Bees Used for Load Balancing

My twin brother sent me a link to some research from Georgia Tech that has applied research on honeybees to load balancing for internet servers. Pretty cool stuff. I've always been interested in how phenomena from nature can be leveraged for man-made

What can I say, we think alike (and look alike, and talk alike, etc.) Having a double in this world rocks!

Joel's Pareto Rule for Software Development Careers

Joel Sposky recently gave a presentation to CS students a Yale and proposed a Pareto Rule for software development careers. According to Joel, 80% of the available programmer jobs are for "in-house software", and the remainder are for commercial software. Joel's career advice was to do anything possible to avoid ending up in the "in-house software" world.

I have to agree with him. I have never had a job at a "real" IT shop, but as a consultant, I've spent a great deal of time in them. It's not that developers of in-house software are less intelligent, less creative, or have less ambition than in commercial software world. It's just that all of their talent & passion is stymied by the practical realities of business--that is, that their company is not in the business of making software; they are in the business of making widgets. And it is extremely difficult with the current model of software development to make ROI justifications for custom software. That's just how it is. So developers who want to make a real impact are forced to move to jobs where software is the business.

But the real question is: does it have to be that way? The DevHive answer is no. If we can change the way that custom software is built, we can change the economics behind custom software. If we change the economics, we can change the incentive model. If we change the incentive model, we can change behavior.

That's what DevHive is trying to do. We want software developers to be compensated for the value of the software that they produce. Is that really such a radical concept?