I Write Code

Fraser over at AdaptiveBlue has a post tonight highlighting BricaBox developer Kyle Bragger. This week on nextNYers, BricaBox CEO Nate Westhimer was featured and it appears that a piece of the video where Nate spoke highly of Kyle was cut out of the final version. So Nate created another short video where they seem to speak about Kyle's scarf (it's fab!) and bagels more than the code, but it's not bad. Love the Bob Barker mic!

Fraser's discussion centers around bringing the coders/developers/programmers to the front. This takes me back to 1995, I flew to some tiny town in Ohio on a prop plane and when I arrived at the company HQ, the CEO took me on a tour of the office. During the tour, it seemed we went from dark to light a few times. I asked him why this side of the office was pitch black while the other side had full lights and sunlight pouring in. His reply was that the developers like to sit in the dark so that's the developer's side and they don't come over to the light side and vice-versa.

I've always wondered what I am since I lean to the marketing/financial side of the business but can jump in and do most intermediate programming. For me it's about understanding enough about everything to speak intelligently and help the team where the holes are. I had the nickname "The Translator" for about 12 yrs.

One of the changes in Web 2.0 is that startups are becoming heavily developer-started. So we are seeing many developers in front of the camera instead of only behind the PC. No more are there developer and creator - they have merged in many cases. I do like the startups that show off their teams on the site and each one gets a short bio or overview. It makes the company seem more real.

As the companies grow, many take on model-looking CEOs to help the company grow in image. I am guessing it's at this point that, unfortunately, the developer's head to the dark side in Ohio. It does seem like more people that I speak with have at least a little bit of developer in them. Better than my days taking Quick Basic at NYU :)

While I normally prefer someone who can get the room excited when presenting their product or service, after the last few meetups and conferences, I am open to just about anything. Whomever is in front of the camera, show some passion. It's all I ask.

One thing I notice about the NY Meetups is that most are just general in nature and the demos are general as well. Perhaps the developer community needs to create more meetups that are hard-core developer-oriented. Even the Drupal Meetup, could probably be split into user and developer discussions.

Overall I believe the developer community is much more tight-knit than it was ten years ago. It's great to see and even if only for the work on CN and HTMLC, I write code.

(Till would say I modify code, but he would be wrong)