Simplicity... It's a good thing!

It's not directly related to the role of an Agile Toolsmith, but I found Andrew Binstock's essay in the May 15th issue of Software Development Times fascinating. The same article is also on his blog.

Very briefly, it describes a set of "rules" to help you think in a more object-oriented manner when writing code. While the rules are (IMHO) not applicable for large-scale projects, such rules guide you towards simpler code, and as most developers are reminded daily the simpler the code the easier it is to maintain.

In a similar way the toolsmith should always aim for the simplest possible set of tools needed to get the job done. For example, if you are already using MSBuild (probably as a by-product of using Visual Studio), it may be appropriate to use msbuildtasks instead of NAnt. On the other hand, NAnt offers certain benefits - like cross-platform capability and the fact that it is open-source which may make it a better tool, depending on your project's unique needs.