Pandamonial – Amanda Laucher

Obsessed with one language? This is how most developers (not myself of course) probably view you. This might be the time to diversify! Take from these pics what you will, they all have many meanings. *Pics have been blatantly stolen from other sites, so click if you want the original source.

C#

Ruby

Java

C++

Haskell

Python

Lisp

Clojure

Scala

F#

Perl

VB

VBA

Cobol

Edit: A friend recently made a comment on twitter about the use of the word fanboy. I’m not sure if he even saw this post but I wanted to update to add my definition of the word. To me a fanboi or fanboy is a person who can not see the negative side of a specific tool because they are blinded by all of the good things. Many developers for instance fall in love with a specific language. The language feels very natural to them and it seems easy for them to model a specific set of applications. The problem comes in when those developers are unable to see that their language of choice is not perfect in every way and is not the correct language for modeling every application. Simply being passionate about a language is not a bad thing.

When there is hype around a language or tool you are not familiar with do yourself a favor and listen to the person. Don’t jump to any conclusions about the person doing the hyping. Ask the person a few questions to determine what specifically makes their language or tool great. In what way is it different to the competition. It is important that they understand that there is (most likely) competition! Also ask questions around what the language or tool is lacking. What does the competition do better? What would they change about the tool or language. At worst case they should be able to talk about what the future development plans. If the person is capable of answering those questions, they are NOT a fanboi. If not, there is a good chance that they don’t know enough to be passionate and you might be dealing with a fanboi.

For those of you who didn’t already know, my husband and I decided a while back that we should go to India.  We were very lucky in that his company, ThoughtWorks was happy to see him visit the Indian offices for a few months to do some project work and mentor less experiences ThoughtWorkers. I decided to leave my job with The Sophic Group in order to travel and concentrate on writing for a little while. The experience has been quite interesting!

I have gotten much writing done in the little time that we’ve been here. I’m well on the way to fleshing out content and ideas to make for a high quality book on F#. Hopefully you will see how much my knowledge of functional programming and F# has grown over that least 2 years when you read it. It’s on Manning’s site now available in Early Access Edition. I really have to say that being isolated without a vehicle (not that I would drive here anyway) has really helped me to concentrate on what I’m supposed to be doing. Without the distraction of running here and there (Starbucks) I have been able to focus on getting things done. I have also learned that Twitter really does lower my productivity. If I force myself to stop going to that site and uninstall my tweet client, I have a better chance of finishing my work.

Besides that I have gotten to spend quite a bit of time at the ThoughtWorks office working with their teams. Those guys are great! They immedietely accepted me into their office and allowed me to do some F# geek talks and even get some writing done in their space. If I were going to offshore a project, I’d certainly look to TW for help.

I have to say this is a much different experience than I would have thought. Prior to this trip,  I had worked on a couple of projects that had been off-shored from the states, but never did I reallize the cultural differences that could become issues. It’s interesting to see the other side of the equation and be made aware of what actually occurs when a project is sent off to another country. The companies that I had worked with in the past had no idea what they were getting into. They didn’t know how to work with distributed teams very well at all, let alone off-shored projects. So many times I’ve wondered what would have been different if I had this experience prior to those projects. If you are currently on a team that is working with another project team in another country do youself a favor – get some face time! I don’t mean that you should send someone from the offshore team to your office. This is not going to be nearly as beneficial to you. Send someone to their environment and get to know what drives them. Its very important to know what sort of barriers can stand in their way of progress as they may be very different than the barriers your home team is facing! Get to know the team and what they are all about and how they like to work. Communication is key. This is true in any team of course but esspecially those that are distributed overseas. If you don’t understand them and their ways, they don’t understand why you are always upset about the way things aren’t working! If you are interested in my experiences here with Indian culture as compared to my American upbringing, drop me a note and I’d be happy to discuss.

I’ll be coming back to the states in October. I look forward to seeing all of you very soon!