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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."
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.
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.