Friday, November 16, 2007

Free Software Presentation by John Selyms

Today we had a guest speaker for BTS. John Selyms came and talked about "why software sucks." The man has a lot of good things to say. I recommend you read his slides here

EDIT: now that I have time, I can write more
Important Slide (31)

What Should You Do?
1 Never underestimate the problem
2 Understand and plan
3 Know the tools you use
4 Act professional - leave ego at home
5 Write free software and share it

My favourite Slide (11)
Comments from the Field(about state of software development)

"It's like pre-Sumerian civilization - we're in the hunter-gatherer stage." - Brad Cox, George Mason University

"Cave art, it's primitive, no science here." - John Munson, University of Idaho

I really like the first quote. It conjures an image of 5 near-ape techno-neandertals, each dragging one knuckle in the ground while his other hairy arm grasps a laptop, or knapsack, or bike helmet; what-have-you.

I asked a question to John relating to this quote, "Could google be the emergence of an agrarian culture of software?" (left as an exercise to the reader)

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