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**This Developer’s Life**

Stories about developers and their lives.

Latest Episodes:

1.0.9 Management Dec 03, 2010

Show notes

In this episode Scott and I talk to technical folks who have moved on up to Management - and what it means to them.

Mark Freedman shares his story about clawing his way out of a successful career as a manager at a rather large, growing company. A good job, lots of respect, and he hates it.
Bertrand LeRoy talks about charting his own path right at Microsoft after graduating with a PhD in Physics and how he maintains a career right down in the middle of manager and coder.
Todd Baesen talks about moving from Chemical Engineer to Nuclear Engineer on the USS Enterprise (literally), and then to senior management at a big engineering firm in the SF Bay Area.

Music

The tracks for this week are used under Creative Commons from Magnatunes:

Daniel Estrem- Asturias (Leyenda) no. 1 from Cantos de Espana
Harlan Williams - Beneath the Iron Heel of Pagan Rome
Williamson - a please goodbye from whore
Urban Response - Hunter Gatherer
DJ Cary -Termoli
Fischerspooner - Danse en France
Jaydiohead - December Backdrifts
Tool - Rosetta Stoned
General Fuzz - Beatdown
Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts
Jaydiohead - Life There

1.0.8 Motivation Nov 19, 2010

Show notes

In this episode Scott and I talk to 2 people with fairly different stories, about what motivates them

Scott talks to Brad Wilson, Senior Developer on the Microsoft ASP.NET MVC team about what motivates him to get out of bed and come to work every day at a high-intensity company, surrounded by brilliant people.

Rob talks to Rob Sullivan, a database administrator at a large company, about what motivates him to make developer's lives miserable in order to keep his job.

Music

The tracks for this week are used under Creative Commons from Magnatunes:

Urban Response - Hip Hop Nai Hai de Morrer
General Fuzz - Lay it Down
Urban Response - Resistencia Nunca Morre
iNTROSPEKT - Government Road
Harlan Williams - Gregory IX
DJ Cary - Overflight
Brad Sucks - Dirtbag

The following tracks are commercial tracks, used sparingly (30 seconds or so) under Fair Use:

Metric - Love is a Place

1.0.7 Audacity Nov 03, 2010

Show notes

In this episode Scott and I talk to 3 developers who have pulled off some pretty audacious maneuvers.

John Resig, Creator of jQuery, decided to write yet another javascript framework when there were already quite a few to choose from. Not only did he succeed, he changed web development forever.
Alex Payne, former API Developer Lead at Twitter, talks about the (somewhat insane) move to leave Twitter, and (somewhat more insane) choice to 'reinvent banking' with BankSimple.
Miguel de Icaza, founder of the GNOME project and creator of Mono talks about creating a clone of the .NET framework - all because he didn't like what else was out there at the time for Linux.

1.0.6 Abstraction Oct 20, 2010

Show notes

In this episode Scott and I discuss "what you need to know as a software developer". How many layers of abstraction do you need to understand? How many geek trading cards should you have in your collection? To find out more, we talked to 3 prominent, living-history developers.

Ward Cunningham - creator of the Wiki and major figure in Agile/XP programming
Charles Petzold - author of many books about Windows and prominent speaker
Dan Bricklin - 'Superman' according to Scott. Creator of the spreadsheet and all around amazing guy.

Most of the music in this podcast is released under Creative Commons, including:

In addition - super short clips of the following songs were used under Fair Use:

1.0.5 Homerun Oct 11, 2010

Show notes

In the first story, I talk to David Heinemeier Hansson creator of Ruby on Rails, partner at 37Signals and author of Rework about the inspiration and shepherding of Ruby on Rails.

In the second story, Scott talks to Dan Bricklin who in the late 70s and early 80s helped to usher in the computer age, as well as a new industry. Dan is the creator of Visicalc - the first spreadsheet program.

Music

Please support these artists.

1.0.4 Being Mean Oct 02, 2010

Show notes

In the first story Scott shares his experience on being 'outted' at a former company, where his name sat beside 7 of the 10 top entries on a list of 'what not to do to code'.

Scott then interviews Cyra Richardson - a program manager at Microsoft with a rather strong opinion about the changes she's seen in the company over the last 20 years.

Finally, I spend some time talking to Giles Bowkett and his various ' 'interesting' interactions with the Ruby community.

1.0.3 Problems Sep 18, 2010

Show notes

image from XKCD

In this week's This Developer's Life that's what I take a look at, from 3 perspectives:

Mike Moore (Ruby developer) talks about personal skills for solving problems, including the ability to ask a different question.
Javier Lozano (Microsoft developer) talks about teams coming together as a 'band of brothers', solving problems that may, or may not, exist.
Tamar Cohen (Java developer) shares her story of the unsolvable bug - something she *had to solve* as the exploration of other planets depends on it. She works at NASA, programming planetary rovers.

Scott Hanselman finishes things off with a story about what happens when trouble finds you'

Some Notes:

I've been asked by the producers of This American Life to kindly change my logo as well as podcast title. In retrospect it seems rather obvious that I should have thought about this - but the short answer is that I didn't know if anyone would really care about this podcast. I also didn't expect the attention it's getting.

Oops.

I changed the logo - a name change will come soon. Worry not - the RSS will stay intact, as will the iTunes link.

UPDATE - I've remastered the episode and removed some of the music.

Soundtrack:

If you like any of the songs - please support my efforts to stay within 'Fair Use' by buying them' I'd very much appreciate it.

1.0.2 Fame and Notoriety Sep 02, 2010

Show notes

In the first story I talk to John Sheehan, a developer who's active on Twitter and is establishing himself in the Open Source community.

The second story comes from Scott Hanselman - one of the biggest names (if not *the* biggest) in the Microsoft community.

Technical Note: You'll notice that the first story's audio isn't ideal. John was using an analog mic that picked up some EM hum that I needed to filter out. I'm committed to spotless audio - but I have to work with what my guests have'

Music

1.0.1 Getting Fired Aug 18, 2010

Show notes

I talk to 2 developers in this episode, and toss in a story from myself at the end:

The first story comes from Sara J Chipps a Microsoft developer who lives on the East Coast.
The second story comes from Oren Eine (Ayende Rahien) about what life as a prison commander in Israel taught him about his career.
And finally there's me (Rob) - talking about the "Coyote Contract" that was doomed to fail. So I gnawed off my own reputation to get out of it.

Music

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