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Good post. There's an interesting tension in software between the cynical and idealistic. On the one hand, there's the notion that writing software is a craft and that what we're doing has an aesthetic component. On the other hand there's a mercenary attitude; we're guns for hire, here to make our fortune, and our loyalty to the job lasts only as long as the paychecks clear.

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While loyalty to the craft can have the side effect of generating more value to an employer, I don't think the two notions are antagonists. Get better at your craft and you'll have more opportunity to operate as a mercenary.

A crafts-merc is the ideal, a pure merc won't contribute beautiful code and a pure crafter won't grasp the business value of their elegant monads.

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I am being to literal in my comparison, but I see tension when I compare craftspeople of the past / other industries with our own. Instead of honing our skills under an expert for many years, we swap jobs and even sub-disciplines frequently. Can we cultivate "craftsmanship" in that manner?

I see it more as realist vs idealist. We need to get this done vs we need the highest quality code base

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