I have just been on summer vacation on Naxos in Greece, and i brought along uncle Bob´s (Robert C. Martin) book “Clean Code” to read on the beach. A couple weeks earlier i had been to NDC 2009 listening to him talk about what makes a developer or programmer a professional. This, the book and all the other great sessions on code quality and agile development got me thinking – what statement can i make as a programmer, developer and software engineer to show the world “I am a professional!” and what would be simple enough to not be constraining?
So, between the great door of Naxos and the mountain of Zeus i wrote down 6 simple guidelines in what i call “The agile developer´s manifesto“. These guidelines will help me improve myself as a developer, software engineer and solution architect.
These are guidelines, not rules that yield punishment if “broken”. I´ll try to follow them in my daily routine and also try to help others see the benefit of them.
There are developer guidelines/manifestos written, like the agile manifesto, but i find this a bit “abstract”. Not a bad thing in itself, and it is the thoughts of great developers, but for myself i want a more hands on simple guidelines to “follow”. Patrick Cauldwell has also written a developer manifesto, but this again has way too much detail for me. Talking about how many % test coverage you must have, and what tools and technology to use etc. I don´t like that.
I would love to hear what other developers think of this manifesto. Is there anything missing?
