Highly-technical Management of Software Development

I really enjoyed listening to Alex Martelli's talk Highly-technical Management of Software Development.

Am I the only one who thinks that a highly technical manager is sort of like a Knight Templar? (Knights Templar had to be knights as well as monks.)

Comments

Anonymous said…

Having a highly technical manager kicks butt _as long as_ they are also good at the other aspects of management. Being an alpha geek doesn't mean crap if they aren't doing other management basics. I mean, it's great if my boss can truly appreciate the amazing widget I implemented, but I'll still end up leaving quickly if s/he's not able to provide me the support I need to ensure my career development.

Money isn't a motivator, but it can easily be a de-motivator.

7:19 AM

Noah Gift said…

I welcome a highly technical manager who is wise in terms of the world, and can do what I do. I am fortunate to be in that situation now. In some ways it is like knowing a guru/mentor.

A situation that is not good, is when you have a boss that thinks they are technical, but are not. Not only do they not understand what you are doing, they often think they know best. Bad combination!

6:37 AM

Drawing Sierpinski's Triangle in Minecraft Using Python

In his keynote at PyCon, Eben Upton, the Executive Director of the Rasberry Pi Foundation, mentioned that not only has Minecraft been ported to the Rasberry Pi, but you can even control it with Python. Since four of my kids are avid Minecraft fans, I figured this might be a good time to teach them to program using Python. So I started yesterday with the goal of programming something cool for Minecraft and then showing it off at the San Francisco Python Meetup in the evening.

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I've been reading Dreaming in Code lately, and I really like it. If you're not a dreamer, you may safely skip the rest of this post ;)

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