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If you think that making connections with people working on same things you do is waste of time you’ve got another thing coming. But yeah nobody writes code at

If you think that making connections with people working on same things you do is waste of time you’ve got another thing coming. But yeah nobody writes code at conferences, I thought that was pretty obvious.

macintux 8y ago
> But yeah nobody writes code at conferences Depends on the conference, I suppose, but most I've been to include a healthy dose of that. Certainly writing production code for work is rare, but for fun? Lots of it gets written there.
- scruple 8y ago
  I've absolutely seen people from well-known companies and consulting groups sitting in a conference talk hacking on their work projects. Very frequently. For the past decade, easily. And as recently as last week, at RubyConf.
  - macintux 8y ago
    I was mentally distinguishing between "code that gets written at a conference because it's a conference" and "code that gets written at a conference because the person is bored/on a deadline/unable to persuade their employer that they need to have time to learn".
robocat 8y ago
> But yeah nobody writes code at conferences steveklabnik in another comment: "A ton of open source project work gets done at conferences".
- dagw 8y ago
  I think we can safely say that 'conference' means different things to different people and all conferences are very different. Some involve highly specialized academics pontificating on highly esoteric subjects, some are places where people go to do million dollar deals, some are just thinly veiled excuses for people to expense their holiday to their company and some involve half dozen hackers sitting around a table knocking out code. And at some conferences all these things are going on at the same time. Basically any statement to the effect of "everybody does/nobody does X at conferences" is almost certainly false.
- steveklabnik 8y ago
  To be clear, I mean both. IMO, the "social" work is the more valuable work that gets done, things like discussing proposals, working on new ideas, coordination between different projects, that kind of thing. Code happens too, of course, and sometimes, the ability to pair in person with someone you're not usually located near can be invaluable.

macintux 8y ago

> But yeah nobody writes code at conferences Depends on the conference, I suppose, but most I've been to include a healthy dose of that. Certainly writing production code for work is rare, but for fun? Lots of it gets written there.

scruple 8y ago
I've absolutely seen people from well-known companies and consulting groups sitting in a conference talk hacking on their work projects. Very frequently. For the past decade, easily. And as recently as last week, at RubyConf.
- macintux 8y ago
  I was mentally distinguishing between "code that gets written at a conference because it's a conference" and "code that gets written at a conference because the person is bored/on a deadline/unable to persuade their employer that they need to have time to learn".

robocat 8y ago

> But yeah nobody writes code at conferences steveklabnik in another comment: "A ton of open source project work gets done at conferences".

dagw 8y ago
I think we can safely say that 'conference' means different things to different people and all conferences are very different. Some involve highly specialized academics pontificating on highly esoteric subjects, some are places where people go to do million dollar deals, some are just thinly veiled excuses for people to expense their holiday to their company and some involve half dozen hackers sitting around a table knocking out code. And at some conferences all these things are going on at the same time. Basically any statement to the effect of "everybody does/nobody does X at conferences" is almost certainly false.
steveklabnik 8y ago
To be clear, I mean both. IMO, the "social" work is the more valuable work that gets done, things like discussing proposals, working on new ideas, coordination between different projects, that kind of thing. Code happens too, of course, and sometimes, the ability to pair in person with someone you're not usually located near can be invaluable.