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Film Documents Software Creation 224

Posted by Zonk from the nerds-in-the-movies dept.
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."
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Film Documents Software Creation More

Film Documents Software Creation

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  • Geeks! (Score:2, Funny)

    by ZiakII ( 829432 )
    Welcome back to The Geek Hunter... today we visit its lair.... the basement... they spend most of their time reading slashdot.....On a sidenote why does it feel like I'm an animal that people want to study?

  • So it's like "The Office" (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    only everyone is Garreth
    • Yeah, or remember the guy that comes to fix the computers...
      "What you doing with my computer?"
      "It's not your computer is it? It's Wernham Hogg's."
      "Right. What you doing with Wernham Hogg's computer?"
      "You don't need to know."
      "No I don't need to know but could you tell me anyway?"
      "I'm installing a firewall."
      "OK what's that?"
      "It protects your computer against script kiddies, data collectors, viruses, worms and trojan horses and it limits you're outbound internet communications. Any more questions?"
      "Yes. How lo

  • What? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by TheNationalist ( 908193 )
    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.

    • Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04, 2005 @07:15PM (#14181062)
      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.

      • Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cammoblammo ( 774120 ) <cammoblammo&gmail,com> on Sunday December 04, 2005 @09:46PM (#14181849)
        My experience is that soccer mums make great project managers.

        Organising six kids (four of whom are somebody else's and refuse to be organised), planning and acquiring resources for activities and meals, transporting everyone in a safe and timely manner and then coaching the soccer team... I think I'd rather just be a cubicle jockey.

        Some of the projects I've been involved in would be a walk in the park compared to a lot of the 'normal' families I know.

    • Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Cl1mh4224rd ( 265427 )
      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.
      Ahh, "Blockbuster Movie Syndrome": Everything put on film must be exciting...
      • Ahh, "Blockbuster Movie Syndrome": Everything put on film must be exciting.

        Yeah, to me the formulaic blockbuster movies are boring as batshit. Some of the technical films in the Prelinger archives http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger [archive.org] are much more interesting. How can you go past a film like;

        Personal Hygiene (Part I) - U.S. Army
        Military training drama showing how the residents of a barracks convince a sloppy soldier to clean up his act. With many folk songs on cleanliness.

        It's unintentionally hi

    • Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04, 2005 @08:02PM (#14181279)
      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.

      • Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by XNormal ( 8617 )
        So what has he achieved?

        If you assume nothing but a huge software conglomerate is "achievement" then I guess he has not achieved much.

        His job satisfaction must beat the hell out of most of us in the software industry. I'd call that success.
    • This isn't a reality TV show; it's a documentary. Documentaries have been around for ages, and they aren't designed to entertain in the way films are, they're designed to inform. Geeks probably aren't the target audience for this - we already know most of the stuff they're going to be showing. The target audience are people who don't know the first thing about what goes on when developing software, so that once they've finished watching it, they will have a clue.
    • Well, it's not like they are filming the developers slouched over their beyboards, typing away for 9 hours straight. Haven't seen the video but there is strong possibility for all kinds of interplays, possible conflicts of ideas or prides, the competition between the young interns who envision this as their time to show their stuff, be on top, make it, leave a legacy, and other such cliches.

      Studying black holes couldn't be more boring either -- most of it being based on theoretical mathematics and endless

    • I believe there are still creations that are genuine(from the heart), and completely contrived manufactured (anything that comes out of hollywood these days). This trailer reminds be a little of Startup.com, which I thought was a reasonably good documentary. It wasn't just about the coding, or the business, it was about the people. That's what I think may very well make this effort every bit as interesting.

    • Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Mossarian ( 936229 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @05:12AM (#14183600)
      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. :-)

  • Such a movie already exists (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Seiruu ( 808321 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @06:56PM (#14180954)
    Revenge of the Nerds

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088000/ [imdb.com]

  • A bit on the movie's costs, profits, and success (Score:4, Informative)

    by Skim123 ( 3322 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @06:57PM (#14180961) Homepage
    This blog entry [joelonsoftware.com] by Joel Spolsky details the success of the film, including the profit and loss... interesting to see the cost breakdown in making an independent film. As of December 1st they had sold nearly 2,600 copies of the DVD, but being listed on /. will surely net some additional sales.

    Of course the real profit is in increased exposure to Joel's company and the highlighting of his internship program, which likely promises an even better crop of students next summer.

    • Re:A bit on the movie's costs, profits, and succes (Score:4, Funny)

      by CodeBuster ( 516420 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @07:17PM (#14181071)
      Maybe next time around he could get a group of 20 prospective interns and then, in a high-pressure software company version of the board room (Joel's office maybe), fire one of more of them each week until only one remains as Joel's Apprentice! Of course, finding type-A personality geeks who would appeal to the same audience as Trump and Martha might be difficult...
      • Of course, finding type-A personality geeks who would appeal to the same audience as Trump and Martha might be difficult...

        On the plus side, a team of geeks could probably come up with a half decent Star Wars promo display.

        A cool episode idea when you get down to five or so would be to give them allBig Wheels set to leave a train of toliet paper behind them, dress them in Tron outfits and play real-life lightcycles. That would be pretty awesome to behold.

        I guess the catch phrase to let people go could be s

  • Compare to the 1981 version... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Myself ( 57572 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @06:59PM (#14180976) Journal
    If you haven't already, you owe it to yourself to read The Soul of a New Machine [twbookmark.com] by Tracy Kidder [jessamyn.com]. 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.

  • Torrent? (Score:2, Funny)

    by XoXus ( 12014 )
    Anyone got a torrent?

  • Bill Gates cloned!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by wiredlogic ( 135348 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @07:09PM (#14181024)
    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.
      "To be" is a verb. So there's still a verb in your sentence. Nice try though. You could make it "I becoming gerund" though.
    • The intern who looks like Bill Gates is probably me (I'm Benjamin Pollack). It's not the first time I've been accused of looking like Bill Gates. I actually was reentering the United States a few years ago and going through customs in Newark, and the customs officer who was at my window when I finally got to the front of the line looked incredibly bored. I walked up and put my passport down. He glanced up, started asking the typical questions, then, staring at my face, he paused. He then looked back down at

  • Software Creationism... (Score:4, Funny)

    by rubberbando ( 784342 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @07:11PM (#14181035)
    In the Beginning, there was 0....

    On the 1st day God said, let there be 1's and it was good...

  • Perfect! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xeon4life ( 668430 ) <devin@@@devintorres...com> on Sunday December 04, 2005 @07:13PM (#14181045) Homepage Journal
    Brilliant! No, seriously, this is the perfect way to introduce prospective CS students to the geek culture. I have friends that are very worried about their future, and aren't sure whether they're ready to commit themselves to studying CS yet, but a film like this is the perfect way to help alliviate some of their fears. It wont solve any outsourcing dilemmas, but it will certainly encourage them.
    • Have you seen the shirt that says

      Programmer (n): An organism that can turn caffeine into code.

      • Re:Shirt (Score:2, Informative)

        by poopdeville ( 841677 )
        That, of course, is a plagiarized version of a quote by Paul Erdos, who described mathematicians as "machine[s] for turning coffee into theorems."
  • this reminds me - does anyone know how to obtain a copy of 'coderush' - that documentary about the initial mozilla source launch? there used to be a site for it but it seems to have been scrapped....

  • Not Bad. Not Great. (Score:4, Informative)

    by BinBoy ( 164798 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @07:24PM (#14181110) Homepage
    There was almost no technical content and nothing dramatic happened. Code Rush and StartUp.com were more entertaining.
    • Got any links to information about "Code Rush" ? I couldn't find any info on a film with that name through my searches..
    • It's a documentary, you f***ing tool. Documentaries aren't entertaining, they're educational. There are only about 4,000 movies out right now that fit your needs. May I suggest Gigli instead?
      • I beg to differ. I like documentaries, and watch my fair share. If a documentary isn't entertaining (read: insightful, interesting, and informed) as well as educational, I'll fall asleep. I love learning, but if something isn't entertaining, it won't hold my interest.

  • Versa (Score:2, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 )
    Whatta coincidence. I have software that documents the making of a film.

  • Easy to use, but performance isn't great. (Score:3, Informative)

    by 511pf ( 685691 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @07:45PM (#14181208)
    I actually tried the Copilot product. It's very easy to use and works well over faster connections. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well over high latency/low bandwidth connections. I think this has more to do with basing the product on VNC than on anything they did wrong. I ended up with GoToMeeting, which works exceptionally well over slower connections. I was able to (usably) remote contol a 1920x1200 screen that was located on a home broadband connection across the US. Still, the movie looks very cool, and it's possible Copilot performance will improve with some tweaks. It would probably work well for people with small remote offices that have decent upstream connections.

  • I don't know about the coding (Score:5, Insightful)

    by penguin-collective ( 932038 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @07:49PM (#14181227)
    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.
    • Damn. Where are my mod points when I need 'em?

      Right on.

      I sometimes wonder if the future of the American software developer is to become a nattering nabob.

      If you can't code quality software at $1.75/hour, TALK a good game.

      John.

  • Great, so I can pay to watch what I do every day (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This film is something I do every day... do I really want to watch it? I guess the only difference is that they'll probably cut out all of the meaningless web surfing, porn viewing, and IM'ing that I do at work...

    Does it show things that are more important, like if the product actually makes money, or them going through the bug-fixing and customer service phase where their customers (if they have any) are screaming at them because of a bug, or they have a sales person yelling at them to get a feature in be
    • This film is something I do every day... do I really want to watch it?

      Perhaps. You know, most documentaries (and movies) that are successful are usually based on things we experience every day (bad presidency, McDonald's, relationships, work, et al). And given the fact that the movie industry is huge, I'd probably guess that a lot of people would want to watch something like this. I'm not sure how this documentary is any different from the rest, except that someone has finally done a documentary on your

  • Educational tool? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by harborpirate ( 267124 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @08:07PM (#14181306)
    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.
    • I just tell them to watch Superman III. It's just like that.
    • Send them the book Microserfs [amazon.com] by Douglas Coupland. Great read for you and your family if you ever want to explain what it is you do every day. From a review: "A hilarious but frighteningly real look at geek life in the '90's". Extra bonus if you actually happend to live in Silicon Valley (not a requirement). Heh, if you have been an engineer for more then a decade this book is going to freak you out as much as it is going to make you love your lifestyle.

      Enjoy.

  • Finally, a reality show my WIFE will hate!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by AngryNick ( 891056 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @08:15PM (#14181345) Homepage Journal
    Thank you, thank you, thank you!!

    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.

  • Had trouble parsing the article title... four nouns! Gak!
  • In the video they mention an instance where a bug crept in and screwed up their program. "We finally traced it down to one tiny little bug." "No developer likes a bug to show up in their code, it's just a way of life." Not heard of agile test driven development?
  • Writing software is a lot like making sausages. The process is messy, ugly, and you'll probably see a whole lot of stuff happen that you rather wouldn't have known about.

    The main difference between the two is that at the end of the sausage-making process you have a yummy treat. At the end of the software process, all you have is...software.

  • Their goal turned out to be the creation of a piece of software later called Fog Creek Copilot, which would help techies fix customers' or relatives' computers by giving them remote access to the ailing machines.

    Great idea! Take an idea [microsoft.com] that [sf.net] already [nomachine.com] exists [gotomypc.com], in several variations, and create yet another incompatible implementation. When it fails, you can always fall back on the movie!

    Oh well, they were only interns anyways.

    • Copilot uses VNC but has some extra software around it to facilitate charging and yet some to provide tunneling and encrypted connection. In effect, it's no more incompatible than any other pimped-up VNC server you could set up - it's certainly less incompatible than any non-VNC server! But I don't think that Copilot is to be compared on equal ground with remote connection software, because if you're using it as that it's clearly going to suck, paying day passes all the time.

      I think that Copilot is a good s
      • I think that Copilot is a good service because it definitely fills a need. Let's say your uncle calls you and says "hey, this program keeps crashing on me" or "I can't figure out how to do stuff in this program". In a minute or two, without prior arrangements, you can tell him to go to a web site, type in a number, download a program and all of a sudden he's got you helping him and controlling the computer.

        Even better: uncle pays $X/hour for the time spent to fix the problem. The n * $X in charges at the e
      • You can already do all this with GoToMyPC.com, and i t is much simpler to use and more featureful.

        Stupid TV commercials aside, it is a good product.

        And as well, Remote Assistance in XP is already there and free. And it will open holes in your router via UPNP automatically if it needs to, and will email or IM a link to you to click on. It is very slick and reasonably secure, and from your description in paragraph two, I can see you have never used it, since with it "you never have to leave the phone", or "sp

  • not meant for already-initiated geeks (Score:5, Informative)

    by CoughDropAddict ( 40792 ) on Sunday December 04, 2005 @09:18PM (#14181691) Homepage
    I was actually just watching this movie a second ago. It didn't quite live up to my expectations.

    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 .com is a must -- what's wrong with "copilot.fogcreek.com?")
    • > what's wrong with "copilot.fogcreek.com?

      Was copilot.com worth $10K ? i donnow, but at least there is a reason.

      Joel explained it somewhere that they needed a website name that you can easilly read on the phone to the person you want to help without having to spell it for them or risk that they'll get the address wrong.
    • I kind of liked the sidepilot name better anyway. Atleast there wouldnt be all that nonsense of making sure to preface it with fogcreek everything. Instead of always saying Fogcreek Copilot, people could say sidepilot.
  • Fancy re-doing the write-up again, with proper grammar and sentence constructon?
  • Wombat'd: 12 Days With Finance and Accounting

    Sounds soooo interesting to me...
  • So, now we have a video document of creation! However, whether the creation was performed by Intelligent Design, remains to be seen. Can test this software?
  • is passing in this thread- but Office Space was the best documentary I have ever seen.

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