Needs, wants and everything in between

I don't think that the following statement should be surprising to anyone but:

EVERYONE WANTS TO FEEL LISTENED TO

The reason, I think, is that everyone wants to feel like they have equal shot, equal footing to have their needs met. It isn't possible to have your needs met when the other people involved in a conversation are not interested in listening to what you have to say. Beyond that it is increasingly difficult to have your needs met if you are not able to articulate what you actually need.

Sounds easy right - you just have to be able to say what it is that you need... You just have to put it out there and allow it to be heard and then your needs might potentially be met, so what makes it so amazingly fucking hard to ACTUALLY do?

Social interaction, moral codes and judgements

My theory is this - over time we are taught as kids by our parents, and elders about things that we can't say or can't do. Kids are negatively reinforced by their elders about how they use their words and are told that the choices that they make can hurt people. As kids we are taught to take care with other peoples feelings and often the ways in which we are taught to do this are statements like:

"...don't say that..."

"...you can't say that to people, you'll hurt their feelings..."

etc.

But we are rarely positively reinforced for using words and other statements to state what we feel and need while also not hurting the people we are interacting with. Think of it like sharing that toy that there was only one of when you were little. Someone else was using it at the time you wanted to also play with it. Now you have choices, you can walk over and take it, you can ask to play with it, etc. However when young we often don't consider beyond ourselves and we don't often have a role model for interacting. We learn as we go about what gets us in trouble and what doesn't including some of the sneaky "I get my way without getting in trouble" actions that can be taken.

Speculate for a minute though - what IF what we modeled for our kids and others was as truthful as kids tend to be, telling things like they see it with few filters but the words were chosen to be clear and concise and non threatening.

Marshal Rosenberg lays out a discussion and conversation model called nonviolent communication. Where he describes the ideas of stating clearly what you observe about a situation, describing how it makes you feel and as a result what needs you have around it. Seems straight forward but is actually amazingly difficult to do. Think about the last argument you had with someone, do you think that you would have been able to be level headed enough to not escalate the conversation with angry commentary but rather stop and say what you observe and what you feel? Ya, I didn't think so - I know I certainly don't - but I am trying.

Imagine if you will

Now - lets go back to the kids. I mentioned them earlier because I wanted to speculate what our adult interactions would be if we were able to example for our children when they were young a method like nonviolent communication. Kids are unfiltered and wonderfully blunt, they say what they see and their interpretation on it. Kids are not afraid to tell us how they feel, but somewhere along the way as we grow up the interactions we have and the things we are told by our elders drum out of us the ability to just say how we feel, and what we need. I love to speculate how much better a place the world would be if we could all get our needs met. I for sure am looking to get my needs met, and using nonviolent communication where I can to help me articulate them.

Death and Craftsmanship

I have been thinking a great deal about software craftsmanship recently. I have Uncle Bob Martin to thank for making me at least think about it. There is however a life event recently that made me consider the topic in a deep way that I am not sure I really even considered before; you see I had been taking what Uncle Bob was saying about software craftsmanship at face value that is until my Grandfather passed away this weekend.

The Craftsman

When I was younger I used to go over to my grandfathers house, which was not to far from my own home, about 2 or 3 times a month. At the age I was at the time - going to his house was about being able to spend my summer in the pool that my grandparents had, it was about having breakfast, lunch and dinner on the porch, it was about the grill and the amazing food that my grandfather could concoct using it. The time that I spent at my grandparents house was rarely about the things that my grandfather did for work or what he had done as work because my interaction with him was mostly after he retired from the work a day world.

To my knowledge my grandfather worked for Boeing as a machinist making various parts and pieces for either helicopters or for the machines that were machining other parts for the same. What I didn't know until I got older is what an amazing skill my grandfather had for doing what he did - I did NOT realize what a craftsman this man was. You see, my grandfather was able to make the machines he worked with sing and dance to create very specific parts. He was able to set up lathes and other machinery to sharpen existing tools, or create something totally new. My grandfather was able to cause these machines to create parts that had tolerances in dimension of no more then a few 10,000ths of an inch, by hand, day in and day out. When he learned how to do this work he didn't have a CNC machine to program, things were not automated in any significant fashion, he was taught how to make these machines do his bidding by hand, with the lightest of light touches. My grandfather took great pride in what he created - in retrospect, I have that same pride now for what he accomplished doing that work.

Software Development

My grandfathers death and the realization of the talent he displayed when working with machining metal lead me to this, I don't think that my software design and programming should be any different. I should be able to perform gross cutting code as well as fine grained 10,000ths of an inch type code and have it all work. I should be able to call myself a craftsman of software by being able to have someone look at what I have done and say that it is complete and well done. Software craft-persons should be able to look at someone else's work and identify their own craft in it as well as to call out the simple and small foibles made by their compatriot craft-person. Performing the 'craft' of software development, turning ideas into code and doing it with quality and precision, is not easy and not everyone can do it - just like I can't do the things my grandfather did with his machines. However - practice, apprenticeship and other things that go with thinking of software as a craft to master can help you improve what you do, can improve how you think about the work that is software development.

I know from here on out I will be striving to be NEARLY the person that my grandfather was, and nearly the craftsman I know he was in his work. I will work every day to improve how I write my software because knowing who my grandfather was and how he did his work prevents me from doing any less.