{"id":1719,"date":"2003-11-14T22:15:10","date_gmt":"2003-11-15T02:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2003\/11\/14\/beware-the-grey-panthers\/"},"modified":"2003-11-14T22:15:10","modified_gmt":"2003-11-15T02:15:10","slug":"beware-the-grey-panthers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2003\/11\/14\/beware-the-grey-panthers\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware the Grey Panthers"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
\n


\n <\/em>Last night at dinner, following the Thursday
\n Berkman<\/a> meeting, Dave<\/a>
\n was commenting on the exotic culture and social habits of programmers
\n and software developers. Although he has been hanging out with a
\n lot of programmers lately, the Dowbrigade is in essence an analog
\n guy<\/a>. When those goofy gearheads get going with the digital lingo,
\n they might as well be Shuar tribespeople speaking the Aguaruna
\n language<\/a>
\n along the banks of the Santiago River in the Upper Amazon Basin.
\n Actually, the Dowbrigade reports feeling more at home among the Shurar
\n ("People")at times than among the collection of strangely developed developers
\n he has fallen in with lately.<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, we asked Dave, who was waxing rather pessimistic
\n about the state of the industry, what was happening to the
\n young genius programmers just coming into the game with their brilliant paridigm-busting
\n epiphanies and limitless post-adolescent energy.  Immediately several
\n of the greybeards at the table chimed in, almost in unison, "Myth!"<\/p>\n

They all agreed, the popular picture of pimply cyber-punks rewriting
\n the universe was totally a Hollywood invention. "There’s just so much
\n you have to know," explained Dave, "All of the best software is written
\n by experienced developers."<\/p>\n

The Dowbrigade was crushed.  How could the Iconic Image of Keneau
\n Reeves as the (now not-so) young genius programmer saving the universe,
\n not to mention high schoolers reprogramming Defense Department doomsday
\n programs, young Einstein realizing relativity, and the brute brilliance
\n of 20-something programmers churning out millions of lines of code in
\n twisted 96-hour
\n bursts
\n of caffeine and testosterone-fueled creativity, not be true? Once again,
\n reality was rearing its ugly head.<\/p>\n

However, the more we thought about it, the more it made sense. For sure
\n there is an art and aesthetic to programming that must be refined over
\n years of observation and experimentation. It sort of reminded the Dowbrigade
\n of his tennis game. Between sets of a savage match with Jon Raisz,<\/a>
\n Brookline architect, topographer, high school running mate, and 35-year-running worthy
\n opponent on the other side of a tennis net, the following hypothetical
\n was proposed:<\/p>\n

If each of the years we had been playing were represented by a separate
\n clone of each of us, and the 35 Dowbrigades had a tournament, that is
\n the 15-year-old Dowbrigade vs. the 38-year-old Dowbrigade in the first
\n round, etc., which version would emerge the eventual winner?<\/p>\n

After august and profound consideration we agreed that the current incarnations
\n would clearly sweep the aggregated younger versions.  The wiles
\n and deception, spins and misdirection shots, and the accumulated court
\n sense honed over the years would more than compensate, we decided, for
\n any minute loss of strength or stamina. Vain self-deception? Well, like
\n programming, the proof is in the pudding.  See you on the courts.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night at dinner, following the Thursday Berkman meeting, Dave was commenting on the exotic culture and social habits of programmers and software developers. Although he has been hanging out with a lot of programmers lately, the Dowbrigade is in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}