Chapter 13. Journeymen Developers

The step from apprentice to journeyman is very significant and represents the coming of age of the developer. It is a public recognition that the developer is a skilled generalist, able to undertake application development projects without assistance. Customers, managers, and other craftsmen will be able to verify this ability by looking at the last application on which the journeyman worked as an apprentice. This “graduation” application is the start of the portfolio that the journeyman will build from successfully created applications.

In becoming a journeyman, a developer accepts responsibility for creating robust, high-quality applications and confirms her acceptance of the software craftsmanship approach. In the traditional crafts, journeymen would often travel to work with other craftsmen to hone their skills while earning enough money to set up shop as an independent. In software evelopment, the economic need to work for other craftsmen is less, but the need to broaden and hone skills is greater. Software craftsmen tend to specialize in just a few programming languages, so journeymen need to work with different craftsmen to broaden their experience until they find the languages in which they want to specialize. Similarly, for application domains, because customers like to use the same few trusted craftsmen repeatedly, to get experience with different customers a journeyman will have to work with different craftsmen.