I work on legacy applcations. Big, horrible, poorly designed applications. Applications with their own custom string libraries and XML serializers. With bad pl

I work on legacy applcations. Big, horrible, poorly designed applications. Applications with their own custom string libraries and XML serializers. With bad plumbing and an eye for "making it work." 12 years later and they have to call me in to help them out. It crashes sporadically. It has memory leaks. It's useable but users want new features and programmers can't add them. There's no documentation anywhere. Most of the code is practically unreadable. A craftsperson is one who practices a trade or skill. The art of craftsmanship (craftpersonship?) is the method and rigor one employs in their studies. To be a craftsperson with good craftsmanship, one must continually practice their skill and endeavour to become better at it. If you're not a craftsperson and your philosophy of work is to simply "get 'er done," then you don't care about the quality of the work or your skill as a person performing the work. This kind of person will produce the kind of software I described above. True, the users of this software have been using it for years without caring or even knowing what programming language it's written in -- but they do notice the memory leaks when the application sporadically crashes. They do get frustrated with convoluted "features" that are really work arounds to flaws in the initial design of the program. The quality of your output as a programmer matters. In the case of producing software, the ends do not justify the means. If you write bad code that works, you have only sold your customer short. In my opinion, they pay you for your skill and trust that you will use the best tools available and write software with a high degree of quality. To use your analogy, people trust the plumber to provide the quality and skill to do the job and do it properly. Not to hack together the first thing that works.