What does like craftsmanship mean to you in the context of software development?

It means that regardless of the framework or the language that you’re using that you care about following good practices and you’re always trying to pay attention how this code is going to be scalable, how it can be reused in other parts of the code, how everything integrates together.

So it’s about being thoughtful about the work that you’re doing?

Yes - thoughtful about what you’re doing - not treating your work as a story to be cleared off the board, but also keeping in mind that someone else is going to be working with your code in the future and you want to make as easy for them and understandable. And also thinking about how the company is going to grow and making things as scalable as possible.

For a junior, it can be about asking help for senior developers, and finding different approaches to problems - doing the same thing but looking completely different. So that’s a good sign for me that people really take craftsmanship really seriously in here.

Cool. How did you get started with programming?

I started in the university more doing like procedural programming to solve engineering problems. I moved towards web about a year and a half ago, out of curiosity at the beginning, but then I found myself just doing more and more and more until I realized that that could be something I could do full-time.

What do you think it is about programming that really interests you?

I think it’s really nice that you can actually create something, an application someone else uses and it’s really rewarding to see the results as you’re doing it. As opposed to areas of engineering where you might design something and you might never ever see in real life. So it’s very rewarding, yeah.

Do you have anything else that you’re really passionate about outside of software development?

Outside of software? I don’t know. I probably would like to teach as well, like I like teaching. I’ve been doing some teaching in different areas - when I was in the university I taught some courses. I don’t really like the academia side of it, but I really enjoy the process of teaching.

Cool. What’s sort of the most interesting thing you’ve worked on since you started?

I’ve worked in a couple stories that required working in React. We worked on a sorting feature that was all like done in React. I thought that was a really interesting story because I got to work with a framework that I’ve never used before.

Outside of the code that you’re writing, can you name some of your favourite experiences you’ve had at Influitive so far.

I really like the Sync-up meeting, doing a presentation at it was a really nice experience. It helped me put things together in my mind, because when you have to explain it to people that are not developers, you have to really understand the problem yourself.

I also really like the off-sites that we have as a team. I think it allows us to bond a little bit together and get in touch with what everyone is doing and have good discussions on things.

What qualities do you think are important in a software craftsman?

First of all, you have to be extremely curious - there’s always so many ways to do things, and you have to be on top of what’s out there and what tools are out there that are going to allow you to do whatever you want to do. And tools are evolving so quickly that if you’re not curious you’re in danger of falling behind.

And in order to be curious and be constantly looking for stuff you also have to be passionate, because otherwise you wouldn’t have that drive to look further to see what’s out there. Also you have to be really patient and have a lot of grit. Sometimes you fix a little bug or a crash. You don’t really know how you fixed it, you just know that by trying tons of stuff you managed to get that process running and you have no idea or that configuration issue that you don’t understand.

Finally, you have to be creative, which is another thing that I like about software development - that it combines logical thinking with creativity and it’s amazing.