http://norvig.com/21-days.html

Have a read, I keep meaning to write something along the same lines myself.

You’re of course correct there are plenty of people with years of experience who have the same experience many times over. I completely agree with everything you say about experimentation and pushing boundaries. Trying out different things is the best way to find out what works and what doesn’t.

I also agree with both the points you make in the end. It can be invaluable to draw on the experience of multiple people (teachers). And noone has ever become a master by mimicking an existing one, at some point you have to develop a style of your own.

While reading your post, I get a feeling at places that you are implying, “Younger developers are less experienced and will probably write spaghetti code”. In your post itself, you’ve rightly highlighted that: “You don’t differentiate yourself based on years in the industry, you differentiate yourself on your attitude, your passion, your knowledge, your insight and your expertise”.

One had to be careful with 10 year experienced people coz they might have 1 year of experience repeated 10 times. Its the quality of experience over the quantity of experience. Quality of experience comes from practice, a lot of intense practice (not just talent). Practice on real world projects, practice on pet projects, practice doing wild things and breaking all rules, pushing the boundaries and so on. (For Ex. if you look at Ward’s FIT code, he has broken most of the OO rules. Good, bad or ugly, I’m sure he learnt a lot of lessons.)

I see 2 main problems with the way people define/explain the whole craftsmanship model:

1). You need more than one master to really become a master craftsman. (Some people have the impression that you can be a journeyman under one master and you’ll become a master craftsman. IMHO you can’t.)

2). Don’t be blinded by your master, look beyond and try things on your own. One has to invest time to break all the rules the master has put forth to truly understand the gravity of the subject.

While I think the craftsmanship models does imply the above points, most people I feel discount this part.

Craftsmanship goes beyond some legal responsibility to do a decent job. It is about having some professional pride in what you do, it is about trying to be the best that you can be in your profession (forgive the sappiness). It is about holding yourself to your own internal set of standards.

You can be a certified java programmer, but that doesn’t make you a good java programmer, or knowledgeable about the language, or give you the ability to write good clean code, or give you any knowledge about other tools/frameworks you might need to use in your job. All it says is that you passed a test of some sort, but it does not make you a decent software developer. It is the same with being licensed software engineer.

Of course being licensed or certified certainly does not preclude you from being excellent at what you do either (i.e. a great craftsman of your profession).

You can also get a degree in Software Engineering in BC: http://www.bseng.uvic.ca/ I know is becoming more prevalent in the United States as well. e.g. http://www.se.rit.edu/

When you become a licensed Professional Software Engineer, you join the ranks of other professionals where you are liable, at least here in Canada for the software designs you seal and can even have your license revoked. Personally, my belief is that software engineering is professional practice.

To be honest I was pretty happy with it myself after I wrote it :)