[tarsinge]

I am both, I own a small agency when I have to be practical, and have fun crafting code on the hobby side.

I think what craftsmen miss is the different goals. Projects fall on a spectrum from long lived app that constantly evolve with a huge team working on it to not opened again after release. In the latter, like movie or music production (or most video games), only the end result matters, the how is not part of the final product. Working for years with designers and artists really gave me perspective on process vs end result and what matter.

That doesn’t mean the end result is messy or doesn’t have craftsmanship. Like if you call a general contractor or carpenter for a specific stuff, you care that the end result is well made, but if they tell you that they built a whole factory for your little custom made project (the equivalent of a nice codebase), not only it doesn’t matter for you but it’ll be wildly overpriced and delayed. In my agency that means the website is good looking and bug free after being built, no matter how messy is the temporary construction site.

In contrast if you work on a SaaS or a long lived project (e.g. an OS) the factory (the code) is the product.

So to me when people say they are into code craftsmanship I think they mean in reality they are more interested in factory building than end product crafting.

[arevno]

I also do third party software development, and my approach is always: bill (highly, $300+/hr) for the features and requirements, but do the manual refactoring and architecture/performance/detail work on your own time. It benefits you, it benefits the client, it benefits the relationship, and it handles the misunderstanding of your normie clients with regard to what constitutes "working".

Say it takes 2 hours to implement a feature, and another hour making it logically/architecturally correct. You bill $600 and eat $200 for goodwill and your own personal/organizational development. You're still making $200/hr and you never find yourself in meetings with normie clients about why refactoring, cohesiveness, or quality was necessary.

[jfreds]

I agree wholeheartedly. As for the why do craftsmen care so much about the factory instead of the product, I believe the answer is pride. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but writing and shipping a hack is sometimes the high road