The Software Craftsman: Professionalism, Pragmatism, Pride

Foreword

In 1973 Roberta Flack sang “Killing Me Softly.” You’ve no doubt heard it in elevators or on your grandmother’s radio station. It’s a soft, lilting ballad about a woman who goes to a concert and hears a young man sing a song that she so strongly identifies with that she ponders whether the young man had found and read her letters. She even professes her belief that he feels her pain when he strums his guitar, and is singing the story of her whole life.

The book you are holding feels that way to me. Sandro Mancuso’s career has been very different from mine. He is a bit younger than I. He and I have lived our lives and worked our careers on different continents and in different cultures. We share neither nationality nor ethnicity. I’ve ...