for the industry at the smaller and smallest scales, this whole movement gives me a feeling that the discipline and effort involved are just too much work for the scale. Just like with doctors or lawyers or even carmakers, I can see this working very well at higher levels, at bigger scales (In fact, in my experience, a culture like this is expected from a programmer at the largest scales). It sounds like a top-down solution that leaves out the bottom tiers. Maybe I'd like to hear about something that is more bottom-up.