The Software Alchemist

Practitioners of any field are prone to wonder what sets the experts apart from the merely competent. At least, I wonder that about software development. So, after much contemplation and general navel gazing, I started to notice a pattern in the professionals I am influenced by.

• I was drawn to JavaScript by jQuery, a library of utilities made by John Resig.
• I'm getting into using the Ruby language. Folks are drawn to Ruby by Rails, the framework that DHH made to make web development easier.
• Game developers on many platforms cut their teeth (and often produce successful games) on Adam Saltsman's incredibly slick Flixel framework.
• The Pragmatic Programmers commend us to "Write code that writes code", rather than churning out more and more lines of hand written code to maintain.
• I recently had the opportunity to learn from the highly inspirational JP Boodhoo. Other than his mind-rocking pep talk after the session, what really stuck with me is how well he constructed a software based learning environment to enable interaction and collaboration between everyone in the coding session.
• And then, I looked to someone who predates even the field of computer science itself. In order to figure out exactly how the planets rotated around the sun, Isaac Newton invented integral and differential calculus.

Notice a pattern yet? Libraries, frameworks, code that writes code, custom shell scripts, differential calculus... They're all tools. The professionals make their own tools, and then turn them over to others to benefit from as well. This is what I believe draws a dividing line between what JP so graphically labels "producer" and "consumer" developers.