I just went to Gnunify to see and listen - but I ended up talking about Webservices. More importantly I ended up talking about Why you should hire a FOSS programmer in a BoF at the end of the first day. Unlike spo0nman who was talking about his life story and GQview slideshow implementations, I was not looking at my personal experience with FOSS. These kids aren't going to go through yet another 1999 in their life - my life is practically useless for them as an example.
Almost all the technical reasons are moot when you really come down to comparing a really good coder from either side. There are some that say FOSS geeks are more hardcore than non-FOSS ones, but I know of enough non-FOSS coders who can beat me at hacking without even trying. But the real difference comes out in the social aspects of FOSS. It is really hard to get involved in FOSS and it is even harder to actually survive as a productive member in FOSS.
To start with, in college it is a competitive system where you have to perform better than the next guy. While in the real world of programming, you have to co-operate with that guy to get the job done. You have to argue with people about bugs, you have to arrive at consensus about a feature. You have to do a lot of interaction which isn't taught in college - some kids do indeed learn of these, but those are unlikely to be of the coding sub-species and are more of the organizing sub-species.
Anyway, if you are a FOSS programmer - you've been through all the flame wars about bugs, the hour long discussions on irc and good communication skills. It isn't easy to communicate complicated concepts over email or irc. All very important things to possess if you want to be successful engineer in the current software industry.
Anyway, Dilbert could be psychic. I was going to talk about Webservices with KingDiamond and lunatech. And while we were preparing our slides - GNULinuxer points out the day's dilbert. Really awesome to put up in your slides about how webservices help people get more out of life.
Anyway, I had a lot of fun at Gnunify. I hope they call me next year - I was sort of a pile-on this year. Amazing number of volunteers with young legs under them (unlike FOSS.in). I just hope they start doing something with the conference and convert it into a student involved event rather than just using them for volunteers.
Just awesome ... except for the part where they called us sir and held lifts for us. We prefer it to be a little bit more egalitarian.
--The best laid plans of mice and men are held up in the legal department.
posted at: 22:44 | path: /conferences | permalink |