Software development has evolved a lot the last decade and we, the developers, are not considered code monkeys any more.

We're expected to write clean and maintainable code that continuously evolve with business needs. Some times we need to work remotely in dynamic and multi-cutltural environments using a variety of technologies and programming languages. Nevertheless we still want to feel creative and proud about their code. Not to mention the numerous new technologies that we need to continuously learn to be always "on the train". 

This book is inspired by an article I read some time ago that changed the way I was perceiving software development. Is it an art? An applied science? a bunch of engieering practices? What kind of knowledge do we need to avoid writing crappy code? Are just technical skills enough for a brilliant professional career?  

Through out the chapters of this book I will discuss the essential skills, the proper attitude and the useful practices that modern developers should have in order be able to treat code, like flowers and systems, like gardens.  

Below you can find a raw outline of the table of contents but bear in mind that it's contantly under development

Chapter 1 : The Gardener / Developer parallelism

Chapter 2 : Combining "Art" and "Gardening" 

Chapter 3 : Essential skills of an artist

Chapter 4 : Essential skills of a gardener

Chapter 5 : The gardener's toolset

Chapter 6 : Gardening as an attitude

Chapter 7 : Practices re-loaded

Chapter 8 : Treating junior developers as flowers

Chapter 9 : 

more to come...