craftable — prologue

#0 craftable: a prolog(ue)

Hi!

craftable engineering team is starting a series of articles, five to be more precise. Think of it like our own advent calendar but without chocolates and will end around Easter 🐣.

How it started

Every good book needs a prologue, to give context, clarity and above all a sense of continuity.

craftable software was born in February 2020 b.CoV-2 (before SARS-CoV-2) with a clear purpose.

Our purpose

Design and maintain complex software while enjoying the journey. This message is visible across many elements of our brand, like the logo inspired by Origami (/ˌɒrɪˈɡɑːmi/) forms, a complex yet satisfying hobby.

Our motto “software with purpose”, keeps reminding us that we do software for a reason: to help people and organisations thrive.

Our name is another great element to show our obsession with craftsmanship. So much so that I feel like I should tell the story about how the name came to be.

Many moons ago, I had the opportunity to read “The Pragmatic Programmer”, a book by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas. (If you are starting your career or if you want to rethink it, give it a read.) Some bits stuck with me for a very long time and altered my perception on how a software development career should evolve. A few things I live by are:

Don’t Live with Broken Windows; Be a Catalyst for Change; Don’t Panic; Read the Damn Error Message; Don’t Assume It, Prove It; Keep It Simple

But above all, the “Care About Your Craft” remark seemed to encompass everything in a single, catchy phrase. Care about what you do, how you do it, with whom you do it. Not only will you have great results but you will also enjoy doing it.

craftable etymology

Craftable, from craft +‎ -able, albeit not a word in the oxford dictionary, is meant to be an adjective, like enjoyable, readable or doable in essence something that can be crafted.

This is the type of software we do at craftable, software that can in fact be crafted to a great standard. And as a consequence of that bring a smile to your face every day.

Enjoying what you do, taking pride in it, has a direct correlation with care, innovation, team building, mentoring and personal wellbeing. For me those are the building blocks of our team and values we share with our customers on a daily basis.

That’s all folks!

The next articles will focus entirely on engineering but without this prologue it wouldn’t be possible to see how we approach the problems we solve, how much we enjoy the journey to solve them and what we aim to do as a collective of individuals who share values.

This is our purpose, do software that solve real problems for real people and that we love to do as well.

Next up, “Staff Engineer 101: You probably are one you just don’t know it yet”

Finally, we are hiring great people who want to enjoy the ride, so make sure to check our openings here: https://www.craftablesoftware.com/#careers 💻

craftable — prologue was originally published in craftable on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.