# Philosophy

The Code Bureau has many strong beliefs.

It's 57 pages, so there are no expecations that everyone reads. It does,
however, have many brilliant ideas and pretty much outlines exactly how the
Code Bureau is invisioned to work.

[Valve's Employee
Handbook](http://media.steampowered.com/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployeeHandbook.pdf).

## T-Shaped People

Within most industries there are now too many skills for single person learn
even a fraction of the whole supply chain. A very early economic concept was
"division of labour", which entails cooperation between people with different
and specific skills. However, being able to cooperate not only requires a
knowing a specific skill well, but also knowing a little about the
rest of the teams skills. This not only for them to appreciate what others
do, but also make it easier to figure out where to turn when help is needed.

At Valve this is called "T-Shaped People", and is described (page 46) as
"...people who are both generalists (highly skilled at a broad set of valuable
things — the top of the T) and also experts (among the best in their field within
a narrow discipline — the vertical leg of the T)."

Becoming an expert in a discipline is greatly simplified by truly enjoying it.
To find such a discipline, testing many others first is usually required.
Therefore, it is recommended to become generalists first, and focus on becoming
an expert only after stumbling upon something that really excites.

## Seperation of Design & Logic

An extension of the "T-Shaped People" philosphy is a strong belief in the
need of separation of design and programming. Design and programming are
such vast fields that no person can possibly become proficient in both.
Thus, TCB believes developers should code, while designers design.

This is actually quite different from how many in the web industry work. 
The term web designer is still more common than web developer, which is
a strong indication that. The result has been that many sub par developers
has written sub par code for very long.

As pure coders TCB can truly begin to unleash the potential of web development.
TCB not only truly understands the coding paradigm, but also exactly how the
servers run and how to interact with them.

## Open Source

As a result of our profound love to code and beautiful technical solutions, TCB
always strive to use the most optimal toolset. As previously mentioned, TCB
exclusively work with open source software. This is not because it is
free from costs, but because open-source tools are actually often the best.

## Modularity and Reusability

2. Build a reusable and modular code base to continuously reduce development
   time for future projects.

A good consultant always charges new clients for work debited previous
clients. TCB's toolset was chosen with modularity as a primary target, and
all products developed at TCB are also designed to be modular.
Through modularity, the intent is to _massproduce tailormade solutions_.

A module used in one project should easily be included in another. This should
result in a high monetary yield of every programmed hour as they can
always reuse code from previous projects.

TCB provides services, and services in general experience lower or no Economies
of Scale. However, as more projects are completed and the code base grow, less
code should be required for each new application. This should greatly reduce
development costs, while leaving revenues unchanged.

## Kaizen

Kaizen is a Japanese management concept loosely translated as "good change".
Kaizen entails continuous improvements to all aspects of an organization
by involving all employees at all levels.

Kaizen is applied to everything at TCB, from this guide to the our client's
websites. Combined with the modularity of most code, TCB is effeciently able 
deploy updates to all our customers, continuously improving their products
even after they have been delivered.

TCB aims to teach all students and employees an awareness that nothing is ever
really complete or perfect. Through small, continuous steps of improvement in
every part of the organization, everything can be optimized further.