Who the Frag Has Time For Open Source?

The other day I was reading Jeff Atwood's blog post discussing why OO.o couldn't attract people to their open source initiative. He made some great points about it being OO's job to attract the developers to them by offering a worry-free coding environment and catering to their needs. I completely agree, but it really got me to wonder. When on earth do I have time to contribute to an open source project?

Now some my think I live a jet-set glamourus life with my  spray on tan and my beautiful friends, but really those fun crazy times are few and far between. What my life really exists of is work(which I enjoy doing), development, Tivo, take-out, and Reddit. In that order. When I am doing development work I'm working on the parts of my project that I don't have time for during the day. The refactoring, the "not cutting corners", the things I didn't have time to do. Not just this project either. I've been like that as long as I can remember, about every project I care about. I'm thinking about the project, not something new.

Do you do open source? Most of you have children and families at home, I can't imagine that you have time between bed time stories and washing the dinner dishes to get to know a new project and care enough about it to get seriously involved.

I mean, I don't know about you guys but I get approached all the time by people looking for a developer that does "side work." "You can just throw something small together." Nevermind the reality behind "something small," but I always say "no, sorry, I don't have time." That's stuff I would get PAID for, not free.

Do I use open source stuff? Sure. Do I support the projects? Absolu. However, I definitely need a clone if I ever think about getting involved in one.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The Sexiest Bachelor Developer Contest

Trying to girl up this place a little bit, plus prove that nerds are awesome. Now, the rules are the candidates must be:

1. Not Married

2. A developer of some sort. Doesn't have to be .NET, can't be a Sys Admin or a Project Manager.

Submissions must contain programmer Name, Photo, Location, Branch of Development, Accomplishments, and WHY he (or you) should be the sexist eligible programmer.

Feel free to submit your brother, or boyfriend, or hetero life partner.

There is no entry cut off date, however, when I feel it's getting close I will let you know.

May the best man win! There will be a prize for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place TBA.

Under Pressure

Am I the only one that can't read that without going "Unda Pressha, bing-binga-bing-binga-bing-bink"?

I have to admit something and apoligize. It's for my bogart web journalistic (read: some idiot with a keyboard) integrity. I totally phoned it in with that whole "Microsoft is the new IBM" thing. I've been really busy, and putting in a lot of hours. It's a combination of this project being quite important to me and me refusing to do anything half-ass (except for apparently blog posts). It's caused some late nights, and some sub-par posting. I'd say you've come to expect better, but that's just being a jerk.

In other news the folks at a place called Server Beach are the most knowledgable hardware nerds I have encountered. Actually, just this one kid, is it possible for a girl to have a man-crush? Because I totally have a man-crush on this guy and the way he talked to me about servers. They came reccomended to me by a guy named Chris Busse who was kind enough to answer my questions about EC2 and reccomend these guys.

Tomorrow I'm heading to the Philly.NET user group to hear the awesome Julie Lerman talk about Entity Framework. Really looking forward to it.

I REALLY want to play with server 2008, I feel like choosing 2003 for production is wussing out, you know? I've heard it's super different. I really want to play.

//TODO: #2

So, here is my fogbugz list of tickets. EDIT: How about ACTUALLY posting the list? As an aside, I'm considering switching to Base Camp  just for the price. Base Camp is $49, where FogBugz, due to the number of users, is $125. This is annoying though since FogBugz has my data. Curses!!! Has anyone used both? How do you like Base Camp?

Actually the biggest monkey on my back is this data import. Now, this FMP database is 3gig, which is completely insane for 633 records, however, it's not normalized so there is all kinds of crazy stuff in there duplicated. There are columns with +120kb of data which is too much for sql sserver. That's the point I'm at, getting rid of those huge entries, or at least cutting them down.

The existing pages are being re-skinned or wired up, the nav is evolving and it's doing great. There was a diagreement in the group on the format, and ultimately what came of it is a super awesome solution. We are doing a vertical as well as a horizontal navigation.

So, so far so good. Our launch date has been moved to 2/12. So far we are on track to meet that goal. I've been putting in a lot of extra hours, though, in order to make sure there is a little padding. .

Today was my neice Lilia's first birthday party!!! She's adorable, don't you agree?

 

Is Microsoft the New IBM?

Remember in, like, 1993 when it was awesome to work for IBM? I remember hearing about their awesome rockstar offices and how many amenities that they had. This guy at my church had just finished Chubb's "Top Gun" program and now was a shoe in at IBM because it was such a great place to work. I heard they had a coffee shop and hair salon INSIDE the building. (hey, it was cool then). I had heard that programmers that worked for big companies like IBM made, like, $200 an hour. It was the place to be.

Then around 2000 I started noticing that only my dad's weird friends worked at IBM. The ones who didn't care that much about where they worked or what they did. The company name wasn't thrown around that much, didn't have the same impact anymore. I no longer had any desire to be a programmer at IBM, it seemed like a bummer.

So, this past weekend the Microsoft in Manhattan hosted Code Camp III. I had a freaking blast, not only did I get to rock my new hightop sneakers but it is so much fun communing with other nerds, isn't it? I don't get to do that too often, my office hasn't had any other developers until recently (our hardcore vegan yoga teaching flash guy), and though I have programmer friends I don't actually SEE them too often. The talks were great, even though I didn't pick up any new tech I wanted to try it's good to see how other people do things sometimes. Gives you a lot of ideas.

One thing struck me as odd, though. So, I expected MS in Manhattan to be posh. However, when I got there they looked like a regular drab office in the city. Now, how "cool" your office looks doesn't make the entire company. However, it does reflect on the management and how much they prioritize their employees. Now, they did have xbox workstations, however, they were the kind you see at Radio Shack. Obviously for visitors and not employees.

Here is a team that knows what they are doing. The fog creek offices are seriously posh. Who WOULDNT die to work there (well, maybe not DIE). Something that Joel knows is that in order to make your staff bust their buns and make your company successful you should show them that they matter to you. Make them love where they are. Even in Joel's blog post about the subject he said it cost a tiny fraction of their revenue. I'm in some pretty sweet digs here (I'll post some pics in the AM, I'm tired). This company understands that in order to attract the talent you need to show them how much they mean to you, we have some serious rockstars under this roof.

Like I said, it's not EVERYTHING. However, if I got a call from Microsoft tomorrow I don't know that I'd be jumping for the phone. That's a very different attitude than the one I used to have. Am I hating on Microsoft? No, I am pretty grateful for this whole "career" thing... but I think that in order to stay current they need to spend a "tiny fraction" of the big bucks they have. Because beleive me,  reputation trickles down. If developers don't want to be there users will find out. No matter who they hire, one thing they know is that developers are the best evangelists they have.

C'mon, Don't Be "That Guy"

 

The first time I encountered them they were in a herd. I was at the Philadelphia launch of this new fangled framework called .Net that was going to bring us all together under a big development net (ooooooh, now I get it!). I don't remember the questions they asked, just what they were wearing. Java hats, Sun tee shirts. One said “Microsucks” They were asking about flaws in the system rumors they had heard about bugs, and all sorts of things that were making the speaker uncomfortable. I didn't understand why on earth they would come to Philly, wait in line, just to make someone uncomfortable. I figured it had to be an isolated indecent.

 

It's not. It's at every group, event, talk..etc I have been to. There is always that one guy in the audience who knows more than the speaker. Who knows the software sucks. Who just NEEDS everyone to know how smart he is. “How do you do that with a closed source compiler?” “Why spend so much time focusing on an IDE and not the code?” “So, what can you tell me about multi-level hierarchy for ITypedLists?”

 

Who are these people? Why do they do this? The worst was at a talk about advanced Java Script by John Resig this past year. There were these two kids that would ask questions, and then if the speaker faltered for a SECOND they would yell out the answer to the question they JUST ASKED. They took up half the talk with their inane questions that they didn't even care about. Just horrible it was.

 

Seriously, these people are taking time out of their lives to teach you and introduce you to new things. Constructive criticism is fine, but what makes someone be “that guy?”

//TODO: #1

So, I used to post my reflections after my iterations are complete and I haven't been. Not because I haven't been doing any reflection,  but because my iterations have been different and more on the fly now that things are wrapping up. So, now I will be posting my fogbugz queue and going over the big things I will tackle the following weeks. Maybe I can get some advice, or just a thumbs up, or maybe a cheerleading squad? Anyway, I think it will help me to stay motivated and reflect. Here goes #1:

Ok, so tomorrow I am working with the consultant and I will be making the "Add New Business" page(#50). It's just a data entry form, hopefully wont take too long. I hope to tackle "Troubleshoot add/edit classifieds issue" as well (#36).

During the week I need to finish the import I started, (#39). I have discussed this and I am using a program called FMPro Migrator. I will let you know how this goes, so far so good.

That should take me most of the way through this week, with time for one more thing. I will keep updating.

OK, some unrelated things.

In response to my question about "Hextrupling" my knowledge base: Thank you to reader Alex De Gaston for letting me know that the correct terms are: Sextuple/Hextuple. (Shoutout to SlackMasterK as well)

The coolest thing I have seen on the internet in at least a month(this means a lot because I see a lot of kickin things on the internet): A Flowchart of "Today Was a Good Day" by Ice Cube

NYC Code Camp is Jan 10th!  Looking forward to presentations from Bill Robertson (Garbage Collection), Stephen Bohlen (TDD), and David Penton (Caching). If you are coming and see me please make sure to say hi. Really like networking at these events.