In order to address the gender gap within software development, Google has decided to take a step towards building a bridge, by establishing new programs that hope to create more of a balance. In doing so, Google has inspired other companies to follow suit. Seeking to avoid being regarded as less progressive than Google, these companies have created their own programs to bolster the roster of female programmers around the globe:

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Walmart : As one of the world’s premier retailer of consumer goods, the company has closely followed the emerging IoT (Internet of Things) movement. In order to fuse their conservative consumer base with some of the company’s more progressive goals, they’ve initiated the Homemaker Einstein education program. Here, cash awards and national recognition will be awarded to the winner of various challenges. Which lady will program their kitchen, so that the oven and toaster synchronize their work in perfect harmony? Or which wife will reprogram the house’s alarm system, so that it can alert her when she’s nagging her husband? Stay tuned to find out.

Hooters : Obviously, with over 75% of its staff being comprised of women, Hooters would naturally be the foremost company when it comes to female empowerment. As management explains, they deal with many technological issues, and they don’t see why their own employees can’t be educated in programming and then be the source of a solution. “For example,” explains CEO Terrance Marks, “We have tried to create the ultimate temperature control unit in our locations. How do we constantly adjust the temperature, so that the buffalo wings stay hot but our waitresses’ nipples stay pert? It’s a real problem, but I’m sure that our ladies can figure it out. Maybe a smartphone app, with a peripheral attached to pasties? I can’t wait to see what they come up with.” As a result of this announcement, Twin Peaks has also announced their own program, promising a vacation to Myrtle Beach for the first woman who can combine a mechanical bull with a Sybian.

Reddit : Refusing to let Google be the only online company with a strong dedication to issues regarding women, Reddit has stepped forward with their own version of a merits-based educational program. Noting the popularity of “/r/gonewild” and similar subreddits, Reddit has promoted the launch of a new subreddit called “/r/gonewildwithcode”. Here, women are encouraged to share pictures which feature themselves programming in naughty, revealing poses. As a reward, popular submissions will be rewarded with a new alternative to regular Reddit karma: karma cash. Upon logging onto their Reddit account, their acquired karma cash will rain down on them as an animation, and it will be redeemable at any store which sells thongs and/or cameras. “We just wanted to do what’s right,” said CEO Yishan Wong. “Hopefully, with our help, these women can advance their developer skills so that one day, they can build voyeur sites of their own and show other women that dreams can come true.”

Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story and has also been known to be a grumpy bastard on occasion.

Good Developer Idea: As part of the open culture at a struggling SaaS startup, you give a developer the admin rights to your build and deployment servers.
Bad Developer Idea: You forget to eventually take those rights away when you go into production, and when the Feds come to raid your offices, you learn that the developer has used your servers to host a “Man Seeking Horse” dating site. (Even after you elaborate on how horses can’t use computers, the developer still stands by his idea.)

Good Developer Idea: Create a library that has reusable, generic code for your group.
Bad Developer Idea: Let the least-qualified lunatic in your group take ownership of it and ruin its whole purpose. “So, with the latest changes, you pass your name into the class constructor (like “John”), and the class executes only your code instead of the code that was written by you or Bob. See? It’s shared and reusable. Now leave me alone to snort my lines of molly.”

Good Developer Idea: Writing to log files from your UNIX program or script.
Bad Developer Idea: Porting that program or script to Windows and still writing large log files in the years B.C. (Before Cygwin). On the plus side, when you opened a 100MB+ file, you gained another hour of personal downtime for yourself.

Good Developer Idea: In order to demonstrate a particular method or style, share a project with one of your junior developers/admins and let them use it as a template.
Bad Developer Idea: Forget to stress that the variables in the configuration file are not supposed to stay the same. “Thanks for letting me use your project. Look! My new project ‘PurgeTableData’ works! What did you say about database properties in the config file? More importantly, what’s a config file?”

Good Developer Idea: In the face of a new project being discussed, you argue against the suggestion of an off-the-shelf proprietary technology that doesn’t really fit your company’s needs.
Bad Developer Idea: Even though you may be right, they press you for an alternative, and you don’t have one. Consequently, you are forever known as ‘the whiny bitch’ among your peers, and they force you to wear a burqa in the office as a reminder.

Good Developer Idea: When attempting to find a new candidate for your development team, encourage other developers to be a part of the hiring process and to provide input.
Bad Developer Idea: Not using discretion as to which developers that you encourage. “Okay, so I would eliminate the first guy, since he puts the opening bracket on the same line as the function declaration. Only idiots do that. And the chick…well…we know chicks can’t code. So that leaves the weird guy who carries around his dead, taxidermied daughter. Now that guy can code! I would pick him.”

Good Developer Idea: Working with management, you help to eliminate the method of stack ranking your fellow employees, ensuring that each one is evaluated on individual merit.
Bad Developer Idea: You forget to take into account that they are all essentially worthless, and based on the new system, they are all fired. In turn, they find out where you live, and they burn your house down.

Good Developer Idea: While at Scrum meetings in the company conference room, you use the whiteboard to create a visual map of the next iteration in your project.
Bad Developer Idea: In order to make room, you clear the current board in haste, and without thinking about it, you erase the cartoonish doodle in the corner of the board. When the CEO and his 6-year-old come to the conference room later (so that the kid can proudly show the doodle), the kid erupts with tears. In order to make amends, for the rest of your life, you must now give the kid and the CEO a piggyback ride whenever the both of them are in the office together.

Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story and has also been known to be a grumpy bastard on occasion.

1.) Convince investors from a third-world country that a mashup of MailHooks and RequestBin is going to replace texting in the near future.

2.) Start to create JSFiddle examples as substitutes for your blog posts and convince hipsters that “they need to catch up”.

3.) If you own a company, use Mirrorrr to pull down and create an exact replica of your competitor’s site, except for the added endorsement of NAMBLA on every page.

4.) When that asshat down the hall wants to “inspect” (a.k.a., “copy”) your code yet again, be sure to be a team player and give it to him…just be sure to run it through UrlEncode right before you do. If he asks you about it, tell him that you’re “l33t” and that’s how you code.

5.) Recommend HostTracker to your less tech-savvy relatives, telling them that it will protect their Facebook page like a junkyard dog and will call the cops on anyone who unfriends them.

6.) Install Fiddler onto the computer of your boss without him being aware. One day, launch it and proceed to convince him that it’s a monitoring tool planted onto his machine by the NSA. If he just gives you $20K, a gun, free hardware, and 2 months of vacation, you’ll be able and willing to put a stop to it.

7.) Play pranks on friends, asking them to help debug HTTP Posts which come to your web site. Using MailHooks, make sure that any Post ends up calling emergency services, so that your friends end up swatting themselves.

8.) Reroute your network configuration so that all addresses point to Necrohost.

Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story and has also been known to be a grumpy bastard on occasion.

Some people are advocates for the extended participation of stakeholders when it comes to implementation, but I would advise caution against that. Why do I say so? Because like some others, I’ve seen the results…

Let’s say that your company has a plan to eliminate the redundancy of existing data in several departments, by creating one schema which is to be shared among the many. After several weeks of collaborating in a state of perpetual confusion, the stakeholders of your project have met on their own without you (despite your repeated warnings of violence towards them). Together, they have stupidly consolidated their tables of sewage and finalized the schema for one massive failure that they plan to share:

Product Table

Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story and has also been known to be a grumpy bastard on occasion.