Reading this thread gives me a feeling of deja vu. Here are my thoughts 1. I have found that most good developers are rarely willing to help their peers when it comes to teaching newbies or expounding at length at something they know well. This is different from answering the odd question. Of course there are exceptions with fellows like Graham and Michael Wakahe but buy and large those who are good at their craft are reluctant to teach 2. This OS/language/platform quibbling is an inevitable stage in growth in the industry, and is a good sign of passion and enthusiasm. But if 5 years later in the industry you are still a hardliner and refuse to acknowledge any view of your own, that to me smacks of myopia and immaturity and I find it difficult to take such people seriously. Complete hypocricy to complain at politicans about PNU/ODM wars and we are no better when it comes to acknowledging alternate views. We have much bigger immediate problems that require our time as opposed to arguing over gcc/ csc or DIR / LS. Nobody cares how sausages are made. They just care that they taste good. 3. I also think the way to prosperity for developers is to come together and share. Whether this is under formal auspices or is informal is neither here nor there. Which is why we set up AfricaDotNet. There are no strings attached and no agendas. Come, present on some technology related topic and listen to others. Meet your peers and share what you know. 4. It behooves any serious individual in the industry to keep a finger on the pulse of the same. Things change. If you are serious you need to move with the change. If you are a PHP guy you should know what's new in PHP 6 and what's so good about it. If you're a java guy you should know what the Grails guys are trying. If you're a .NET guy you should be investigating Silverlight 4. And to make things even more interesting, you should find out what the guys in the other camp are doing and leverage it. Like i tell my team time and time again -- this industry is not monogamous. There is no law that says you must be exclusively in one camp. 5. The only way i see our budding industry succeeding is if we take it seriously as a profession and not a glorified hobby. We must be willing to do things outside our comfort zone. Besides exploring outside our preferred platforms and languages. Software is not just coding. There is analysis, design, documentation, training, quality assurance and support. All these seem to fall by the wayside when it comes to locally developed software. @Aki That 92% statistic I find difficult to believe. It is too high. Could you cite your source? On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 12:03 AM, aki <aki275@googlemail.com> wrote:
*Corrections welcome :-)*
On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 8:23 PM, Murigi Muraya <mmskunkworks@gmail.com>wrote:
What is most ridiculous in Kenya is developers not occasionally getting together to lift each other up - skill and reputation (business) wise - resulting in few notable apps to speak off - which probably exist in many developer heads & hard drives in Kenya.
*I don't consider myself a developer and not for another 2 years at least, thus my involvement is based more about what the future holds. *
*Murigi, what you describe above is self inflicting suicide if developers are doing these things. It benefits no one and neither is anyone going to hit at some magic wand app that will change their lives over night. Such things belong in a " fairy tale " or a distant mirage. Reality is we have to struggle 10 times more than other countries to even get where they are with apps etc and chances are even greater that the app has already been done.* ** *As " under dogs " from a developing country who have more to prove than necessary, unless we change and become atheletes, that recognition is not going to happen. We don't have an iota of code out there neither do we have commercial apps that would place us anywhere.*
*Why would we choose such a self destructive path? What excatly is causing these problems? What are the solutions?* ** *I definately see the strengths of software developers/coders/etc association where all java, php, .net, c++, c can come together under one umbrella and a common cause, with guidance from those in the industry.*
*The above is a good example of a .Net language, though you may need
to clarify about Point 1 ? . What about other languages like php, java etc? Can they also not operate under a single umbrella?*
It is part of the Java / FOSS culture to engage in MS bashing. This is the reason why most .Net developers are not interested in skunkworks. Many started out as hard core FOSSists until work (not college) got them into .Net. As such many of them also work with PHP. One told me last week they have no time for types who know nothing about .Net but specialize on negative commentary about anything MS. Now, guess who is doing most enterprise (intranet and extranet) apps in Kenya today?
*I read an interesting article the other day and the comments from a CEO made a lot of sense. When people are in college, foss is all fine etc but when someone has a family and bills to pay, going out on commercial proprietory systems pays. The problem with foss is that its commercial payback is based on support. That demand for support is reducing as companies are encouraging their inhouse IT people to learn and support such systems and with google, well need I say more....* ** *A further research on the net revealed that 92% of all desktop apps are Microsoft while others hold the other %. So those going after MS in developing countries are people who have been paid to do so through commercial undertakings or partnerships, or have other revenues to sustain their rants or are just plain silly. * ** *There is a bottom line to this. Politics and Economic change will bring good or bad news world over, we are no different. How long before we see that in Africa we are just simple END USERS of commercial games being played out in corporate board rooms out there whether proprietory or open source. We are the test bed of many things so until we write our own code, develop our own OS etc there is no justified reason to build defensive lines just because of systems. **I would add that .Net guys should join skunks and also add their veiws, get a thicker skin and move on to what is more important than rants. * ** *BTW, I'm a FreeBSD believer but I can tell you that even Linux people have a problem with this. I personally do not care, I get my work done and results whether proprietory or open. And now Iphone and steve jobs seem to be a new target, the net is full of articles. :-)*