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Spec Driven Development — Chapter-01: About the author
- Source: /library/Spec Driven Development/source-file.pdf
- PDF pages: 11–12
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About the author I started programming in the 90s, writing software for video rental stores, back when renting a tape was still a business. In 1998 I built my first ERP, an integrated management system, in Visual Basic 6 with SQL Server. Real clients used it and it grew for years. It also rotted in my hands, and that experience taught me early how much it costs to build without a method. From 2002 on I worked on systems that had no right to fail: international registries and access control at the Federal Police, international internet banking, the Basel II rollout, the risk requirements the Central Bank imposes on banks. A reusable framework I wrote back then is still in production at a large Brazilian bank almost twenty years later, without anyone having had to rewrite it. Then came the phones. Dozens of published apps, in partnerships that included research and development projects with Microsoft. Along the way, an artificial intelligence system that analyzed 10 million calls a month for a support operation with more than 150,000 employees across 13 countries. In 2017 I launched an app of my own, Meu Cronograma Capilar. It passed 10 million downloads, holds a 4.8 rating and has been in the category's Top 10 on the Play Store since 2018. I still take care of it alone to this day: architecture, code, tests, publishing and operation. I mention this app because it proves what no job title proves: I know how to deliver the whole cycle, alone, and sustain it for almost a decade.
That path matters here for one reason. I entered the profession when the heavy process, full of documents signed before a single line of code, was the rule. I watched agile development be born as a reaction, work, and then degenerate into ceremony. I worked under every methodology this material discusses, with the scars of someone who was there. Today I build software with AI in production every day, and this material was produced with the techniques it teaches: specification, clarification, plan, tasks, implementation. The specification tree in the repository records every step, including this text you are reading. When I claim that something works, it is because I saw it work in production or I point to whoever demonstrated it before me. J.C.Ködel