Apprenticeship Patterns

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Apprenticeship makes a difference because it instills a lifelong passion to master the craft. It instills a passion for perpetual learning and, in the process, enables the apprentice to become a great developer.

Pete McBreen, Software Craftsmanship

This book is written for software apprentices—for people who have had a taste of developing software and want to take it further, but need some guidance. Whether you have a college degree from a prestigious computer science program or are entirely self-taught, you recognize that there are great developers out there, and you aspire to achieve the same mastery that they possess. This book is written entirely for you—not for your boss, not for your team leader, not for your professor. There are many other books we would recommend for people in those roles, but this book is for people at the beginning of the journey.

While writing this book, we were heavily influenced by the principles and ideals of software craftsmanship. Indeed, the title of the book reflects this. The concept of apprenticeship is based on the medieval craft model, where small teams of practitioners work together and inexperienced apprentices help the journeymen and master craftsmen do their work. One of our goals for this book is to inspire the people who love to create software to stay focused on their craft. The journey discussed here starts with “Hello world!”, but where does it end? Far too often billing alarm, it ends with a promotion to middle ...