HtmlForFood

From APIDesign

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 a sign with "Will Code HTML for Food" slogan.

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 thousands 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!

1 Pictures
2 Do you have your own Code for food Picture?
3 Competition
4 GeeCON 2011

Pictures

Do you have your own Code for food Picture?

Share! Here is one taken by Petr Suchomel:

Competition

The HtmlForFoodCompetition which we run in order to promote TheAPIBook and popularize its major concepts is running towards its end! I have already selected the winner using a complex mathematical operations with a huge contribution of pseudo randomized numbers. Please tune in the next NetBeans Podcast Episode 46 and hear the announcement yourself!

I can only say that the submissions we got were really great:

Vincent Cantin was looking so desperately sad.
cismet guys provided wide range of variations on the "code" topic.
Tonni Epple draw a perfect caricature.
Andre Pinto pictured himself with a beautiful selection of languages and "code" sentences.
Full Movie was not really submitted for competition, however it is very nice exploration into everyday developers' pains.

Who will win TheAPIBook by providing the best Html For Food picture?