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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.
It looks like one of them is a clone of Bill Gates. Note the peculiar neck implant. This can only be the work of the Borg as they try to infiltrate our planet.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
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.
There was almost no technical content and nothing dramatic happened. Code Rush and StartUp.com were more entertaining.
You must be new here. That has been Joel's modus operandi for months now. If he farts and writes about the delectible smell, it winds up on Slashdot.
First, does this movie feature
* Attractive girls, elsewhere than on computer screens?
* Humour, understandable by people who aren't living in their parents' basement?
* Action, more thrilling than tracing a memory leak in C program?
* Adventure, filing post-outsourcing job applications to mcdonalds not included?
* Love, relationships to chat bots not counted?
* Message, other than that life sucks and your imaginary girlfriend doesn't?
Slashdot doesn't have any of these, and yet people come here in droves. On a more serious note, there have been many movies that have done well without that, like "March of the Penguins". Obviously this isn't your typical blockbuster, but keep in mind that making a profit requires a lot fewer sales.
You've got to hand it to Joel: regardless of what you may think of his programming skills, he does have the art of shameless self-promotion down to a science.
I'll tell you waht I'm jealous about -- I'm jealous of that sweet UID you have. Bastard.
It seems like everything today is being turned into a film or reality show. Not everything is exciting, especially coding a new project. In fact, that's probably one of the least exciting things they could have focused on.
Not to mention that Joel is pretty much out of karma - the guy has been preaching as a self-anointed genius of software development for over half a decade now.
So what has he achieved?
Well he still has a tiny shop - about the same size that he had when he cashed in his Microsoft options. A large portion of his pimping is for trivial crap like his endless use of Amazon affiliate links, as well as attention whoring. Of his products, one is a trivial, overpriced rip of an open source VPN, the other was a marginal CMS that they've pretty much canned, along with a one-of-about-a-million-clones bug tracking package.
Woot!
What a prophet.
All I can say is I'm going to make sure to catch this ASAP - to try and determine whether I can send it out to family members so they can finally understand what exactly it is that I do every day.
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!
After years of putting up with the crappy reality shows that my wife likes to watch, this will make the perfect gift for her! Sweet payback for all the nights I've had to endure her [bleeping] "Real World" addiction with its 20-year old mindless babble.
Just out of curiosity, what is it like over there in Soviet Russia?
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
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
More than likely the projector will crash during the show and they'll have to issue a patch for a security flaw in scenes one and four. Version 2.0 is due out next summer (maybe). Not to mention that it went over budget and over time with scenes in it that no one asked for and in future the entire production will be outsourced to Bollywood. :-)