Andy Hunt is more of a professional writer than the founder of the Agile Manifesto. His " The Pragmatic Programmer", " The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master", and " Programming Ruby: A Pragmatic Programmer's Guide" are all well-reviewed programmers' books. He has never left Agile yet has not tied his life tightly to it. His spiritual life is rich and fulfilling: he makes music, does woodworking, writes science fiction, etc.

Andy's career has gone through many stages, from working as a programmer for a Fortune 100 company to working at a "really elite, interesting high-tech software company", to being a consultant for all of the above, author, and publisher. He now holds a stable title of Entrepreneur.

Programmer Andy

In a speech in early 2020, he introduced himself like this: "My name is Andy Hunt, and I've been programming in business for 38 years." So let's start with his profession as a programmer. Andy started his career in the DIY era of Heathkits, radio's CP/M (microcomputer operating system), and S-100 bus. Andy wrote his first actual program - a text editor and database manager - for an Ohio science challenger. Andy started hacking into 6502 assemblers, modifying the operating system, and writing his first commercial program (a manufacturing resource planning system) in 1981.

After that, he learned Unix and C and began designing and building more extensive, more interconnected systems. While working for a large company, Andy followed Usenet closely and started his early email habit by accessing ihnp4 directly. Then, he worked on electronic prepress and computer graphics and dedicated himself to delving into beautiful silicon graphics machines. That's it, Andy knows several flavors of Unix, from BSD to System V.

Writer Andy

As he gained more experience, he came across a "crazy" project: 5 million lines of code on a tight deadline. After taking over the project team, he met Dave Thomas, and the two worked in the same way, completing the tasks on time and keeping the project on track. They realized that many projects had common problems: team members often didn't test, didn't communicate, requirements were inconsistent, and no one even knew how to build software. So they wanted to share the philosophy of how these programmers, software teams, and industries work with more teams through the experience accumulated from this experience and other consulting cases.

Many years later, faced with The Pragmatic Bookshelf series, both authors will recall the distant afternoon when they sent the manuscripts to the publishers. In the beginning, they had no plans for what would follow, nor did they intend it to be a textbook or monograph, but rather a kind of personal experience summarizing notes or a booklet that was helpful to the work. But as the content became more and more complete and the manuscript became more extensive, Andy accepted the suggestion of relatives and friends and chose a high-quality publisher of software books. They hope that the rejection letter from the publishing house will indicate why they couldn't publish, adjusting and optimizing the manuscript accordingly. But this "cunning plan" failed, the publisher directly accepted the manuscript and informed them that it was ready for publication. Then, the first edition of " The Pragmatic Programmer" was published in the fall of 1999.

Source: Amazon 

In 2000, Andy met Uncle Bob in Miami, and they exchanged views on lightweight project management for software companies. This fall, Bob and Martin Fowler came up with the various competing lightweight process advocates to form a unified manifesto and invited Andy. In the end, Andy and 16 other participants spent three days at Snowbird Ski Resort for opinion discussions that resulted in the Agile Manifesto.

Publisher Andy

Andy and Dave Thomas have worked closely together ever since Agile's universal applicability made it possible to extend beyond software development. In 2003, they established The Pragmatic Bookshelf publishing company using agile principles.

What makes this publishing company different is that:

• They are publishers for developers;
• Authors can write directly in markup language;
• A shorter publishing process;
• Automate where it is possible;
• Authors can update their books and create new electronic editions at any time;
• Higher royalties paid to authors (3-4 times the normal ones);
• Provide readers with DRM-free eBooks;
• Open e-books that have not yet been officially published.

For Andy, who is both a publisher and an author, in addition to the well-known " The Pragmatic Programmer", he and Thomas also co-authored and published more than a dozen software development books, such as " Pragmatic Unit Testing in Java with JUnit" and " Pragmatic Version Control Using CVS", etc. They also introduced this new language from Japan to the Western world with the book " Programming Ruby: A Pragmatic Programmer's Guide".

Father Andy

As an entrepreneur, Andy often works from home. With multiple skills, he has an active mind and efficiently handles problems from a different perspective, integrating knowledge from other industries with software development. For example, he believes that a company's organizational structure impacts job security. Developers focus on quantity over quality because of the presence of maintainers and just want to get paid more. The reason is that the root of this type of organizational dislocation lies in accounting standards. The root cause of this type of organizational dysfunction is accounting standards.

He is also unconventional in terms of working methods, describing his computer desktop as "neither spotless nor a messy pigpen". He sorts and batches files. He believes that breaking down the files into finer-grained categories would be a waste of time, but if he doesn't, he can't find the files needed, so he generally files them into a few simple topics. This method allows finding the correct storage bucket with a quick linear search, which is an excellent way for Andy to share for moderate efficiency.

Faced with the balance between work and family, his response was "the same challenges with different turning points". Therefore, with the hat of an entrepreneur, work, family, and rest are no longer completely independent elements, they are regarded as a whole. The kids are also part of the company, helping their father pack for a speaking engagement, preparing martinis for his soon-to-be homecoming, or playing by the pool. At the same time, Andy brings his laptop to code, write articles, and create sales plans for the publisher. The whole family is on the same page.

When working from home, he thinks it's a matter of prioritizing whether to stay with the kids or go to work. The balance between work and family is a two-way give and take. If the kids have predictable school performances and activities, work will make way for that. But if specific work issues must be dealt with in the evenings or on weekends, the children will also consciously respect and not bother their father.

"Slash Middle-aged" Andy

In addition to being agile, Andy also writes novels. His new book " Conglommora" is a science fiction novel with a magnificent image of a future world where the green earth of old was long gone. The People had printed their family ships from the reclaimed ruins and fled the devastation to find another planet, a new home. But they discovered that there were no other suitable homes in the cosmos. So they stopped their wandering and joined their ships together here at the edge of Nothing to form the Conglommora. Suddenly thrust into a world of adventure, Charlie has to confront his demons as this mysterious stranger plummets them into an incredible journey across the galaxy to confront the past and threaten the future.

Source: Amazon 

This novel is also done in agile methods, and Andy has also read many quantum physics books and learned a lot about astronomy.

In addition to writing science fiction, Latin, flute, trumpet, keyboardist, rocker, woodworking, etc. This series of skills is hidden behind his career as a programmer turned writer and publisher. It can be said that his soul has always been full and rich, from the "Slash Youth" with multiple skills to the "Slash Middle-aged" who is not limited to agile now. His latest album of electronic ambient music features vintage and modern synthesizers suitable for listening while programming. He has a well-organized schedule in his woodworking workshop, where he works on dovetails. And the novel writing that has achieved a good reputation is also preparing for the next one.

On how to switch comfortably between various identities, his life goal can be shared with readers: "To understand".