The First Thinkpad

On holiday recently I had the opportunity to take a look around some of the places in the bay area which have played key roles in the history of computing. Despite the fact that most of the developments when it comes to what we now consider 'the computer' have happened in the last 100 years, scientists and inventors have been making progress in the field for over two millennia.

As with most fields, most of the advancements beyond the few well known breakthroughs remain confined to the realms of obscurity. Now that I've committed to computer science as a pursuit, it was fascinating to be able to look into the past and be inspired by the pioneers who paved the way for the technology of today.

One of the things that stood out for me was one of the original think pads in the Computer History Museum. So many times, someone made a decision or said something that went on to be far more popular or influential than could ever have been imagined. What started out as a prompt on a notebook now adorns millions of laptops worldwide. Email is another prime example of something growing out of all proportion (for better or for worse).

Anyway, there's not much more to show - otherwise this just becomes holiday snaps of a museum. Just remember that beyond being interesting, history can be a valuable guide when forging something new. Although a bit hackneyed, the well known George Santayana quote still applies:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

The Bottom of the Stack

As with all the best things in life, this all started with a crazy idea that was initially dismissed out of hand. While I was in a fervor planning for FOSDEM this year I did a quick check to see if there were any conferences in the UK that I might be able to go to (my student budget didn't allow for another international trip). I worked with PHP for two of my previous internships, and used it as the base for my most used personal projects (pizza-get and music-get), so seeing that PHP had a conference in the UK was exciting. But there was a problem. A problem to the tune of £300 in the form of an entry fee.

Eventually I found that PHP UK were offering diversity scholarships for the conference, to the tune of travel, accommodation, and the entry fee. That sounds great, but I was pretty certain that I wasn't going to get one, especially as a student when the conference is aimed at professional developers. Well, turns out that if you don't ask you don't get.

Fast forward to February, and I'm on the way to a campaign reception at the Chiswell Street dining rooms with the other scholarship awardees and conference presenters - not only was I at the conference, but I had a unique opportunity to network with some of the best minds of the PHP world! After an insightful evening of wine, food, and excellent advice it was time to retire to the apartment I was staying in for the duration of the event with my roommate (another student awarded a scholarship).

Some of the main track conference talks blew me away. Compared to what I had been to before - FOSDEM and an 'unplugged' conference by RSAC - this was a big budget event. This also meant that there were some talks which one might not expect at a tech conference. There were talks about diversity in the industry, impostor syndrome, and mentoring. These are all really important subjects, and ones which nigh impossible to pick up from a book. I think more conferences should have these types of 'soft' talks (In fact, thinking back to RSAC unplugged the best session by far was Alexis Conran of the Real Hustle describing the psychology of scamming and deception, and not the ones by various heads of cyber security/research).

Aside from being harder to learn, these topics are the ones which get left out (in academia anyway, it was better when I was at a startup) in favour of technical skills. The thing is, I know how to find out about tech stuff - I can use Google to help me figure out that I can use Docker to ship my app - but I'm far less likely to google why it is that all my colleagues seem to know more than me and how on earth I got through the hiring process without them seeing through my fraud. Wait, did I just say that out loud?

To wrap up, I'm incredibly grateful to PHP UK for giving me this opportunity. I didn't think it would be possible to make people feel included in a community of 700 where, to be honest, we had very little in common. But it's worked! One of the conditions on receiving the scholarship was that I pay it forward one day, and you know what? I will. After the conference it dawned on me that one day I'll be able to provide the same eye opening experience to someone, and that's incredible. And also thanks to my mentors this time around, so I guess it's self perpetuating.

(I mentioned RSAC Unplugged a bit here, so I had to include the awesome picture they made of all the conference talks)

What's all the FOSS About?

This weekend I joined some friends from the computing society on a trip to the Free and Open-source Software Developers' European Meeting (FOSDEM), an opportunity to learn from and share opinions with ~5,000 other developers from the continent. Having such a broad topic means that FOSDEM is a great place to learn about all sorts of incidental things you wouldn't expect to. I learnt about window managers, DNSSEC, and ?. These weren't things that I went with the express intention of learning about, but it helps make me a more rounded engineer than what my course and personal projects allow.

It's nice to be around others who share the same niche interests as you do. I went up to the stall of one of the projects that I use (ownCloud), expecting to say hello and exchange pleasantries, and instead ending up discussing the project and it's intricacies with one of the developers. It takes a bit of courage, but this is the best opportunity you can get to learn from the best of the best. I finally got to see what all the fuss about this Stallman bloke was about, and learnt more than I thought would about software licenses (from the perspective of a developer and a community).

The other astounding thing about FOSDEM is the sheer amount of beer that gets consumed. The convention takes over the delirium cafe in the centre of Brussels on the Friday before the event starts (complete with bouncers that ask you about the JVM before they let you in), which is packed to the point where you can't get into the street it's in. After everyone's woken up with sore heads the next day, extra shops open up around the ULB campus to serve the mas of developers who are still hungry for booze. A few of the stalls bring free (as in beer) beer, and will happily swig away while talking to you.

This time we decided to write off Monday and get a later train back (the idea that you're going to do anything productive on the day you get back to the UK is a naive one), which let us visit a few sites in Brussels. We didn't do this last year, and it was a really nice way to spend the day. We saw the cathedral, complete with the fanciest pulpit you ever did see. On the way out we spotted the Banque Nationale De Belgique, which turned out to have a temporary exhibit open. There's something about money which makes it intriguing, and the ability to print banknotes with your face on aside, it was an insightful look in to the way the euro is managed, and the role the member states play (and what's left to the central bank. My favourite was the machine used to invalidate old coins, which corrugates them :P We also went around the European Parliament, which was filled with quite a lot of European propaganda, but served as a reminder of how incredible it is that the European Union exists and does all the things it does (especially when the press opinion of it is overwhelmingly negative).