HtmlForFood

From APIDesign

Revision as of 08:22, 19 August 2008

As part of Chapter 1, The Art of Building Modern Software I wanted to demonstrate that the need for programmers is really big and that almost everyone who wants to get a job as a programmer may get it. For this I wanted to reuse a picture of a San Francisco homeless that is famous for wearing sign with "Will Code HTML for Food".

However my publisher told me that the picture is of really low quality and that I need to re-take it. This is indeed a bit hard, especially if you are few thousand kilometers away from that guy and as such I decided to ask my friends to help me. We created the same sign, took the worst cloths that we had and asked the best photographer we knew to take our pictures.

Of course these are not really authentic, but we did our best. I hope that they will illustrate the point. The point that the need for programmers is real and that everyone who wants, can get job in the IT industry. In no way I want to satirize people with tough destiny. I just found the "Will Code HTML for Food" way of getting rid of misery very creative and entertaining. I wish to be as creative when I end up on the streets one day.

I love the text of that sign as it builds nice tenseness. Probably the sign has to work, otherwise the guy would not ware it. Did he really get the job once? How good he was? Can he code HTML? I doubt, one cannot code HTML, HTML is just text document, isn't it? At least it used to be. Coding it is as meaningful as "coding an email". Everyone can do that. Does that mean everyone can get job in the IT industry? Does that mean one can get job regardless of the amount of skills one has? If this is true, can we produce reliable systems at all? How is that possible? That is the question!

Pictures

Competition

Get a chance to win TheAPIBook by taking "Will Code HTML for Food" picture and adding a reference to it here by Aug 28, 2008!

• Vincent Cantin
• cismet
• Tonni Epple