Software Gardeners are professionals who perceive software development in a different way. Our goal is to spread the word of our core values, be mentors for the new developers and create software that it is developed at the highest quality bar.
Every software gardener believes and embraces the following :
- We treat software systems as gardens and code as flowers. Although we don’t disagree regarding software as a “craft”, we believe that software is a living and breathing “being”, not just an object, created using the best materials.
- We constantly mentor young developers and we share our knowledge at every opportunity. Junior developers are like flowers that need to be irrigated to blossom. We are the water, the sun, the soil, the fertilizer for every (young) software professional.
- Software development is a lot more than slinging code. We know the practices and we apply them effectively. We make use of the most productive tools and our skill-set includes both soft and technical skills. We also understand that our overall attitude is what defines us as software gardeners.
- We care about our code and this care, we show it continuously, day by day, every moment in every single line of code we we write.
- We are not only able to respond to change but we are prepared about the endless – internal and external – environment reform.
- We treat customers as the people who will walk in our garden and smell our fragrant flowers. Having said that we engage them from the first day, to make sure that all their needs, requirements and expectations will be met.
The above statements may be freely copied in any form, but only in their entirety through this notice.
Version 1.0 – 03/05/2015 – © SoftwareGarden.io
Cool idea, like the idea of code as a garden and features as beautiful nice smelling flowers. However, why do we treat our customers as women? Don’t men get to enjoy the garden as well? A cool idea like this manifesto should imho be without gender bias. 🙂
Thanks a lot for the feedback. Indeed!! That was a mistake and I just changed it!!
> We treat customers as the women who will walk in our garden and smell our fragrant flowers. Having said that we engage them from the first day, to make sure that all their needs, requirements and expectations will be met.
IMO, This is sexist: you should not treat customers as women, but as loved people, irregardless of gender
Thanks a lot for the feedback. Indeed!! That was a mistake and I just changed it!!
> We treat customers as the women who will walk in our garden and smell our fragrant flowers. Having said that we engage them from the first day, to make sure that all their needs, requirements and expectations will be met.
IMO, This could be improved: you should not treat customers as women, but as loved people, irregardless of gender
Thanks a lot for the feedback. Indeed!! That was a mistake and I just changed it!!
When comparing young developers with flowers I guess you mean “soil” and not “oil”.
Most flowers don’t like oil 🙂
Of course!!! Thanks for catching this!! Fixed
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Hi, this manifesto seems to be the same as the Software Craftsmanship values. What is the difference for you with that?
Hi Alessandro
I paste a paragraph of my article about software gardening ( http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/softwaregardening.php )
I hope it explains the basic difference 🙂
I am not really convinced with the metaphor of the garden, actually. A garden can’t live in an hostile environment, for example. No matter what you do, a garden made for, say, tropical flowers, can’t live in Alaska 🙂 Also, a gardener is a professional, in the end. And so we come back to the point of professionalism, which is the key of Software Craftsmanship.
But still, the values you advocate are important and noble, so..keep going! 🙂
Your comments are more than welcome 🙂
Thanks for taking the time to provide feedback. I really appreciate it!
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“code we we write” – grammar / duplication nazi here…
We care about our code and this care, we show it continuously, day by day, every moment in every single line of code we we write.
We we, hehe.