The well-known Quarry Worker’s Creed, called out in prefaces to books such as “The Pragmatic Programmer” and “Ship While you Sleep”, posits the notion of IT done right as more than simple engineering discipline – good software development, for example, should not “preclude individual craftsmanship”. Drawing parallels to the construction of large cathedrals built in Europe during the Middle Ages, the quarry worker’s creed points out that while generations of builders advanced the state of structural engineering from one decade to the next, the “…carpenters, stonecutters, carvers, and glass workers were all craftspeople, interpreting the engineering requirements to produce a whole that transcended the purely mechanical side of the construction”.
We who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals, says the Quarry Worker’s Creed, and as companies, cities and countries lean on their IT teams to enable the transformation to digital business, the talented men and women that work in technology are not just builders: they are increasingly artisans and craftsmen – experts in the tools of the trade and also nuanced in navigating the vicissitudes that present themselves in the quest to build and secure the technology that powers the next wave of innovation and growth.
Cybersecurity teams in particular have their hands full today. On one hand there are all the new advances that we often can’t get fast enough: crowd-funded financial services, online education, virtual booking for work spaces, driverless cars – to name just a few. All of these need security be conceptualized and built-in from the beginning (or not, to our peril). On the other hand, their adversaries, the often-elusive hackers are increasingly sophisticated actors, who design malware, tweak code and inject vulnerabilities with the same flair and passion of a renaissance architect. Continue reading “We Who Cut Mere Stones Must Always Be Envisioning Cathedrals”
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