Apprenticeship Patterns

APPENDIX A

Pattern List

• A Different Road: You have discovered that the direction you want to go is different from the path toward software craftsmanship.

• Be the Worst: Your learning has decelerated as you’ve quickly surpassed everyone around you.

• Breakable Toys: You work in an environment that does not allow for failure, yet you need a safe place to learn.

• Concrete Skills: You want to work on a great development team, yet you have very little practical experience.

• Confront Your Ignorance: You have discovered wide gaps in your knowledge, and your work requires that you understand these topics.

• Craft over Art: You need to deliver a solution for your customer, and you can choose from a simpler, proven solution or take the opportunity to create something novel and fantastic.

• Create Feedback Loops: You can’t tell if you’re suffering from “unconscious incompetence.”

• Dig Deeper: You have only superficial knowledge of many tools, technologies, and techniques and keep hitting roadblocks as you try to tackle tougher problems.

• Draw Your Own Map: None of the career paths that your employer provides is a fit for you.

• Expand Your Bandwidth: Your understanding of software development is narrow and focused only on the low-level details of what you’ve worked on in your day job.

• Expose Your Ignorance: You have discovered wide gaps in your knowledge and are afraid that people will think that you don’t know what you’re doing.

• Familiar Tools: You are finding it difficult to estimate your work because your toolset ...