Software Craftsmanship as a Thing

Dan North's recent blog post on software craftsmanship unleashed a lot of blog and forum discussions.

I, as a member of the craftsmanship's community prefer the Michael Feathers's opinion on the issue.

I think our community doesn't need labels. We must see our work as a "Big Thing". The "Thing" which lead us toward efficiency, better performance. The names doesn't make any differences. Our aim is common. This is significant.

As a comment in Micheal's post says, I guess this proves yet again that naming stuff is one of the hardest things we do. I sorta feel like this is a give up, though - replacing 'agile' and 'software craftsmanship' with 'thing'. I'd say all these conversations are already about the thing."

Do not get me wrong, I welcome debates and discussions but I think our community's main concentration must be the "Thing" not our naming conventions.

These are the posts correlated to the matter:

• Dan North's original post
• Liz Keogh explains her discomfort with the software craftsmanship manifesto.
• Gil Zilberfeld draws a comparison between software craftsmanship and alt.net.
• Jason Gorman wants us to avoid getting hung up on labels
• Michael Feathers looks for more deliberate practice in our work.
• George Dinwiddie provides a physical example of why quality work is important to a customer, and how certification and licensing doesn't help.
• Dan North expands and clarifies some his earlier points.
• Bob Martin says software craftsmanship is only about programmers tired of writing crap.