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programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
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I have the distinct honor of speaking at this year's CUSEC, which runs from today until Saturday.
CUSEC is the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference, an annual conference about the most interesting topics in software engineering organized for and by students from universities across Canada. What makes CUSEC unique is that it is the only software specific conference that targets students. This means that the presentations you'll see at CUSEC will be about things that matter to you, not just things that matter to professional developers. That doesn't mean that the speakers we get are nobodies, either. Past speakers include David Lorge Parnas, Kathy Sierra, Ralph Johnson, Kent Beck, Alistair Cockburn, Dave Thomas, and many more.
They weren't kidding about the impressive speaker list. This year's keynote speakers are:
It's hard to shake the feeling that one of these things is not like the others, but I suppose the conference organizers had their reasons for inviting me, however crazy those reasons may seem to me.To provide a sense of history, the CUSEC keynote speakers from 2007:
And the CUSEC keynote speakers for 2006.
I think you get the idea, so there's no need to list the 2005 speakers. It's an honor to be among such distinguished speakers. How distinguished? Many of these folks have their own Wikipedia entries! I had the opportunity to meet Tim Bray today, for example. Since 2004, CUSEC has grown into the premier conference by computer science students, for computer science students-- across the whole of Canada. It's too bad there isn't an equivalent student-run conference for American computer science students.
This is also my first trip to Canada. After many years of wanting to visit our northern neighbors, I've finally made it. I have to agree with William Gibson; as he wrote in his book Spook Country, Canadian cities look the way American cities do on television. I'm enjoying Montreal and the Canadian perspective on life tremendously. It's refreshing, although I am not sure I needed the televised Capital One Grand Slam of Curling.
I wasn't able to find any video archives of previous CUSEC keynotes, but I was told by Edward Ocampo-Gooding, our keynote host, that they're capturing hi-def video of this year's keynotes. Assuming my talk isn't a total disaster, I'll update this post with a link to my keynote when it is available.
Update: 1/23/08 My CUSEC 2008 keynote, "Is Writing More Important Than Programming?", is available for local download (ppt, 3mb).
Posted by Jeff Atwood View blog reactions
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Well, when you get bored of the curling, come to pub!
Guillaume Theoret on January 17, 2008 06:06 PMCome on,how disastrous could your talk be? You have a blog for goodness sake and shouldn't have any problem expressing yourself.
gogole on January 17, 2008 06:29 PMAh crap, I wish I had known that. Would have loved to see you speak, to me you are one of the few pragmatic guys with the passion for state-of-the-art without being tainted by corporate interests and that makes you a whole lot more interesting than many others. Anyway, while you are here, don't forget to taste the local beers, an unfiltered Raftman from Chambly for instance. Good luck with the talk.
Casper Bang on January 17, 2008 06:47 PMI've been chair of CUSEC 2004 and I have to admit that I totally agree with their choice of keynote speakers, yourself included. Our goal when organizing CUSEC is to gather people WE'd like to hear. Spolsky, Parnas, Kruchten, Beck are others we had the honor to listen in the past years. Since codinghorror becomes more and more popular among software engineering people (and personnaly since Kathy Sierra stopped bloging, another respected speaker in the human factors field), I would have put you on top of my list either.
Looking forward to listen to your speech.
joelmig on January 17, 2008 07:00 PMWhat !
Joel Spolsky has his own entry in wikipedia, and there would be no Jeff Atwood entry ?
+1 for me
Unless of course Jeff does not agree...
Guillaume Gibert on January 17, 2008 07:01 PMCongratulations!
Too bad I can't actually attend the conference. Oh, well, I just hope somebody uploads transcripts.
Jonathan Paul Madrid Abaca on January 17, 2008 07:03 PMJeff, if all you wanted was an entry in Wikipedia, why didn't you just say so? I'm sure your readers will be honored to take part in such a brief entry. j/k, :-D
Looking forward to your keynote, definitely. Enjoy Canada, I certainly did so much that I revisited Montreal three more times before saying enough's enough.
Wish we had more talks related to this one(for students) in the States more often.
Patrick on January 17, 2008 07:07 PMWelcome to Canada, I really hope you enjoy your stay up here.
Kevin Nisbet on January 17, 2008 07:17 PMI do miss Montreal... enjoy your time there.
Brett on January 17, 2008 08:32 PMCurling is surprisingly interesting if you watch for a while. Particularly good on a Sunday morning with a hang-over.
Obviously I'm Canadian, but I've never curled!
Jerome on January 17, 2008 08:40 PM> Canadian cities look the way American cities do on television.
Err, you do realise that most American TV shows set in America are filmed in Vancouver and Toronto? :)
I'll just hide over here in the corner, shall I?
Random on January 17, 2008 08:53 PMJeff,
What are you going to talk about. I mean anything specific?
Ugh. If I had known about CUSEC I would not have bothered with CUTC in Toronto last weekend. CUSEC looks to be about four thousand times more interesting! Any chance there might be a video of your keynote made available?
rgould on January 17, 2008 09:24 PMJeff,
Why didn't you announce this earlier? I'm down in Toronto and I would have loved to come see the show (I am a comp sci student, but had no idea this conference existed).
Bit too late to drive down now - but I wish you the best and can't wait to see how it went.
Better late then never, theres always next year :)
The student chapter of ACM at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign runs a computing conference in October every year called Reflections|Projections. It's not specifically a software engineering conference, but it's got the same types of speakers, a 48-hour programming contest, and other stuff.
It's not a national thing, but it's pretty well attended by students from Midwest schools.
> So what, exactly, is CUSEC?
It's also a play on the french idiom 'cul sec' for bottoms up (literally 'dry ass')
Steak on January 17, 2008 11:17 PMDon't worry, no one understands curling, not even us canucks.
And yet, when you stumble across it on tv, it is strangely hypnotizing...
Xepol on January 18, 2008 02:11 AMNo-one curls like the British...for some reason.
[ICR] on January 18, 2008 03:04 AMCan you speak canadian?!?
Q on January 18, 2008 04:25 AMWe have 2 great treasures... Tim Horton's Coffee, and Alexander Keith's Pale Ale. I recommend both.
Philip Snelgrove on January 18, 2008 05:13 AM"Canadian cities look the way American cities do on television."
There's a reason for that - so many of them are filmed there!
http://www.canadaka.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=127
@Philip:
Timmys was sold a few years ago to Wendies. You'll have to switch to Robins...
Too bad the conference wasn't in the summer. Montreal is a blast in the summer.
Steve on January 18, 2008 06:17 AMI wish I had of known this was going on. I am in Ottawa and its not that far away, but to make a road trip out of it requires a little planning.
Mike Grouchy on January 18, 2008 06:41 AMHey, great to have you in my home-town! I hope you enjoy it. Forget about what someone said about Keith's, though; you need to go for some Boréale or some Unibroue (Fin du Monde, Don de Dieu, etc).
Anyways, enjoy!
Richardmtl on January 18, 2008 07:01 AMIf you're a fan of excellent beer, I suggest visiting the brewpub Dieu du Ciel. http://dieuduciel.com/en/home.php Every visit to Montreal, I have to spend an afternoon or evening there.
Keith's is a treasure? Hah!
lister on January 18, 2008 07:18 AMMaybe you're there as eye-candy?
Danimal on January 18, 2008 07:32 AMSay hi to Shawn (Hanzo) for me while you're up there. :P
Congrats Jeff. Have fun and let us know about your experiences in Canada.
Remember to end all speaking in "eh".
You don't like curling?? BLASPHEMY!!
Mattkins on January 18, 2008 08:40 AMYour first time visiting your neighbour? You must not travel much. And this is definitely not the best time of year to visit Montreal.
Chris on January 18, 2008 09:31 AM"It's too bad there isn't an equivalent student-run conference for American computer science students."
Probably because most CS/SE students in America wouldn't be able to come up with the $$ to attend it! :P
Anyway, play nice with the Canadian kids. And remember to bundle up - it's a tad cold up there this time of year.
Jimmy on January 18, 2008 09:35 AMwhat will your speech be aboot jeef?
jin on January 18, 2008 09:37 AMJeff, you must have something worth saying / reading or you would not attract such a fan base. and...
Curling is another crazy game invented by the Scots. Once you understand it it is great fun to watch. I have two kids competing in the US Junior National Curling Championships next month so like it or not I have to watch it.
Doug on January 18, 2008 09:38 AMHey, cool.. You're visiting my city. Welcome! :-)
Andrew Trumper on January 18, 2008 09:52 AMWhat do you mean not the best time to visit Montreal? It's gorgeous there this time of year, and there's plenty to do:
http://www.dreamica.ca/winter.php
So, for those of us too close to the subject, what exactly is the Canadian perspective on life?
Geoffrey Wiseman on January 18, 2008 01:26 PM> what exactly is the Canadian perspective on life?
Mainly that there are other countries in the world. I can't speak for all my fellow Americans, of course, but many of them seem to think the world literally ends at the US border.
> Can you speak canadian?!?
Tell me about it. Some trickster added a different language to all the signs and changed all the units to metric!
Jeff Atwood on January 18, 2008 02:24 PMIf you run into Zed, watch out for falling f-bombs.
Those can kill a entire language.
Currently hanging out in our hotel room waiting to go to the Banquet.. I actually came across this blog after I found out you were speaking at CUSEC.
Look forward to hearing from you tomorrow!
David Vessey on January 18, 2008 03:14 PMThere is no mismatch. If you need proof, above list is your voters. Go ahead and shoot. congrats and best wishes.
Sachin Chavan
> Probably because most CS/SE students in America wouldn't be able to come up with the $$ to attend it! :P
The price is pretty low, it only costs $55 for a ticket to the conference, which includes *all* three days. That's like, two weeks worth of beer money.
Skrud on January 18, 2008 09:13 PMI hope you are enjoying your stay in Montreal.
Emmanuel Sanders on January 19, 2008 12:07 PMHey cool! I'm in CS at Concordia and I'm totally coming.
Morgan on January 19, 2008 05:00 PMOh shit, it's tonight. And yesterday and the day before. And I'm going to a show. Ugh.
Morgan on January 19, 2008 05:03 PMCarleton Engineering FTW!
Catalin on January 19, 2008 09:11 PMI never knew Dave Thomas from Wendy's did any programming. Killer.
Nathan on January 20, 2008 01:53 AMI really enjoyed your keynote at CUSEC, thank you very much for coming! You inspired one of my close friends to start blogging again.
Matthew Gallant on January 20, 2008 12:49 PMHi Jeff, I am a long time reader and sometimes commenter, how dissapointing is that such a good blog had to rely on some external site to host a 3mb PPT, not only I couldn't download the file quickly but also was redirected to dating pages and free porn pages.... please check the quality of the sites you decide to use, it does affect your image....
Esteban on January 20, 2008 03:45 PMI was kind of hoping for video of your presentation, but it was good regardless.
James Cassell on January 20, 2008 05:55 PM> I was kind of hoping for video of your presentation, but it was good regardless.
I would also like to see the mentioned Hi-res video :-)
Tudor on January 21, 2008 04:06 AMJeff,
As Esteban said above, I am also a reader of yours, but was immediately surprised when, after clicking on the link to download your presentation, I was redirected to a site which presented me with popup ads for porn and myspace layouts! Surely you didn't realize that the site that you posted your file on was loaded with crap.
Brad on January 21, 2008 06:13 AMAs the others have mentioned... The site hosting the presentation is VERY unprofessional. I wish I had known the types of popups before going there... but then it was too late... VERY unprofessional. Love your blog though.
Tony on January 22, 2008 10:47 AMI am working on hosting the file locally, but I certainly did not experience any "unprofessional" popups from the current file host in my testing. That's odd. I got one popup for a T-Shirt company, and that's all.
Jeff Atwood on January 22, 2008 11:24 AMDOWNLOAD HORROR!!!
FIVE - countem pop-UNDERS that showed up even though I have my firefox popup blocker set.
A truly AWFUL download experience.
Gives your most excellent site a very bad taste.
Heck I still don't know if the file even got transferred, but I ain't goin back there!
And I really want to read your presentation.
nuts!
Sorry for the host problems. I didn't see any of that when I tested it! The file is *now hosted locally* via the link at the bottom of the post, so try again if you had problems.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/files/cusec-2008-presentation-jeff-atwood.zip
Jeff Atwood on January 23, 2008 11:10 AMthe new link works great! is there going to be an audio/video of your speech?
jin on January 23, 2008 12:01 PMworks. thanks.
good points. thanks for the clarity.
| Content (c) 2008 Jeff Atwood. Logo image used with permission of the author. (c) 1993 Steven C. McConnell. All Rights Reserved. |
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