Saturday, March 20, 2010  Blaming your tools  This blog post
"Human-tool intellectual partnership" made me think on our own
field. Here's some thoughts of mine.  As long as I've been
around, I've heard people bring up the phrase "a poor craftsman
blames his tools." With the rise in the software craftsmanship
movement and the associated (oft-
misrepresented/misunderstood/misapplied) terminology, this
happens even more often.  When someone talks about how you are
more productive with Rails than with some other frameworks, out
comes the 'a poor craftsman blames his tools.'  When you talk
about how using a dynamic language offers affordances and design
possibilities that a static language, such as C# or Java,
doesn't you can hear the cries of 'a poor craftsman blames his
tools.'  How often would you see a professional, custom-
furniture maker use a saw to pound in a nail, or use an awl to
attach a screw. Could they pound in a nail with a saw? Sure, I
bet they could. But they don't. They choose the right tool for
th