videos I think promote "mentoring" discussions for students
Sukant Hajra
The first one was one of the best key notes at this developer conference I
attended this year called Strange Loop. The title is called "Simple Made Easy"
[1] and it's just a great message, especially appropriate for junior
developers.
Also, I stumbled on a link from the Hacker Lounge folks about Elon Musk [2],
who's accomplished some amazing things, but seems to come off as an engineer at
heart (a modest one even). For me, this is kind of noteworthy, especially in
contrast to Steve Jobs -- it's nice to know that there's other ways to be
great.
Finally, a while ago, I stumbled on a 2008 video by a developer named Zed Shaw
[3], who's kind of (in)famous, especially in the Ruby world. The technical
part of the talk is kind of a snooze. But in the middle of it, he goes off on
a complete tangent and makes bold statements about how he'd recommend a
software developer direct their passions. I comes off kind of as "don't give
your soul to The Man; do everything you love in your spare time." This is an
interesting perspective; I certainly don't agree with it directly. But I think
it's an important perspective for students to see. You're going to encounter
this sentiment sooner or later, and Zed presents it about as well as I've seen
it presented. Why not discuss it now, while you're still students?
-Sukant
[1] http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy
[2] http://www.youtube.com/user/mahalodotcom#p/c/8EC121A605B149BB/0/6K8NkJpUei4
[3] http://vimeo.com/2723800?pg=embed&sec=2723800