Kimberly Blessing is a computer scientist, a Web developer, a standards evangelist, a feminist, and a geek. This is where she writes about life, technology, women's issues, and whatever else comes to mind.
The past 13 months have been a mixed bag of successes, failures, changes, growing pains, and learning opportunities. This time showed me who my real friends are and helped me realize what’s truly important to me. Silly as it may sound, the eleven Duran Duran concerts I was able to attend during this helped greatly with the process of finding and re-centering myself.
Now the tour is over and life must return to normal. I’ve come to learn that normal for me isn’t what it is for others — the expectations I have of myself leading an extraordinary life constantly drive me to seek out unique opportunities. For a while, there were people in my life who made me feel as though this was an odd way to live, and I was always apologizing for doing the things that I loved to do. But the events and activities of the past year — and the love and support of friends — have helped me find myself again, and have shown me that an extraordinary life isn’t wrong. In fact, it’s what my whole life has been preparing me for.
2009 is going to be a very interesting and exciting year!
Posted June 22, 2008 at 12:32 AM EST | Categorized as Space
Did you know that there are only ten flights left in NASA’s space shuttle program? It’s true. STS-124, which landed back on June 14, was the 123rd shuttle flight and the 35th flight of the Discovery vehicle. The next flight, STS-125, will be in October 2008 and will be the final Hubble servicing mission. The shuttle fleet is due to be retired in 2010.
With all of these “final” events taking place, it makes me sad. I grew up with the space shuttle and I never lost the sense of awe that I had for the spacecraft or the astronauts — if anything, with greater access to NASA in the past decade, my understanding, respect, and admiration has only grown. Still, looking forward to March 2015 — the current estimate for when the Ares and Orion vehicles will be ready for initial operation — I’m excited about Constellation. I only wish that more people knew about the program.
What many people do know about, however vaguely, is the Astronaut Selection process. What you may not know is that the application process for the 2009 Astronaut Candidate Class is accepting applications through July 1! This class will support the International Space Station (ISS) Program. Apply online at usajobs.gov — search for “astronaut”. Oh, and in case you weren’t aware, frequent travel may be required.
Yes, I wish I were talking about Hillary! But I’m not.
Instead I’m talking about the ACM elections, and the woman I’m referring to is Wendy Hall, CBE, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society, co-founding director of the Web Science Research Initiative, and (if you couldn’t tell) one of my role models. So the votes have been counted and, come July 1, Wendy will also serve a two-year term as President of the ACM. Congratulations!
And speaking of GHC, I also need to mention that registration for the 2008 conference is now open! After so many years of attending, stalking Telle Whitney, and volunteering, this year I’m finally going to be speaking on a panel! (Go me!) So, don’t miss this opportunity to interact with thousands of smart, successful, techie women — including Fran Allen!
Software programmer Sara Chipps (yay! a woman!) has written an article titled Natural Programmers (Code Monkeys) vs. Career Programmers (Geeks in Suits). It’s probably the best non-techie explanation of the behaviors, habits, and beliefs of the “natural programmer” that I’ve read — and yes, I completely identified with much of what she wrote.
However, I have to take a step back and address an issue that I have with the two types of programmers she defines and the names she assigns to them.
First there’s the “career programmer (geek in a suit)”. These days I find that career programmers are not geeks, and they’re definitely not in suits (always business casual!). I’ve found that they’re in programming for the money; they learn enough to do their work — perhaps well, maybe even to get to the point of being perceived as geeky. But I also find that these people lack a true passion for the craft of writing code. Sara suggests that the career programmer is more of a business person, concerned with cost effective solutions, but I’m not even sure that’s true anymore. To me, this person’s work is just a job, and if flipping burgers paid as much as programming, they might be doing that instead.
Like Sara, I fall into her other category of “natural programmer”. But I am certainly not a code monkey — I am a code ninja! (Actually, with a nickname like “Obi-Wan Kimberly”, I’m probably a code jedi, but anyway…) I find the term “code monkey” to apply more to the previous category of programmer. Why? “Code monkey” implies that anyone can do what we do and that we work for bananas. “Code ninja”, on the other hand, says that we’re stealth and secretive, jumping out of the darkness when you least expect it. Our code takes you by surprise in its brilliance and our swiftness of execution is legendary. We could do no other job because we have trained for so long, perfecting our natural talent, and nothing else can satisfy our need for control over the systems we affect.
Sara closes her article with some OR logic about which type to hire, however I need to propose a more detailed and different solution. If you have only one programmer working for you, you probably don’t want either of these types — you need someone who really does fall into the gray area between the two extremes. (Yes, they are out there!) And if you have a team of programmers, you need a mix of these two types, and you need to put effort into getting them to communicate effectively with one another. Only then will you have both a killer team and killer code.
