"Apprenticeship Patterns" Book Writeup
October 26, 2010
Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for Aspiring Software Craftsman
Dave Hoover, Adewale Oshineye
ISBN: 0596518382
What’s the point? The books aims to provide solutions to common problems that inexperienced developers run into – both technical and professional. The over-arching theme is the road to software craftsmanship and how to advance yourself from apprentice to journeyman to master.
How was it? I thought this book was awesome. It follows the established “patterns” approach and gives context, problem, solution and action items for each section. So many of the sections have proved really valuable to me already. The book is new enough that all of the suggested action items seemed relevant (things like “write a blog post” or “look at the source code on GitHub”). I especially like the Create Feedback Loops and Confront Your Ignorance/ Retreat Into Competence patterns.
Who should read it? I think the book is aimed towards newer developers, but there is also some value in the book for engineers at any stage in their career. The parts about making your own career roadmap are very helpful and since the path to becoming a master is long and winding, I think that most people would get something out of the book. It is a pretty short (under 200 pages) so you could easily tackle it in a weekend.
Notes: I read this entirely on my Kindle and there were no issues. This book is also available online on O’Reilly Chimera Labs.