Virtuous Code - Latest Comments

Re: Epic Fail, or, why the users hate us.

WESTERUNIONHATER — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:43:55 -0000

FKING WESTERN UNION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I HATE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IM HAVING THE SAME DARN PROBLEM!! CAN'T LOG IN!!!

Re: BarCamp Baltimore 2009

nevans — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 08:24:14 -0000

I'm very sad I missed Barcamp (and it would have been great to catch up with you, as well). Hopefully I'll be at the next one. At any rate, I did have a great day-before-father's-day trolling for Rockfish in the Chesapeake Bay with my wife and father-in-law (and I even have a fish-story about the enormous one that got away).

My current plan for directly contributing to the women-in-tech solution is to breed a female technophile or two of my own. I figure my wife and I are good stock for this. (I suppose this falls into the "Mentoring, Mentoring, Mentoring" category.) We'll see how that turns out in a decade or two. ;-) Keeping my big mouth shut when others can and should contribute is also a good step.

*MY* concrete takeaway from Barcamp Baltimore is that I need to do a better job with long-term scheduling, so I can have my barcamp and family fishing outings too.

Re: BarCamp Baltimore 2009

ecogordo — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 08:12:59 -0000

Good insight. A lot of social gatherings like Green Drinks seem to be a majority female. Cross pollination between Greens and Geeks might be a good thing.

Re: BarCamp Baltimore 2009

Nathan Powell — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:31:11 -0000

Wow, the hackerspace thing is so rad. I wish there was one in the Harrisburg area.

Re: Playing Grown-Up: The Rails Maturity Model

avdi — Sat, 16 May 2009 09:18:43 -0000

Yeah, I overstated, as is my wont. I guess the real issue I have is that the practices are already starting to read a tiny bit like a "Java list". Java was all about taking away all the features mediocre developers might shoot themselves with. Once it became "the standard" you had to justify the use of "dangerous" languages like C++ or Ruby.

As you and I know, effective remote collab is possible, but it takes more effort than making collocated collab work. I wouldn't recommend it for just any group. Maybe it's good to have the default advice be "keep" everyone together" - but now we're right back at catering to the lowest common denominator. The annoying thing about enshrining collocation as a "best practice" in an ostensibly "cutting edge" context is that now shops that can do distributed collab are going to be asked to justify their choices, and/or seen as higher-risk.

And given the people involved in the RMM, I don't see a "distributed development" practice gaining much traction on the list. The companies involved seem quite pleased with themselves and each other for keeping all their developers together in one place.

Which sucks, because I genuinely believe that distributed development is a big part of the future of software. Not just because it's what I want to do; but because it's a more efficient, sustainable way of connecting talent to work without expensive, polluting, community-straining mobility.

Re: Playing Grown-Up: The Rails Maturity Model

nevans — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:11:47 -0000

I'm not responding directly to your post, because I'm more amused by #rmm and reactions to it than ticked off or excited or worried by it.

But: "Practice #3: Everyone Together. This is an incredibly backward value to be espousing in 2009."

I beg to differ. There can be serious competitive and qualitative advantages to following that practice and really utilizing the high-bandwidth communication it provides, just as there can be advantages to not following it. These are tradeoffs that many(most?) firms make without even really realizing what they are trading off. At any rate, it seems to me that there's nothing stopping anyone from putting a whole slew of recommended practices for remote workers onto the list and endorsing what's worked out best for them.

And, on a more serious note, I do hope that someone posts a "practice" concerning the Sampsonite Theory of programming that you and John Trupiano were discussing a month or two back. From my experience, I know that I can and will endorse that, and there are at least a couple of rails shops that I can confirm adhere to it with at least some of their developers.

Re: Playing Grown-Up: The Rails Maturity Model

obiefernandez — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:09:32 -0000

Intentions are in the eye of the beholder. I can't stop you from judging me so harshly, but I can work hard to prove you wrong.

If you think about it rationally, Hashrocket is already very popular and successful. Our track record of transparency and assisting other firms and individuals is beyond reproach. There is simply no need for us to spend what amounts to tens of thousands of dollars in labor to create a self-serving promotional site.

Since you brought it up... The emphasis of the site is the practices. That's why it was no big deal to remove the firm page from the navigation. The firms page that was little more than a scaffolded list. Hashrocket only appeared at the top of that page since we had the most data in the system, an artifact of our position as initial alpha testers of the site.

I do admit to naivete about the depths of cynicism among some people in the community. It's disappointing, but at the same time, provides strong motivation for me to prove the naysayers wrong.

Re: Playing Grown-Up: The Rails Maturity Model

cduhard — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:17:12 -0000

I should proofread before i post. Previous post should read:
"The fact the the site originally went up with firm rankings leads me to believe Obie's true intentions are self-serving."

Re: Playing Grown-Up: The Rails Maturity Model

Christian D — Wed, 13 May 2009 18:07:18 -0000

I find it really interesting that people are so reluctant to call Obie out on what his true intentions are. I guess it could be political correctness or politeness; I see it as not offending someone with a lot of weight. The fact the the site originally went up with firm rankings leads me to believe Obie's true intentions are anything but self-serving. The rankings were removed from the site, but not doing so it would have made it hard to keep any credibility.

What I have see here is an attempt by Obie and Hashrocket to create a club, where only the bigger shops can truly have any real influence. If I am a small shop I can choose to do my own thing, but the club has already biased the community and potential customers on what the best practices should be.

Re: Playing Grown-Up: The Rails Maturity Model

jtrupiano — Wed, 13 May 2009 06:42:37 -0000

Avdi, another aspect of RMM that reeks to me is that you either engage in a practice or you don't. There isn't even any gauge to whether or not you're effectively applying the practice (not that it would even be possible to vet people/companies on a large scale to this extent).

It's kind of like when you're at a presentation and the presenter asks "who here has done x?" and you see a few hands go up, so you put yours up even though you've only read a blog or two about it....you just don't want to be left out.

Just because you do #standup doesn't mean that it's a positive thing. Your team needs to understand how to approach it, what things are useful to share, etc. Otherwise. you just wasted 15 minutes of productivity for your entire team.

Re: Epic Fail, or, why the users hate us.

pure trash surplus — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:37:30 -0000

thanks for sharing the informations. I am not sure what I should think about the post. I thought twice if I should writte my opionen. I choised to leave my opinion open. But INTERESTING post.

Re: Rehabilitating the professional rock star

avdi — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:05:15 -0000

Mine too. I hate Wordpress with the fire of a thousand suns.

Re: Rehabilitating the professional rock star

wastedbrains — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:02:03 -0000

Yeah this has been a topic I kind of want to talk about, but also kind of didn't want to add fuel to the fire... Anyways I have been discussing it with my girlfriend which has been interesting.

On my system it looks like a lot of your quotes got converted into a funky symbol... Â

Re: Rehabilitating the professional rock star

avdi — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:46:00 -0000

Thanks. Although I don't find the discussion of whether it's porn or not remotely interesting or. relevant. "What is porn?' is one of the most infamously subjective questions ever asked. The fact is that a plurality of people had a problem with it. That is the only relevant data point, as far as anyone responding should be concerned.

Re: Rehabilitating the professional rock star

avdi — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:38:50 -0000

I think you've missed the point. I tried to make it clear above that it's not the slides I'm concerned about - it's the *reaction* to people having a problem with it that bothers me. Immaturity is sticking your hands over your ears and yelling LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU I'M TOO BUSY BEING AWESOME. Mature people *listen*.

Also, sorry, you don't get to define what's an overreaction or not. The fact is that a plurality of people at the conference, and a much larger number of prominent developers after the fact, had a problem with it. At that point calling it an overreaction just identifies you as someone who is more interested in trying to assert your own view of the world than in understanding where others are coming from.

Re: Rehabilitating the professional rock star

Joe Grossberg — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:28:28 -0000

Ooh, look! An anonymous name-caller. How brave!

For the record, yes, slide 7 is porn; even though her head obscures the man's penis, it's not hard to guess what she's doing with it.

Original photo used in the slide: NSFW - http://fc05.deviantart.com/fs21/i/2007/251/5/2/... - NSFW

Re: Rehabilitating the professional rock star

maturity — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:01:29 -0000

I would agree with this(and probably dhh and matt too) if the slides contain any real porn. do you _really_ call it "porn"? come on...

I am sorry to say but this overreaction is stupid and childish.

Re: Devver

Kevin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:23:32 -0000

I'm happy for Avdi!

Please keep us posted on how things are going.
I'd like to hear more about the remote development tools you guys end up using.

Re: Devver

avdi — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:24:31 -0000

Thanks Patrick!

Re: Devver

avdi — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:24:07 -0000

Thanks, Evan. It's a good feeling.

Re: Devver

avdi — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:23:41 -0000

You snooze, you lose! ;-)

Re: Devver

bryanl — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 23:10:12 -0000

Well that sucks. That means I can't recruit you for my venture. ;)

Re: Devver

Evan Light — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 19:14:59 -0000

Congratulations. That's exactly why I signed on with reQall when I did.

Re: Devver

pschless — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:31:33 -0000

Glad to see you're enjoying your new position -- Devver looks like a great fit for you!

Re: Ubuntu, Emacs, and Fonts

Paul — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:43:51 -0000

You must've offended her. ;-)