The Unlikely Artisans
When I think of the word “artisan,” I think of people who are writers, painters, sculptors, and actors. I think of people who have trained for years to do one specific craft; people who are masters of a medium that most people could only dream of being able to conquer. To me, artisans are the people who I watch in absolute amazement as they effortlessly create something beautiful, right before my very eyes. They are people who take some base materials, essentially nothing, and form them into something wonderful.
…people who are masters of a medium that most people could only dream of being able to conquer.
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to travel to Italy with my beautiful bride for my honeymoon, and while we were there, we toured the beautiful islands of Murano and Burano. These two islands are located a short boat ride away from Venice and they are world renowned for their glass and lace, respectively. When we arrived at Murano, we docked at one of the handfuls of glass factories on the island and were immediately ushered inside (highly supervised the whole way by Italian men in suits) to see a glassblowing demonstration by one of their master artisans.
The whole demonstration went by in a flash — while the master artisan was doing his work, another member of the family was narrating everything he was doing. Within mere minutes, the master artisan had created a beautiful blown vase; a few minutes later, he had created an even more beautiful sculpture of a horse. From nothing but sand and some colorful minerals, this man had created an object of pure beauty, and I was utterly amazed.
…the idea of being able to create something of pure beauty every single day sounds like an absolute dream!
Ever since I saw that demonstration, I’ve had the idea of artisanship on my mind — more specifically, what does it mean to be an artisan, and how on earth could I possibly become one? To me, being an artisan must be a life of immense satisfaction; the idea of being able to create something of pure beauty every single day sounds like an absolute dream! The only problem is, I don’t really have any innate talents towards drawing, writing, and especially not glassblowing. Maybe if I quit my day job and focused solely on being the type of artisan I saw on those islands, I could begin to scratch the surface of what that Italian glassblower showed me, but I’m already 22 years old, which is by no means exceptionally old, but my clock is ticking!
So with that bouncing around in my head, I headed back to work. I work in the web software industry at one of the most amazing companies that I could ever be a part of, so right when I got back, I dove head-first into my work, only trying to think about this idea of “artisanship” in my free time.
It really strives to bring beauty and simplicity to otherwise potentially nasty web code…
At work, we use a framework (honestly, the best one that I’ve ever used) called Laravel, which is a PHP-based framework made by Taylor Otwell. It really strives to bring beauty and simplicity to otherwise potentially nasty web code, which is a nice feature to have when you’re pushing out thousands and thousands of lines of code that will most likely need to be referenced and understood months (if not years) into the future!
Why do I bring this up? Well, it wasn’t until this past week at work where I finally had my “ah-ha!” moment as to how I was going to become an artisan, just like that glassblower on Murano. I was really wrestling with adding a feature to one of my projects at work, so I decided to turn to Laravel’s documentation to see if I had missed something. I arrived at the Laravel homepage and was greeted with something I had seen countless times before, Laravel’s logo and tagline. It hit me like a truck — Laravel refers to itself as “The PHP Framework for Web Artisans”.
We’re definitely in an era right now where some people regard programmers as rockstars…
I couldn’t believe it. Web artisans — the answer to my question had literally been right under my nose the entire time! For me, at least, it’s really hard to see programmers, software engineers, etc. in roles equivalent to those of my stereotypical “artisans,” but in truth, we are! We’re definitely in an era right now where some people regard programmers as rock stars, either by directly wanting to be a programmer for the money, experience, love of technology, or something else, or indirectly by just loving the products that programmers create! I think that people who work with computer code are even more than rockstars though, I think we’re artisans.
It doesn’t matter what role you hold in the creation of software — whether you’re a front-end or back-end developer, a UX/UI designer, a database architect, cloud computing specialist, or anything in between, we all see the beauty of software in some regard. I dare say it would be difficult to be successful in this field if we didn’t find some sort of beauty in the work that we do. Working as a full-stack developer, I see both sides of the coin. I get to see the beauty of front-end code when it makes a user’s experience more enjoyable and doesn’t waste their time, and I get to see the beauty of back-end code that runs quickly, is well-tested and gives the user exactly the data that they want, nothing more, nothing less.
So what’s the takeaway? If you’re a person involved with the creation of software, remember that you are an artisan.
So what’s the takeaway? If you’re a person involved with the creation of software, remember that you are an artisan. You have the potential to create something beautiful, useful, and fun! As artisans, though, we need to keep honing our craft, so don’t be scared to learn something new, brush up on old skills, and keep those side-projects going! Life gets crazy, but the love of our art will always give us fuel to keep going. If you’re a person on the other side of the spectrum, remember that we as software developers, designers, engineers, and architects have a love for the art we create. And next time someone asks you about any artisans that you know, point them our way, I’m sure we would LOVE to talk about our artisanship.
