Software is not a craft. We aren’t housepainters. Competence is not supreme in a shifting, complex system. Our users’ needs change, our technologies change, and every change we undertake is one we’ve never made before. We cannot possess all the skills we need; our secret weapon is learning, never perfection.

Software is not an art. Neither are we creating a portrait or a poem, where there is such a thing as “done.” What we build affects people more directly than works of art. To do this it must keep running, it must work on their devices, it must keep changing. Software has a greater power to change people by changing the world, but these systems are more than one person can make, and they never complete.

Serious software development is the practice of symmathesy. Software is not Art. Software is the next thing after art. It is something new, that we’ve never been able to do before. And that implies that our current time is the next thing after the Renaissance. We are developing whole new ways of being human together. I am thrilled to be a part of this, and to be in the thick of it. To be more than a craftsperson, more even than a developer. I am a Symmathecist, in the medium of software. (sim-MATH-uh-sist)