programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
Back in September 2008, I mentioned that we were spawning a new process. Well, that process arrived today, and its id is Henry Burton Atwood.
We're starting him off right with a little light reading.
You may recognize this book from Apple's Mac vs PC ad series, specifically, the "Gift Exchange" Mac vs PC ad.
Because, truly, what better gift is there for a newborn than the C++ GUI Programming Guide? Watch the ad to see what I mean. "I've been eyeing that myself."
All credit for creation of this new process of course goes to my wife Betsy who did the real work. I now truly understand the meaning of the classic Bill Cosby skit on childbirth.
Helping my wife walk the pain scale, going from pain level 7/10, 8/10 and then seeing the maw of darkness that lies at pain scale 10/10 and beyond, was quite an experience. How much pain? Well, imagine the worst pain you've ever experienced. Now imagine taking that pain, packing it in to a rickety Oldsmobile, setting it on fire, then driving it off the edge of a cliff at maximum speed. Into a valley filled with white-hot molten lava.
It's a little bit worse than that.
You may have heard that childbirth is a mystical, spiritual process. The thing that ties every human being together as one long continuous string of life, extending all the way back to the beginning of time. To a point, it is. As my friend Phil said, it's all ponies and butterflies. Until the ponies and butterflies start spontaneously screaming. But, it was all worth it to get Henry, who is genetically engineered to be awesome. Being a geek from birth, Henry has his own Twitter account, which was opened with exactly the first message you'd expect:
Hello World. Literally.
If you've been reading my blog for a while, I'm sure you know I will approach our new parenting adventure the same way I do programming -- with absolutely no freaking idea what I'm doing. And often hilarious results.
Here's to you, little guy, and every other little programmer being born around the world.
Congratulations!!!
arturh on March 13, 2009 3:23 AMCongrats!!!
I am a little worried about the decision to make him a programmer though.
Let him choose.
Niyaz PK on March 13, 2009 3:27 AMCongratulations! Being a father is the coolest thing ever!
DrJokepu on March 13, 2009 3:31 AMCongratulations!
Breakfast on March 13, 2009 3:33 AMCongrats dude :)
Juan on March 13, 2009 3:33 AMCongratulations!. I hope this little guy will be such a great writer as his dad. Congrats again.
Fabian on March 13, 2009 3:33 AMCongratulations, that was a great lvl up!
Marco on March 13, 2009 3:33 AMCongratulations, Jeff and family :)
Amit Schreiber on March 13, 2009 3:34 AMHappy Birthday!
Joe on March 13, 2009 3:34 AMCongratulations Jeff! Yeah, I'm about to fork the VM myself with my second instance. Actually, forking the VM is what got me into this mess in the first place.
Welcome to the world Henry!
Jay on March 13, 2009 3:37 AMCongratulations!
Congrats jeff! Looks like @rockhardawesome will be the youngest twitterer and blogger ! :D
Jaskirat on March 13, 2009 3:40 AMCongratulations Jeff and family!
Paul Healey on March 13, 2009 3:46 AMCongratulations for the awesomeness!
Jay on March 13, 2009 3:55 AMCongratulations Jeff and Betsy!
BTW, he already looks like you =)
Can Berk Güder on March 13, 2009 3:55 AMCongratulations Jeff!
John on March 13, 2009 3:55 AMCongratulations. May he bring as much joy to you as our little, soon to be one year old, bundle of joy has been for us.
chrisb on March 13, 2009 3:56 AMCongratulations to the three of you, but especially the mother.
Steve W on March 13, 2009 3:58 AMCongradulations, it must feel GREAT! I'm a programming type with a little programmer boy @ 3 months and I'll be waiting for your hilarious tips and notes about parenting... as I'm not into blogging-tweeting that much but it will still be interesting to read how other coding types tune the parenting process... Cheers to the little boy and his parents!
Martin on March 13, 2009 4:00 AMCongratulations.
Hopefully there won't be many regressions in this new Atwood release. :-)
Stewart on March 13, 2009 4:01 AMCongrats Jeff and Betsy
Anand.V.V.N on March 13, 2009 4:02 AMCongratulations Jeff
Gert on March 13, 2009 4:06 AMCongrats man! Tip: sleep when the baby sleeps :-)
Mitch on March 13, 2009 4:07 AMCongrats, boss!
Jarrod Dixon on March 13, 2009 4:09 AMCongratulations Jeff! =)
Artur on March 13, 2009 4:10 AMCongratulations. Good luck.
Francis on March 13, 2009 4:13 AMCongrats to family!
Ville on March 13, 2009 4:15 AMCongrats Jeff :)
When's he get to start playing rockband?
Congrats, Jeff!
A newborn is like a computer booting up for the first time. It has some BIOS routines built-in, but that's already it. No operating system, no applications. The interesting thing is, the OS doesn't need to be installed, it is copied by observation. Each adult has already a running OS and children copy these OS functions, one by one, by just observing how the OS of the adult works. A computer that programs itself by just monitoring how the OS on another computer works - what a great concept. Of course the observation and copy code is already in the BIOS.
Additionally to that OS, that is copied anyway, you as a parent can perform further programming, though you cannot just tell what to do as on a PC. You can only encourage something to happen... sometimes something will happen randomly out of nowhere... in either case you can later on reward or punish the system. Behavior rewarded will get established within the system, behavior punished will vanish of the system (though occasionally break through again). And hurry up on doing that, as the older the child gets, the FLASH memory becomes more and more of a ROM that cannot be changed anymore (it's like a Flash with unlimited amount of possible reads, but very limited amount of possible writes).
At the age of 12 to 14 the OS will further develop a strong firewall that is going to drop 80% of all your input and the 20% that goes through are stored in the Trash folder and only if you are lucky get restored from there on time before the Trash is emptied.
:-D
Mecki on March 13, 2009 4:28 AMHearty congratulations Jeff!
Does he have a stackoverflow account as well? :)
Hitec on March 13, 2009 4:36 AMNice work, cute kid. Don't let your babies grow up to be programmers. ;)
A. L. Flanagan on March 13, 2009 4:43 AMCongratulations!!!!
Mike on March 13, 2009 4:43 AMCongratulations Jeff !
Even if you don't yet realise it, your no1 priority will shift now, from programming to Henry.
The good news : you will be perfectly happy with that :)
He's going to grow up to be a skateboarder and it will be HILARIOUS
Andy Kelley on March 13, 2009 4:50 AMCongratulations - I'll always remember the original post, as it was (by chance) the first thing I read after finding out we were expecting as well. Ours is due a week today...
Mark on March 13, 2009 4:54 AMCangratulations, man!
*looks for a birthday cake with 0 candles*
Rikkety on March 13, 2009 4:55 AMCoding Horror 2.0! Congratulations! :)
Joe Chung on March 13, 2009 5:00 AMCongrats! As a father of 3 boys, I can tell you that you have no idea how you life has just changed for the better. Shut off the world for a few days and focus on your wife and son. Savor this.
And, of course, in short order you will find out the true meaning of stack overflow. :)
hobaird on March 13, 2009 5:03 AMCongrats Jeff, nicely done. Having been through it twice I can safely tell you that yes, indeed, you owe your wife a debt that you may never be able to repay.
Go take care of your family.
SQLBatman on March 13, 2009 5:09 AMCONGRATULATIONS :D
Filini on March 13, 2009 5:20 AMCongrats Jeff. Henry looks very much at piece with his C++. A good sign i'm sure :)
Justin Wignall on March 13, 2009 5:24 AMooops.. *peace* :)
Justin Wignall on March 13, 2009 5:24 AMAwww, sweet!
wonderful stuff.
Congratulations Jeff Mrs Atwood. re: the pain (just to give the disbelieving men some context) My wife has ridden a motorbike into a fence and had the bones in her shoulder sticking out thru her skin. She said childbirth was worse. Much worse. Good luck Henry.
JosephCooney on March 13, 2009 5:27 AMCongrats man!
Herr_Alien on March 13, 2009 5:27 AMCongratulation!
Ah, young parents ... Please note that the first computers that Henry is going to program are his parents' brains. In a very short time, he'll master the set of commands needed to provide him with nutrition, songs, massage, blanket, and even frustrated tears ... I mean, error message. And amazingly, he discovered all that without a single manual, just good old trial and error. Beat that C++!
Enjoy the journey, fellow parent!
@Paulus Lahur
Very true. Some programming parents foolishly think that they are programming the child, and all the while the child is programming them.
secretGeek on March 13, 2009 5:39 AMCongratulations! Welcome to a whole new era of not having a clue about what to do. :)
Vaughany on March 13, 2009 5:42 AMCongratu-freakin-lations!
Zach on March 13, 2009 5:47 AMCool. I had to go and work straight after both of mine were born. Stay as close as you can - you won't regret it.
The second one comes much easier, or at least he appeared to to me!
The first one is off to Siberia with the girl guides this summer. Where did the last 16 years go?
Savour every moment you can get with your wife and child, I missed the first years of both of my kids because I was on the road. You will never get that back, so make sure you have it. Take lots of photographs.
It's an adventure. Even after 16 years for me. Enjoy it.
Francis Fish on March 13, 2009 5:49 AMCongratulations, Jeff! Perfect job, perhaps your best ;)
Juergen on March 13, 2009 5:50 AMRemember, this is real time code with little formal debugging instrumentation available.
Congrats!
Jim Lehmer on March 13, 2009 6:00 AMCongrats Jeff. Kiss your sleep, what little you had of it, goodbye! Have fun.
mike on March 13, 2009 6:04 AMWelcome to the world, Henry!
PaulG on March 13, 2009 6:07 AMCongratulations!
Wishing you every blessing, and it's a lot of fun too!
Tim
Congratulations!
I agree with the sleeping part. It's a new sleeping schedule altogether (waking up every 2 or 3 hours), because of feeding, burping, changing diapers, helping ...
But... It's great (I already have a couple - girl and boy)! :)
André Cardoso on March 13, 2009 6:09 AMCongratulations with this classic just beyond the project deadline delivery. Good health, fortune and ofcourse lots of fun to you all.
Rolf on March 13, 2009 6:11 AMCongrats!
Chris on March 13, 2009 6:14 AMCongratulations!! to both of you,
A reader on March 13, 2009 6:14 AMCongratulations. Are you going to have a new site called..
Parenting Horror
Ben on March 13, 2009 6:14 AMCongratulations, Jeff! Don't use the task manager with him, though :-)
Román on March 13, 2009 6:18 AMCongratulations Jeff! I'll be so proud if his first word is orange ;-)
Alastair Smith on March 13, 2009 6:19 AMCongrats to the 3 of you! Don't worry about him not coming with a manual, who would read it anyway grin
KG2V on March 13, 2009 6:22 AMRE Childbirth pain. According to one woman I know, gallstones are worse than childbirth. The both hurt in the same KIND of way, trying to put something too big through a tube that is too small. I will tell you that gallstones (and kidney stones) HURT, and they can give you drugs for that that they can't safely give a woman in childbirth
KG2V on March 13, 2009 6:25 AMCongratulations Jeff!
Mike J on March 13, 2009 6:26 AMCongrats Jeff!
We will wait for a post written by this baby geek ;)
Andrew
Andrew Rosa on March 13, 2009 6:32 AMCongrats!
Donny V on March 13, 2009 6:33 AMCongrats! This is great news!
Timothy on March 13, 2009 6:39 AMCongrats, Jeff!
Mike on March 13, 2009 6:41 AMCongrats, for all of you.
DRukus on March 13, 2009 6:43 AMGreat man, Congrats!!!
Lonely Soul on March 13, 2009 6:46 AMCongratulations on your new process! Be sure to upgrade your task scheduler to handle the extra load, and watch out that the new process doesn't hog all your resources!
Keithius on March 13, 2009 6:49 AMI've had a kidney stone... nice description of the pain.
Keebla on March 13, 2009 6:52 AMCongrats! The first 3 months are the worst. And the best. Enjoy.
Mr. Shiny New on March 13, 2009 6:56 AMCongratulations!!!!!!!
Shaymaa on March 13, 2009 6:58 AMCongratulations Jeff! Felicidades!
BGarza on March 13, 2009 7:00 AMCongrats! Enjoy everything, even the bad parts - I'm 9 months down the line myself, and a bad day with Kiera is still better than a good day doing pretty much anything else.
Darren on March 13, 2009 7:01 AMCONTRATULATIONS!!!1!!111!!!!
Watch out for those first couple of core dumps. They are a doozy.
Congrats Jeff! :-)
MRK on March 13, 2009 7:09 AMCongratulations on successfully making babby!
Graeme on March 13, 2009 7:11 AMCongrats!
And at least _try_ to get some sleep at night ;)
Joel Coehoorn on March 13, 2009 7:14 AMSingle greatest tweet ever. A newborn saying Hello World! That's unreal.
Billkamm on March 13, 2009 7:15 AMMy best wishes for the three of you,
You'll be a man my son
Warmest regards, Mike
Good luck, Jeff.
It will be interesting to see if your spawned process actually takes any interesting in programming. I couldn't even get my kid to take an interest in programming with real life Karl the Robot through LEGO Mindstorms. He's a luser to the core.
I hope yours doesn't fit the same mold, because what are people going to do when they're as computer-dependent as they're going to be, but all of us true geeks are long dead?
Michael on March 13, 2009 7:21 AMawww! and he's the cutest wittle programmer!
congrats!
Congrats, glad to hear everything went well.
Chad Moran on March 13, 2009 7:24 AMCongratulations!
Yann Trevin on March 13, 2009 7:25 AMCongrats to you both.
Nik on March 13, 2009 7:29 AMCongrats!
tO on March 13, 2009 7:30 AMI believe that congratulations are in order. You were able to spawn 2 wonderful children this past year (Stackoverflow and Jeff v2). Hats off to you.
PS: Try not to drool on the keyboard too much :)
André Medeiros on March 13, 2009 7:31 AMDude, congratulations!
more to come ???
cya!
Nicolás Miyasato on March 13, 2009 7:32 AMCongratulations to you and your wife Jeff!
Wishing the newly spawned process a 100 year uptime
Way to go you guys, kids are lots of fun.
Peter Turner on March 13, 2009 7:34 AMCongrats indeed!!!!!!
Ewen Cameron on March 13, 2009 7:34 AMCongrats - Kids are a blast so long as they don't touch your monitor...
I'd recommend that you head over to http://www.hanselman.com/ (since you're more apt to listen to a fellow programmer) and read all about doing Baby Signs with your kid. You won't regret it!
HB on March 13, 2009 7:35 AMHey Jeff, there seem to be a lot of programmers procreating recently, myself included. How about a spinoff of stackoverflow for parenting questions? (In that context, a stack overflow is a much different, and much smellier, kind of thing.)
Reed H. on March 13, 2009 7:36 AMCongratulations! That is one of the funniest posts that I've read in a while.
Chris Norris on March 13, 2009 7:36 AMCongrats Jeff - my wife is due in a few weeks here, I understand everything you're saying.
Best wishes!
Sam Schutte on March 13, 2009 7:43 AMCongratulations!
David Mohundro on March 13, 2009 7:45 AMCongratulations! Long time lurker posting from the cave for your new one!
Knight on March 13, 2009 7:45 AMThe comments to this entry are closed.
Subscribe in a reader
Subscribe via email
|
|
Traffic Stats |