Slashdot Mirror
Film Documents Software Creation
vasanth writes "Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks with Geeks a story of intern programmers at New York-based Fog Creek Software creating a product from scratch to shipping, is now finished, one of the first films to delve wholly into the life and culture of coding. And though it may not be the next Harry Potter, it's an engaging film that focuses more on the personalities of the people than on the technology, bringing to life a process ordinarily wrapped in geek mystique."
Of course the real profit is in increased exposure to Joel's company and the highlighting of his internship program, which likely promises an even better crop of students next summer.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
> They make a big deal of the fact that Copilot works through all firewalls and proxies
I'd like to see that. They'd have to have several proxies at well known addresses listening on all ports, tunnelling their protocol inside various standard protocols on each of those ports (so enough machines to make that possible). But that won't help when your firewall only lets your kids' computer connect to the BBC website, your local network, your local library, and their school.
It looks like VNC on the client, and some proprietary code on their server so that rather than have VNC listen, it connects to their server which acts as a matchmaker. The advantage being that it can get through firewalls, since most of them don't block outgoing connections on port 443.
https://www.copilot.com/tech/
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
There was almost no technical content and nothing dramatic happened. Code Rush and StartUp.com were more entertaining.
The last time I tried Remote Assistance to help my Dad who was 100 miles away, it said it couldn't find the host 'dadpc'. No kidding professor. If I have to set up static IP and external DNS for my dad's home PC and configure port forwarding on his router/firewall to use Remote Assist, I'll just install VNC thanks.
With CoPilot (as I understand it), both ends just act as a client, and you go through the CoPilot servers - so if you can make an outbound TCP/IP connection to their VNC servers (I'm guessing they support port 80 for obvious reasons), then you win, and nobody gets goo on them.
In other words, it's exactly like go2mypc, VNC but fun, snappy, easy, bypasses firewalls and highly commoditized not to mention being 5 years old.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
I actually tried the Copilot product. It's very easy to use and works well over faster connections. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well over high latency/low bandwidth connections. I think this has more to do with basing the product on VNC than on anything they did wrong. I ended up with GoToMeeting, which works exceptionally well over slower connections. I was able to (usably) remote contol a 1920x1200 screen that was located on a home broadband connection across the US. Still, the movie looks very cool, and it's possible Copilot performance will improve with some tweaks. It would probably work well for people with small remote offices that have decent upstream connections.
That, of course, is a plagiarized version of a quote by Paul Erdos, who described mathematicians as "machine[s] for turning coffee into theorems."
After all, I am strangely colored.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
I was actually just watching this movie a second ago. It didn't quite live up to my expectations.
.com is a must -- what's wrong with "copilot.fogcreek.com?")
This movie is primarily about geeks geeking out. If you've never been around that, you will probably find the movie more interesting than I did. For example, a good ten minutes were devoted to the interns discussing whether they could jump out their window to the next building in case of a fire. If you are a geek who performs thought experiments with friends/co-workers all the time, you already know what that's like.
This movie is not about sharing insights about how to develop good software. You shouldn't think of the movie as an extension of Joel's column. Opportunities for venturing into that realm are abandoned. For example, all the interns are given a stopwatch and a stack of computer books their first day. Later on, one of the interns admits that he has no idea what the stopwatch is for. Unfortunately, the movie never gives us the answer to that question. I was wondering if it had something to do with user interface design, like quantifying the irritation of having to wait around for software by starting the stopwatch when you see the hourglass. But we never find out.
There is also not much technical content. We get only a few details about the project and its technology.
The biggest disappointment was the camera work. The footage shakes around a lot, especially in shots of computer screens you're trying to read. Far too much of the film is overexposed -- Joel's face is often half-white. This happened throughout the movie, and was visually distracting. This ultimately left the film feeling somewhat amateurish.
For the good: Joel Spolsky and Paul Graham were both engaging as always. They're the kind of guys that manage to make almost every word they say intriguing. The employees and interns are likable people you don't get tired of hearing from. You get a chance to see some interesting decisions, like deciding to pay $10k for "copilot.com" instead of using the inferior name "sidepilot" (though we never hear anyone justify why having the
Launch MSN Messenger. Ask your dad to ask you for remote assistance. Use his desktop transparently. Disconnect. Works every time, firewall or not. I've fixed PCs halfway across the globe with that thing.
The Soul of a New Machine is indeed a terrific book. The only downside is that it is disappointing to realize that the machine they built was the DG Nova, which wasn't the great success they hoped it would be but was eclipsed by the VAX.