Philosophy is a weird subject. Many of us have had to learn some of it in high school, but we quickly dismissed it as we move forward in life, only to rediscover it as soon as we hit some midlife crisis along the way. Or, at least, that was the experience of this author. Yet philosophy is the only real bridge uniting all sciences, and as such deserves a much brighter spot on it. In particular, the road that led us to the computer was primarily built by philosophers, and in particular, by Bertrand Russell, whose 1959 interview is the subject of this month's Vidéothèque article.
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Dartmouth College
In August 2014, Dartmouth College published a video commemorating the 50th anniversary of the BASIC programming language, the subject of this month's Vidéothèque section. It features original footage from the 1960s and interviews of former students and team members, including Professor Thomas Kurtz, who was 85 years old at the time. But the heart and soul of the video is, without any doubt, Professor John Kemeny himself; not only his technical contributions, which were outstanding by every standard, but also his open personality and progressive spirit.
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Guy Kawasaki
There is a website out there providing an answer to the question "What is Developer Relations?," a question that this author, whose job title is precisely that one, gets a lot. According to this resource, Developer Relations is an umbrella term encompassing three major areas of activity: "Community," "Content," and "Product;" a perfect description of a job role, at least as far as this author is concerned.
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Mayuko Inoue
The archetype of software engineering dress code is quite parochial: a t-shirt (usually featuring a conference or programming language logo, or a geek joke), a pair of jeans, snickers, and a sweatshirt, in case the weather gets more San Francisco-like than you might expect. And that is it. Let us admit it: the "about us" page of software companies often looks like advertising for The Gap, American Apparel, or sometimes even, sadly, Abercrombie & Fitch, minus the abs, of course.
