adam bien's blog

Unworldly Oredev 2013 Theme 📎

The oredev 2013 conference theme is somehow strange:

"Programmers, like dancers, work with visions, using their unique vocabulary as a means of expression. Mastering highly technical skills, they build their arabesque in the air, from air, creating works of art by elevation of the imagination.

Few forms of media creation are so agile, so easy to refine and rework, yet so readily capable of making grand conceptual structures a reality as software."

I don't get the theme. Some good managers, who were able to manage anything, revealed me the following:
  1. If you have a good specification, you are done. A spec can be implemented by any developer.
  2. Developers are replaceable (even expendable?)
  3. Developers are poolable and stateless. You only have to throw more developers at a project and you are earlier done.
  4. Outsourcing (better: offshoring) paired with fixed budget is the key to success.

So as you can clearly see, there is no room and not time left for arts :-).

oredev is (was) a great conference. Kudos to the org team, technicians and designers.