Re-opening comments, due to popular demand.
I had an email exchange this week that reminded me of this topic, which I've been meaning to blog about for a long time (thanks, Ben). Attribution!
I believe that fundamentally the best programmers in the world are artists. I'm not the only one to draw this conclusion, but I did draw it independently from Paul Graham.
Back when I started at Apple they had an ethic of attribution. Everybody signed their work. Some of the original Macintoshes even had signatures inside the case (I know because I've looked...I used to run the Apple Archives and we had several signed cases). For sofware there was the About Box. I've just found a link on Andy Hertzfeld's Folklore site about why we got to be in the About Box. Very interesting piece of history. As a result of Bill Atkinson, the About Box in the late 80s through mid-90s always included a list of the people who worked on the software, sometimes also what jobs they did and if there was room also a picture. Sometimes the picture was only accessible in an Easter Egg. For QuickTime Conferencing it was my job to create the About Box list. It was so cool to be able to tell your Mom and Dad how to look for you in the About Box.
In about 1997 it was decided that About Boxes would no longer include attribution, because Apple had noticed that every time a new version of software came out, everyone on the list got an unsolicited call from a recruiter.
Now, I don't know about you, but if obscurity is the only reason I'm still with my company....there's a problem!
If I was at Apple now you'd better believe I'd be arguing for attribution again. In fact I think every programmer should fight for attribution, no matter what company is writing the paycheck. Look at the entertainment industry. Who shows up where in the credits is a big, big deal...translating directly to job satisfaction and a way to track an individual's body of work over time.
This is one of the best features of open source in my opinion. I tell people all over the world that open source (and blogging) can help build them a reputation that will serve them when looking for employment. Why should that stop when you get a job? You should get credit for everything you do (good and bad)...responsibility and accountability come along with attribution too.
So sign your work! Sign your comments on blogs while you're at it!
Really good blog content Danese you just got yourself another regular reader :D
As a ex-sun Employee and a new Intel employee i regard your opinions with high regard.
If you could tell us more about your job role's in Intel would be intresting to read about.
Thanks,
- Vikram
www.FaeLLe.com
Posted by: Vikram Mohan | March 26, 2005 at 01:42 PM
If only a few more people would understand the truth behind your blog entry, hospitals would have a few more beds available. Hence, I wish you were my boss. Anyways.
Posted by: Gustavo Garnica | March 28, 2005 at 07:02 AM
Well said. I was part of a team in the late '80s that had regular need to read the VMS source (on microfiche no less). Digital developers' names were always part of the module change history, and you saw those same developers in the flesh at events like DECUS. Psychologically people take more care when they know they're signing their work. Projects, products, releases, and teams come and go. The company gets the benefit of that care and attribution and public presence. The channel might be different now, but the human conversation remains the same. It's always too bad when the company gets too big and the culture becomes one of "managing resources" and "operational excellence" instead of the technological excellence and solving customers' problems. When we delivered Interix (the UNIX-like virtual layer on Windows NT) we had all the developers names in a virtual directory (r+d) on which you could run ls, with their start date as the file timestamp, and a link count of zero if they had left the company. We had to strip out the directory when we arrived at Microsoft in the Fall 1999 as they were going into Windows 2000 lockdown.
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