About 6 months ago I signed up for the StackOverflow DevDays in London, a one day event run by the team behind StackOverflow, which if you’e a programmer is a website you’ll probably know well. This includes Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood, the aim of the day is to talk about all things development. So no particular focus on a technology, more a focus on good code, how to write it and, the appreciation of it.
An example was the session given by Michael Sparks from the BBC about Python. Not a language I know anything about, but in 45 minutes he went line by line through around 30 lines of code which make up the spell checker in some Google apps. Hugely nerdy but informative, interesting and inspiring. Other technologies covered included Android, Nokia QT, jQuery, Yahoo Developer Tools and so on. The only common factor being people are doing cool things with the code.
And inspiration was really the order of the day, if you were slightly jaded about programming going into the (packed) auditorium then by the end of the day, if you weren’t re-inspired to do cool things then a change of career should probably be on the cards for you.
Unfortunately I had to duck out early due to some real world production issues to deal with, but if the event comes back in the future, you can be assured that I’ll be signed up.
