Today, I proudly donned by Hotdocs volunteer shirt and did  a volunteer shift.  In volunteer training, we were warned that you can't assume you will get to see the doc screening so I didn't expect it.  But I did get to watch two films!  Volunteering was really fun.

My Grandmother's House
I didn't see this full doc.  As I missed the beginning and left before the end.  It is about a grandmother who is taking care of her young granddaughter.  Meanwhile she is being evicted from her house as new apartments are being built in her block.  I loved the film makers' shooting style and the colours she used.  I found the doc didn't do enough to connect me to her her subject but maybe it was because I missed the beginning?

Arctic Son
Highly recommended.  Beautifully shot documentary of a son who returns from city living to the traditional lifestyle of his father in the Arctic.  The doc shows the father teaching the son the techniques of living off the land.  The son gradually finds himself through this and moves away from his destructive habits (drinking, drugs etc.).  This film really portrays the stark differences between the lifestyle of the Inuit with the southern Whites while leaving you with hope for the future.

Country
Country was made by a Quebec film maker about the phenomena of country festivals in Quebec during the summer.  People who enjoy country music and the country culture (rodeos, shirts with tassles) drive around to each festival all through the summer.  It is a warm environment and the people who participate in the country fair find it lifts their spirits.  This was a beautifully shot documentary that illustrates that even in our mass communication people still are drawn to very personal cultural experiences.

I missed the most recent DemoCamp event because I had another event that night.  I read a review of it by the AccordionGuy and I wished I had been there to hear a comment by a frustrated Java developer.  As the AccordionGuy describes it

I feel for those Java developers.  In the late 1990's they were really king of their game.  I recall a colleague from Nortel who got sent to a Sun sponsored Java conference for developers.  We all gathered round him to hear what it was like. 

When he arrived to register at the conference, in addition to the usual questions, he was asked what kind of coffee he liked (regular, latte, americano etc) and what he took in it (milk, two sugars etc).  His response was programmed into a small Sun branded key chain.  When he went to the coffee machine, his key chain could fit in a small receptacle, it would read it and make him the coffee he had specified at registration.  I don't think I need to say it but ...... fancy-schmancy.


 



Java, it seems to me, was one of the first languages to be heavily marketed.  It was no coincidence that the Java conference organizers choose to illustrate the power of the programming language through a coffee machine.  Java, coffee, get it? Get it? 

According to Wikipedia, the name Java could be an acronym or could stand for nothing but was most likely chosen because the developers met at a coffee shop.  Either way, it was fortunate that they chose Java and that at the same time the coffee culture was rising.  That really made it easy for the marketing people. 

It was not a good day for programmers when marketing people got a hold of their languages.  In general, programming languages are developed by programmers to solve a problem that can't be overcome with what eventually becomes the predecessor language. 

In the '90's, corporates started to realize that programmers with an expertise in a language would become some of the 'stickiest' customers you could create.  And so the linguists were born.  When Kernighan and Ritchie developed C they certainly weren't thinking about the million dollar industry that would develop from Microsoft C++ courses.

I am often dismayed when I hear programmers act like linguists.  I speak 'C or Perl or PHP or Java or Ruby'.  And they put down the other languages.  I have no interest in that type of discussion.  As a product manager, I am most impressed with programmers who can listen to my business or customer problem, develop a solution and then prototype the solution for me (so I can see it).  If they wrote it in Lisp, I'm happy if it solves my customers problem.

So Java developer, be comforted.  If it solves a customer problem or saves your company money then you don't have to worry about what those Ruby guys are up to.  But if you are just there to defend 'Java' your language, the way acadamie-francais defends French then you have problem.