Tod1d's Thought Process

I have been recommending one article/essay a week to my co-workers, with positive results. So I have decided to expand my audience and post my recommendations to my blog.

The articles/essays you see posted under Article of the Week will give you a chance to read short writings that I have found valuable to my daily process, for sharing new ideas, and for stimulating creative discussion between co-workers.

I will try to keep the recommended material as short and as relevant as possible. Now, on to the Article of the Week.

Title
Craftsmanship

Author
Joel Spolsky

Description
Joel describes why he believes that programming is design and not craftsmanship. He defines design as "that nebulous area where you can add value faster than you add cost." Whereas craftsmanship is when you do something rare that makes your product stand out. However, doing something rare takes a lot of time and therefore is very expensive.

For this reason, you do not see much craftsmanship involved in solutions developed to be utilized in-house. This was an important idea for me. 90% of the solutions I work on are created for in-house use. I used to spend a lot of time trying to determine the "best" practices to implement a solution. Unfortunately this would entail much procrastination on my part.

I now realize that if the solution I am working on is only used in-house, and by one person, once a week (if that often), it probably makes more sense to complete it as quickly as possible, without spending too much time worrying about the "best" way. Save those for projects where they will make a difference. Like websites being accessed by users outside of your company, or applications that are being used by many users on a daily basis for mission critical tasks.