Gerd’s Blog

I Just read an very interesting comment in one of my colleagues Skype status message. It was written in german so here is the translation:

Live is like a bicycle, you have to ride the whole time, otherwise you will fall.

I wish i would have teachers or professors that are able to explain complex topics in an way like he does it. Once again an amazing presentation on TED.

Today I want to post about something different than software development. Yesterday I found the Video about Rand Pausch’s last lecture and was really impressed. It was not about a person that still has fun living even knowing that he will die, further more about a university professor that dedicated his live teaching students to reach their child hood dreams.

A full version is also available.As some of you might know I am still studying Computer Science at the TU Vienna. I started in 2000 and no I was not just studying the last 7 years. In September 2002 I decided to work full time and this is what I am doing until now. Therefore my progress at the University is not as fast as expected.

There are several reasons for starting to work full time but one of the biggest was that studying was more a burden than a pleasure and I do not mean it in an hey lets go out and have fun way. After nearly seven years at the TU including several years working as Tutor, I have to say there is and was no Professor who fascinated me in any lecture he gave to aim for the stars in a way the talk above does. There was neither a person I would

There was one sentence in the full video that fascinated me most:
When he got his PhD his Professor told to him that he is an excellent seller and he should use this technique to sell something more valuable than any product of the world - he should sell education.

We are complaining that skilled, enthusiastic developers are so hard to find but forget that they have not learn it. Not in school an not at the university. Where are the Mentors the Rand Pauschs that can captivate students with their words?

I have posted that the company i am working for is searching for developers a few weeks ago. As mentioned we tried to use http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/ to find engineers that are searching for challenges as Christopher mentioned in his post. After the posting is not available any more i want to share our results with you.
We got 5 Replies - 3 of them where from Indian Consulting companies and just 2 where from interested candidates. I did not expect there would be much replies special if you take a closer look at postings form Europe (at the moment 14) but two is fare too few.

Post located on Software Engeneering - Best Practice:

http://best-practice-software-engineering.blogspot.com/2007/02/tech-software-reusability.html