*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

It seems that an article I wrote a while back is making its way around the Internet once again.  It never fails that once a year or every 6 months it pokes it’s head up from the ashes, dusts itself off and finds new readers.  The article I’m talking about is this one:

How an Open Source Developer Transitioned to .Net

It is an interesting read and if you haven’t read it, check it out.

I started getting lots of emails from readers last night and this morning as the article was passed around.  One person emailed me a question that was particular interesting after reading it:

Thanks for sharing your story on your transition from .php to .net. My main question is; did you also change from working on Macs to the inferior PC’s?

Obviously by the reference of “inferior PC’s” in the question we know where this reader stands.  It is sort of like one of those interview questions you get that is completely loaded.  For example, “So Mr. Person Wanting a Job…. things around here are really busy.  A lot of the times you have to switch tasks very quickly.  How would it make you feel if you were working on a project and then your manager asked you to stop it and move onto something else?”  Obviously the question has already been answered.  Or rather loaded up for you to respond in the way the person asking the question wants to hear.  By the way, if you ask these type of interview questions, stop.  They get you no where.  I digress though. 

I don’t know if this question is the same loaded type of question but my first reaction was, wait, aren’t Macs made up of the same parts that are in PCs?  It is a hard drive, processor, video card and memory.  Apple looks at various vendors and plugs in the best deal / bang for the buck just like any other PC manufacturer.  Are PCs really inferior just because Apple has a better looking plastic cover than most PCs?  I don’t think so since they are essentially made up of the same parts.  Case in point I recently upgraded the wife from an aging iBook to a HP notebook.  I think she got a far superior product for a whole lot less money compared to a Mac.  That’s another post that I’m working on though. 

Maybe he was talking about the PC operating system being inferior?  What if I am running FreeBSD on my PC, does that make it more superior to the Mac since OS X is really just FreeBSD under-the-hood?  Or what if I’m running an Intel version of BEOS?  Maybe it was a OS X vs Windows comment?  The reader didn’t say so I am totally speculating on what he’s “really” trying to ask and also infer.

Here is the bottom line folks.  When you chose a technology you ultimately chose a platform.  We all do it and to say we don’t is just wrong.  When I was writing PHP/MySQL I used Linux for years since I thought it was important to develop applications on the same OS the application was going to run on the server.  I knew the Linux platform inside and out.  Even enough to teach it at the college level.  Today I write .Net code and I write that on Windows for Windows.  Again, I think it is important to write software on the same platform it is going to run on.  The difference is when you chose .Net you are married to the Windows platform, at least today.

Whether you want it to be or not, there is a huge platform investment made as a developer to understand the full potential of our applications.  I have a buddy at work that has been doing Windows IT infrastructure related stuff for years.  He understands a lot of things under the hood of Windows that I don’t even understand.  For me he is a resource I use often to pick his brain to solve a problem.  More times than not, he has an easier way to solve a problem than I was thinking just because he knows the platform.   For .Net development it means that those of us doing .Net development are married to the platform of Windows.  That is not a bad thing though since from a business standpoint the platform as a whole provides a lot of value.  

Yes, I use PCs today as opposed to Macs.  I’d be completely non-productive and probably lacking brain cells to development enterprise applications on a Mac and boot Visual Studio in a virtual machine.  I’d also be completely non-productive trying to write .Net code using Mono with VI.   I’ve seen lots of Macs at conferences and even friends of mine that are fellow MVPs have purchased Macs and run Visual Studio in a VM or just run Windows on the Mac 100% of the time because they like the Apple notebook better.   For those running Windows on an Apple, if you want to pay the Apple tax and spend a lot more money for your shiny toy fine, at least you understand that you are ultimately writing .Net on Windows.   For those that boot virtual machines and do .Net development God bless you, you must have the patience of Job.  I’ve done it and ultimately I came to the conclusion of:  Damn this slow and non-productive.  BTW, if you are a client of a consultant and he/she walks in with a Mac and is doing .Net development for you.  Run!  They just doubled your billable hours haha!  I poke fun in jest obviously but hey, it is something to think about if you are footing the bill no?

The thing is I still like OS X.  Notice I didn’t say Apple, because I don’t like the Apple hardware tax having built computers for years.  The operating system I like, nay, completely admire still to this day.  I’ve spent many hours looking at XCode on Mac OS X wishing it could be my development platform of choice.  Wishfully thinking that I could get a job as an Enterprise OS X developer at one time.  I wrote a few programs for Mac OS X and found it to be 5-10 steps and way more complicated than it needed to be just to do something simple like put a button on a form using Cocoa.  Compared to Visual Studio dragging and dropping a button onto a form and double clicking to wire up an event is apples and oranges (pun intended).  I’m sorry, but Apple spends all their time on making their OS shiny and adding features for end users but doesn’t do a damn thing to help developers embrace their platform at all.  At least that is how I see it.  If you don’t agree, then feel free to shine some light on my short sightedness, I’m all ears.

So yes, I use PCs today, not a Mac, and I don’t feel when I wake up in the morning and sit down at my computer I’m using an inferior product.  As a matter of fact I feel I have more options using the Windows Platform than I do using a Mac, especially since there isn’t an Apple store within 300 miles from me.  Not only that but professionally I have all sorts of nice haves that run and are supported with the Windows platform such as integrated authentication for applications, SQL Server, Biztalk, Windows Presentation Foundation, Winforms, Asp.Net, Windows Communication Foundation, Workflow Foundation, Silverlight, Visual Studio, Ado.Net, Windows Mobile, Office (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Infopath, Publisher), Sharepoint, built-in analysis and data mining features, OLAP, Report Services and much more.  Based on all of that reader, which platform seems inferior now?

Ok here we go again.  I’ve posted several personality tests to the site and usually several of you joined in by posting yours so here we go again!

In the past we did:

What Transformer Would You Be

Programmer Personality

So today let’s do are you left brain or right brain. Here’s my results which are pretty interesting.  I guess it means I am well rounded.  I think this means that I’m logically visual, articulately figurative and practically intuitive.  🙂  If I ever have to interview again (which I hope I never do again) and someone asks me to describe myself that’s what I’m saying:

Logically visual, articulately figurative and practically intuitive

 Here are the official results.

Another quick test to take is this one.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html

On this one the girl spins clock wise but also appears to stop, and then at times, occasionally she goes the other way.  So one test says I’m weighted more left, and then another says I’m right.

Ok fire up your browsers, take the tests and let’s see where you land!

I was catching up on some reading tonight and came across an article about an ex-employee at Google who filed a law suit because he felt he had been dismissed on unfair grounds.  One of the things noted in the evidence of the case was his colleagues referred to him as “old man”, “old guy” and an “old fuddy-duddy”. 

Reading the comments on the article further down a person named johns had this comment.

Applying to IT companies when you are mid 40’s or above is a real crapshoot. Age discrimination is rampant in IT.

That got me to thinking.  Will I be a fuddy-duddy as I age?  What are some things that I can do to not come across as a fuddy-duddy as I get older?  Is my career in IT really limited to a certain age?  If I have a great job today and then because of changes in life I have to leave that job to find another, will I get re-hired?  Or will I be perceived as an old aging dinosaur that has arthritis and can’t type?

One might think that I’d be thought of as a wiser more experienced person and you’d be right to think that.  Of course with more wisdom comes a higher salary and if I am 45-50 years old how many employers are going to be willing to pay me what I am really worth?  Hmmm.  Could this be why most “consultants” are older?  I mean you really don’t see young self-employed consultants.  Sure there are exclusions to this but in general I can’t think of a young consultant that is self employed.  I use to be a consultant but the difference is I didn’t work for myself. 

What about age 60?  Would you hire a 60 year old IT person?  Would you be willing to take a chance on a guy/lady that is only a few years away from retiring?   It is definitely something for us to think about and keep in mind as we get older.

After thinking about this more I think getting older and whether or not someone will hire the ever aging programmer has to do with perception and personality of that programmer.  Not personal perception, but public perception.  In other words how people perceive you to be.  For example, I would like to think I would never wear shorts with blue dress socks and dress shoes in public as I get older.  I mean how hard is to put on tennis shoes and white socks and present yourself in a more friendly manner that doesn’t come across to someone you have a severe lack of ability to put things together that match?    In my mind I think, “well, if he can’t match his clothes, how can I trust him to match the best technology to solve a problem”. 

 Sure one gets cool points for being different but only from people that also have dress socks and dress shoes on.  In other words everyone else is deducting cool points.  My point is the way we are perceived may have a lot to do with finding employment later on.  Here is another example that may help drive the point home.  It is really no different than the punk rock kid coming into an interview for a wall street position.  He looks like he just fell into a tackle box with more metal attached to his bottom lip than what is in the front axle of my truck.  Sure no one is going to say he was discriminated against during the interview but there is a thing I like to label as personal perception discrimination.  It does exist and just remember you read it here first.  If you don’t believe me, watch how many people feel “uncomfortable” around bikers.  A lot of bikers are nice guys and a lot of them are lawyers, doctors, professionals etc.   But, you can clear a bar in 10 seconds if a crew of bikers pull up.  Why?  Perception.  People perceive them as being bad and causing trouble.  Just as if you look old, are grumpy out of date etc., people are going to perceive you as not worth hiring.  At least that is my theory.

I’ve worked with guys that were older in IT and some seemed young for their age while others seemed old.  I’ve even seen guys that were perceived as being fairly young but the first time they opened their mouth they definitely sounded old.  Even if you don’t come across as an old fogy at first glance, your next point of failure may be when you open your mouth.  We’ve all watched the movie Grumpy Old Men and I’m sure no one would want to work with a grumpy old person.  Yet, as we get older, the trend is for us to get more opinionated.  One can definitely come across as a harsh old bastard who likes to sit around and talk about how he got started in the computer industry on a computer with 1K of memory that he built from scratch out of toothpicks and copper wire.  If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years is the way you sound and treat people is very important.    In other words, no one wants to work with grumpy old bastard programmer who calls everyone young whipper-snapper no matter how good he might be. 

I would like to think this will not be a problem in the future but it will definitely be interesting to go back to this article in the year 2022 when I turn 50 and see what the state of affairs for the older generation programmer holds.  Hopefully those who kept their axes sharp and skills up with the current times will be able to find and keep gainful employment just as easy as they did when they were younger.  Time will tell.

The Elder is officially back from DevLink.  Time to catch up on work, sleep and set the sights on future talks.  Before I put the DevLink memories to bed here is a recap of the conference. 

Thursday

Thursday night as noted here, the speakers ate at Stoney River.  I took pictures of everyone so check out the speaker pictures.  And yes, Wally is in most of them because everyone needs http://www.morewally.com in their life (for those that have been paying attention).   One thing I didn’t post about earlier was I did get into a discussion with Brad Abrams at dinner about Smart Clients, WPF, Silverlight, etc.  It was good to hear where he thinks things are headed with regards to the various technologies.

Friday

Friday morning I had the first session after the key note.  I got there about 30 minutes early and that turned out to be a good thing.  While the room was setup, it wasn’t setup in a conducive manner for giving talks that required programming.  The DevLink folks jumped in and got someone from the University to help out and the problem was solved.  This talk was on “Leveraging Enterprise Library in your Applications”.  Basically the talk was on how to get started with EntLib and how to use the various blocks, the console, etc.  And of course why you would want to use it.  I got a lot of positive comments on the talk and that is good.

After the talk it was back to the speakers room to eat lunch and prepare for the next talk after lunch.  For me the most interesting conversation comes out of the speakers room a lot of times with so much diversity.  When I got there David Laribee, Jeff McWherter, Allan Stevens, Rob Foster, Jon Box, Mark Dunn, Mickey Goussett, Billy Hollis, Rob Howard, David Silverlight and Rob Windsor were all hanging out.  It was quite the room full.  I grabbed a quick sandwich and fired up my demos for the next talk to make sure they worked.

My second talk was on “What’s new for Smart Clients in Visual Studio 2008”.  During the talk Brad Abrams walked in, talking about pressure to perform!  It is amazing how time flies because I had to rush to get done in the end and skip a few demos. 

Later that evening we had a what I thought was a fairly decent little supper at the conference.  Then we had entertainment from a local comedian who was awesome.  After the show was over we sat around and talked it up and then headed to the bar.  A bunch of us rolled out to Jonathan’s Grill and commenced to having drinks.   Good times, good conversation.  Josh Holmes got a head massage at the bar from the waitress which I think was the highlight of the evening.

Saturday

I had to get my oil changed in my truck so I found a local Five-Star Chrysler dealer.  I got back to the conference in time for lunch where I found Mickey, Rob, Jon and Ron Jacobs in the speaker room.   Later Kathleen Dollard, Allan, Jeff and David came in and we got into some pretty good conversation around agile development. 

After the conference a bunch of us went out to Showgun’s and ate some hibachi.   We started out with a reservation for 10 but we had 14 show up.  It was a pretty good crowd to say the least.  Check out the pictures starting here.  After food we headed back to Jonathan’s Grill.  After Jonathan’s several of us rolled downtown to hear some live Nashville music.  I think I was the only person that knew all the songs though.  After that we headed to Waffle House for our forth meal and then back to the hotel.

As you can see it was a great time, the pictures speak for themselves.  Since this is the first conference I’ve ever attended in the South, I have to say that I enjoyed not being the only Southerner.  Many thanks to John Kellar and the volunteers for hosting the conference.  I definitely will be back next year. 

We kicked DevLink off last night with a speakers dinner held at Stoney River Legendary Steaks.  I don’t know about everyone else but my steak was fabulous!  My compliments to the sponsors for picking such a great place.  Everyone had a good time and it was good to see people I hadn’t seen in a while.   You are probably wondering who was there so I made it a point to take a picture at every single table last night to document who was there.  You can view them here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithelder/sets/72157602387712580/

See if you notice a theme to some of the pictures, surely you’ll get it.  Hint, everyone needs more of it.  🙂