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."
I know there are some good intentions for this film but the article makes it sound like one long advertisement. Come work for us, we made a movie.
If you haven't already, you owe it to yourself to read The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. It documents and humanizes the effort at Data General, with one team working to soup up the existing architecture, and another team working to redefine the market with a revolutionary new design.
Brilliant! No, seriously, this is the perfect way to introduce prospective CS students to the geek culture. I have friends that are very worried about their future, and aren't sure whether they're ready to commit themselves to studying CS yet, but a film like this is the perfect way to help alliviate some of their fears. It wont solve any outsourcing dilemmas, but it will certainly encourage them.
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
I thought the same thing at first... But then it hit me... Remember the first project you were a part of? Assuming you've been there... It really was a blast for me and exciting. Some days the work was boring as all hell, but when you're with a project from start to finish and see it ship, there's something in that, at least at first.
After years of it though, it begins to lose its magic. Especially if you went from a geek dominated culture, to one where a soccer mom is your project manager. The point is though, that while I think I would find this boring as all hell, to people who haven't been there, they might find this really interesting. I would have before the industry found my soul into a fine dust and spread it across the ocean of asskissers.
And if it is your thing, give me a call and I'll cut you a deal.
Seriously though - not everything Joel writes is all that valuable or important or worthy of Slashdot frontpage real-estate. In fact, I've just gotten downright tired of articles by or about him or his thoughts. Maybe he's a nice guy and maybe he isn't. I don't know much about him beyond a few of his articles. I just know that there's a lot more content and many more voices out there that could be heard and shared with the bandwidth this guy gets on Slashdot and I'm getting Katz'd-out from it.
But let's not attack the guy on that level . . . Come on . . . In fact, it's not his fault Slashdot posts everything of, by, for or about him. You'd roll with it and use the opportunity too, if you had it. I blame the Slashdot staff, frankly.
But hey - at least they haven't given him his own editor/posting account yet like they did with Katz.
Nice. Joel and Fogcreek have yet another frontpage Slashdot advertisement, then a comment about Joel and Fogcreek's products gets moderated as "offtopic" in that very same article thread. What the fuck?! It's no more an "advertisement" than the other 500 Joel on Software articles posted to Slashdot.
Perhaps. You know, most documentaries (and movies) that are successful are usually based on things we experience every day (bad presidency, McDonald's, relationships, work, et al). And given the fact that the movie industry is huge, I'd probably guess that a lot of people would want to watch something like this. I'm not sure how this documentary is any different from the rest, except that someone has finally done a documentary on your specific line of work.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
"My experience is that soccer mums make great project managers.
Organising six kids (four of whom are somebody else's and refuse to be organised), planning and acquiring resources for activities and meals, transporting everyone in a safe and timely manner and then coaching the soccer team... I think I'd rather just be a cubicle jockey."
It's ironic that you don't see the problem with this. You see, because soccer mum(you british?) has so many parental responsibilities, soccer mum leaves early a lot, is on the phone a lot for a parental reasons, and just generally has a very difficult time staying up to speed on the project she's supposed to be managing.
But she's so nice, and she says what the higher ups want to hear, that she has a long bright future with the company.
I don't know what experience you've had with a soccer mom managing a project, but this has been mine. If I'm going to be asked to sacrifice my personal life for the sake of meeting deadlines, I want to be asked that by someone who is in the trenches with me and knows what the hell is going on.
Buying us a big subway sandwich because we're going to stay late while you go home early, then offering us tickets to an amusement park as a thank you for sacrificing our personal lives just doesn't strike me as the pinnacle of project management techniques.
In case any soccer mum project managers read this: I hate subway. I hate subs. And I hate amusement parks. If you're going to practice management through bribery, at least bribe us with stuff we like. Like $$$s.
Either the message carries weight, or it doesn't.
Nice... I've said in the past the reason I post AC is I hate the coloration of association. It'd be neat to see slashdot do all posts AC for a week. I suspect there would be a huge difference in the type of comments that get highest mods. Like far better quality posts and conversations.
Joel ingeniously created a way for him to educate interested and intelligent people about the software development process and unobtrusively promote his business at the same time.
That statement presumes that his advice actually unconditionally works for the kind of software development most organizations need to do, which just isn't true. Neither his experience nor his products are representative of most software development.
If you assume nothing but a huge software conglomerate is "achievement" then I guess he has not achieved much
I'd settle for interesting, innovative software. YetAnotherBugTracker isn't that, neither is reinventing remote desktop.
Joel's column is sometimes worth reading, but it's more talk than action. This movie just seems like more narcistic self-promotion. Let the code do the talking.