Thanks for chatting with me. So to start with, let’s talk about what craftsmanship means to you.

Craftsmanship to me means thinking about what you’re building and building it properly the first time.

Walk me through an example of that.

Well, if you have to solve a problem or build a solution for something, it’s important to take five minutes to think about what the future ramifications of that solution are before you actually start putting hands to keyboard. You can make it a little bit more high quality in the long run with just a bit of thoughtfulness.

So it’s about not charging headlong into something and being more thoughtful about it.

Yeah. And obviously there’s a place for experimentation - but if you’re trying to build a house you want to have a plan before you start digging your foundation.

Why do you think that is important as opposed to the Facebook philosophy of moving fast and breaking things? What do you think the advantages of a more say thoughtful approach are?

It’s easier to add onto it or change it in the future. If you have a solid foundation, it’s always easier to come back and add one little thing onto it. But if you have a precariously teetering application and you try to add something to it you might crumble the whole thing.

How did you get started with programming?

I was always kind of into programming and web design and development as a teenager. I never thought about it as a career, and kind of fell out of it. I actually went to theatre school and wanted to be a professional stage manager or lighting designer. I came back to it after landing a job as an admin assistant, being exposed to working with databases and having an opportunity to do some programming. And I just remember how much fun it was. So I went to HackerYou and took an introductory Rails course, and here I am.

What’s the most interesting thing you’ve worked on since you started at Influitive?

It would have to be starting the Community project. I really enjoyed building it from the ground up, getting to use new technologies like React, and getting more familiar with complex JavaScript apps. And just seeing how it developed from an idea - through the growing pains of early stages to now where it’s a functioning thing that people are using and we’re continuing to iterate on it. It’s just really cool to be able to create something like that.

Yeah - it’s interesting that it’s kind of almost a tension, or an interesting relationship between being thoughtful up front while being responding to users and responding to what you’re hearing.

I don’t think so if you think about it. Even if you take five minutes to think about something, even if you’re doing a very small feature you take five minutes to think about it and plan it out then hopefully you can build it so it doesn’t break or doesn’t negatively affect your users.

Or maybe that’s even easier to change.

It’s easier to change, especially if you have a solid foundation on all of the important architectural issues. Adding a new feature might take you 15 minutes but if you think about it for a few minutes beforehand at least you’re, you know, you’re going in the right direction.

Cool. What’s your favourite experience working at Influitive so far?

Just the knowledgeable people. It’s not really a singular experience but just being able to talk to different people about different things and getting an answer. It’s great having this resource of knowledge that I can tap into whenever I need to. That’s kind of probably one of the best experiences working at Influitive.

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

Creativity, logical thinking obviously. But I think really good communication skills too, you have to figure out what a problem is and a business problem might be different than a technical problem. It might be the same problem that you need to solve together.

So it’s not always enough sometimes to just think about the technical aspect of things.

Yeah, exactly. You have to think about the problem that you’re actually trying to solve, get in touch with users, and figure out what the best available solution is.

I think continuous learning is important as well, you have to have that thirst for knowledge because there’s always so much new stuff and new ways to do things. If you’re stuck in your ways you’re not going to make it too far.