Communities of professionals don't just spring into being on their own. In this episode we welcome a special guest, Mike Clement, to talk with us about his experiences in starting and building communities. Meeting with a group of kindred spirits can make a huge difference in your career.

A professional doesn't just write code, they also know when to delete it. In this episode, we discuss the problems that code can cause and share some ideas on how to go about making your codebase smaller.

Practice is key to learning and developing skills. It provides us fast feedback and allows us to fail in safe efforts which can be reversed or thrown away. Playing in code can motivate us and our teams to improve, creating outcomes that employers desire.

What does it mean for a software team to be effective? What sorts of things can you do to increase your effectiveness as a team? In this episode, we discuss the principles and practices which we have seen in common among effective teams.

Coding is a specialized skill where we learn to communicate with a machine. Unfortunately, this can often blind us to the fact that crafting code involves a lot of communication with humans. Writing clean, expressive code communicates with other coders. Communicating well with non-coders helps us understand business needs so we can write the right code.

Failing projects are the bane of a software developer. In this episode, we discuss how principles of crafting software can rescue a failing project. Whether the problem is rooted in the code, the team, or the system, we can improve our feedback loops, make small but significant improvements, and focus on finishing instead of starting. Slowly but surely, the project can turn around.

What does it mean to craft software? In this first episode, your hosts David Adsit, Matt Baker, and Allan Stewart discuss what we think software craftsmanship is all about. We cover how crafting code helps you find better ways of doing things, steadily add value, and build a community of professionals. We also talk about how this craft is not about art as an expression or perfectionism; nor is it about elitism or exclusion.