What If... DZone had a Reality TV series???
What if there was a reality TV show that featured everyday programmers/software developers like you and me? It could give the rest of the world a glimpse into our jobs and see that the stereotypes are true, but they could also see that a sizable majority of folks in this profession are actually pretty normal.
On top of that, young people that may be interested in going into the software development industry can get a glimpse of the day-to-day events of you and me, and could encourage the interest of young kids trying to make up their minds.
There have been some neat documentaries about software development in the past, such as Startup.com and Revelution OS, but they didn't show the day-to-day happenings.
What kind of format would you want it to have? I can think of a few:
The Death Marchers: Have two teams develop various solutions given difficult constraints, and/or changing requirements, one week after the next. The loosing team would face Rick and one member must hear the dreaded words "You're Deleted!" The winner gets a job working with Rick and Matt.
The Surreal Project: Throw a bunch of well known / famous programmers together to live with each other 24x7 and have an assignment they're supposed to complete in 6 weeks. Watch the team congeal and complete their assignment, despite occasional blowups and outbursts.
Extreme Do-Over, Website Edition: A team of programmers goes and develops a new website / webapp for a charity, and documents their progress along the way.
eXtreme Programmers: Shows how an XP project works, and the benefits gained from using XP (or another Agile Method)
Open Sourcery: Follow a team of open source developers, and see how open source software development (and all development) invloves product/project management, planning, implementation, QA, and support.
adVentureCapitalism.com: Capture the progress of a fast moving startup, from idea conception to going public -- this is basically the premise of the movie Startup.com, but you'd be able to see more of the daily activities of all of the employees.
Ok -- so they're all pretty silly, but it could be entertaining for the rest of us. :-) I'm sure Google, Apple, IBM, Sun, Microsoft, and loads of others would all have a field day with sponsorship.
Share your ideas for reality TV shows -- Rick and Matt might actually go for it!
(Note: Opinions expressed in this article and its replies are the opinions of their respective authors and not those of DZone, Inc.)
Comments
Rick Ross replied on Fri, 2008/01/25 - 3:56pm
Well, you remind me of an old joke about a contest where the winner got a 1-week, all expenses paid vacation to Yuma, Arizona. Second place got two weeks!
Clever post, Jim - I very much enjoyed it!
Matt Stine replied on Fri, 2008/01/25 - 4:17pm
Jim Priest replied on Fri, 2008/01/25 - 4:59pm
A few more:
The Amazing Program - teams race around the world programming an application in two weeks while trying to find Wifi and places to recharge their laptops.
Program Busters - Windows, Mac and Linux zealots go at each other - at the code level - picking apart each others code.
In all seriousness - I do think a company like Google could make this interesting - it may be difficult from a NDA point of view but I'd imagine there is enough stuff going on at Google they could make it work! And it would be interesting for anyone considering going into IT/programming...
Bjoern Jensen replied on Sun, 2008/01/27 - 5:39pm
Hi,
the NetBeans Community has something similar: http://www.netbeans.tv. Just check it out. And for the DZone it could be a big thing. Let's go :o)
Robert Robbins replied on Fri, 2008/02/01 - 12:22am