Developer Bowl: We're #1!

Some of the top minds of the software industry joined me at last week's SD West 2007 Conference in Santa Clara. Which probably causes you to wonder, what the heck was Erickson doing there?

Okay, I admit that I was seriously out-gunned in the brains department -- but they didn't know that. At least not at first, anyway.

The event was the "Developer Bowl"-- a competition that pitted teams of smart guys against each other in a test of knowledge about the history, technologies, and traditions of software development. According to the Conference organizers, the Dev Bowl was "Back by Popular Demand!". Boy did I fix that. They'll be lucky if the Conference is let back in Santa Clara next year, let alone the Developer Bowl.

So the event went like this (or was supposed to): Two rounds, each made up of two teams. The two winning teams then face each other in the final round. The other rules? Well, I sort of made them up as we went along. I could do this because I was the moderator, host, or fool on the hill, whichever fits.

Round 1 pitted a team from Google against a team from Yahoo. The Google team consisted of Guido van Rossum, Joshua Bloch, Peter Norvig, and Peter Weinberger. The Yahoo team was made up of Chip Morningstar, Marc Abramowitz, Ramana Yerneni, and Philip Bohannon. Like I said, lots of very smart and very talented people. And then there was me.

So I asked them "During WWII, more than 80 women mathematicians were hired to calculate ballistic trajectories using desktop calculators. What were these ladies called?" Answer "computers." Josh Bloch nailed it. Then there was "Although it was the first machine with a GUI and mouse designed for the mass market, the $10,000 price-tag for the Apple LISA computer flopped. Who was Lisa named after?" Answer "Steve Jobs' daughter." If I recall, Yahoo's Ramana Yerneni got that one. You get the idea. Still, Round 1 went to Google.

In Round 2, a team from CodeGear, consisting of David Intersimone, Michael Swindell, Allen Bauer, and Ken Chan, faced the IBM team of Theresa Quatrani, Scott Ambler, Tony Fiorot, and Michael O'Connell. You'd have thought that I would have cut Theresa some slack, since it was her birthday. But this was serious stuff.

Google took off running with Josh Bloch leading the charge. (Please note that we did have to retire the buzzer button after the pounding Josh gave it.) Still, CodeGear surprised me, especially when Ken Chan came up with the answer to the question "What does the acronym 'YAGNI' mean?" Answer "YouArentGonnaNeedIt, an extreme programming tenet." (I should point out that I used Google to find the answer to that.) In the end, Google won out, taking the crown (such as it was) from reigning champ CodeGear who had held it since the last Developer Bowl.

All in all, it was a lot of fun and I'd like to thank each of the participants for their good humor and patience. And if the SD West organizers actually hold the event again next year, I hope the winning team will return to uphold Google's honor.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 02:10 PM  Permalink