Why Software Development is a Craft

Although many of the people who have been attracted to this movement, mainly because they are passionate about programming, I can't help feeling that this metaphor like many others does not describe software development either. I'm not sure that it is that useful.

For me software is becoming more varied and ubiquitous it is some systems will need engineering vigour, others perhaps are design problems, others have heavy linguistic elements, others are mathematical and many are built from building blocks. Moving through the software profession I think you meet characters that in other worlds would be anything from lawyers through bankers to builder/plumbers.

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