Programmers, Estimate Honestly and Fairly

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"We will do no harm, the first of the ethits," he says. "And we always do our best work." But programmers have to estimate how long it will take them to write down instructions so that a person who has never tied a shoe before can tie your ship without being demonstrated. That's the fundamental problem with software. We are communicating with morans. These computers are morons. It's hard to estimate that. So when a manager comes to you and says, i need this by tuesday, you're stuffed with a real problem,. ecause you don't know if you can get this done by t Tuesday.

“The simplest way to describe craftsmanship is pride of workmanship. It is the mindset that you are working on something important and you are going to do it well."

Robert C. Martin (aka Uncle Bob) is the co-founder of cleancoders.com, an acclaimed speaker at conferences worldwide, and prolific author of multiple best-selling books. In this episode, Uncle Bob shared some insights from his latest book, “Clean Craftsmanship”. He first started by sharing the current major challenge of the software development industry, i.e. as a young discipline, it suffers from the state of perpetual inexperience amid exponential acceleration of demand for programmers, which drove Uncle Bob writing the book to help define disciplines, standards and ethics for software craftsmanship. He then touched on the five key disciplines of clean craftsmanship, specifically focusing on test-driven development and refactoring. Towards the latter half, Uncle Bob described a few essential standards and ethics of clean craftsmanship, such as never ship s**t, always be ready, do no harm, and estimate honestly.

Listen out for:

Career Journey - [00:07:29]
Clean Craftsmanship - [00:10:54]
Programmer as a Profession - [00:15:31]
Craftsmanship - [00:18:46]
Disciplines - [00:22:45]
Disciplines: Test-Driven Development - [00:28:50]
Disciplines: Refactoring - [00:34:32]
Code Coverage - [00:39:02]
Standard: Never Ship S**t - [00:42:35]
Standard: Always Be Ready - [00:47:16]
Ethics: Do No Harm - [00:50:01]
Ethics: Estimate Honestly - [00:53:56]
2 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:57:50]

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Robert C. Martin’s Bio
Robert Martin (Uncle Bob) has been a programmer since 1970. He is the co-founder of the online video training company cleancoders.com and founder of Uncle Bob Consulting LLC. He served as Master Craftsman at 8th Light inc and is an acclaimed speaker at conferences worldwide. He is a profilic writer and has published hundreds of articles, papers, blogs, and best-selling books including: “The Clean Coder”, “Clean Code”, “Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices”, and “Clean Architecture”. He also served as the Editor-in-chief of the C++ Report and as the first chairman of the Agile Alliance.

Follow Uncle Bob:

Twitter – @unclebobmartin
Clean Coder – http://cleancoder.com
Clean Coders – https://cleancoders.com
GitHub – https://github.com/unclebob

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