[wplug] Research Q's for movie script

[Bill Moran]

Elwin Green wrote:

> I'm writing a screenplay in which the two male leads,
> Jeremy and Leonard, are co-workers in a Pittsburgh
> software development firm. The company lands a
> Department of Defense contract for a job which will
> require a project manager to relocate to Denver for 6
> months. Jeremy and Leonard both apply for the
> position. Jeremy gets it, but screws up so badly that
> the company sends Leonard out to rescue the project.
> 
> When Leonard arrives, he imposes the rule that at the
> end of each workday, each person on the development
> team will give Jeremy a hard copy of the code they've
> written that day, however much or little. Each
> evening, he and Jeremy review everyone's work. With
> lots of long hours, they save the project.

Neat.  The story would have more to it (IMHO) if Leanord
where are hacker turned manager, whereas Jeremy had no
previous coding experience and only managing experience.
You could write some sort of subplot where the employees
that Jeremy is managing are snowing him and he's unaware
of it because he can't read code.  You could even make
Leanord unskilled in the management arena, so there would
be a cool teamwork thing where they worked together to
save the project.

> The movie is a suspense drama, and for 90% or more of
> the audience, the type of work Jeremy and Leonard do
> will not matter. However, I want the movie to be
> credible for any IT pros or other geeks who happen to
> watch it. So I have some questions for the hardcore
> among us:
> 
> Is the overall scenario above credible?

Yes, and I believe it would be more credible if you did
it with the additions I suggested, but it'd be credible
anyway.

> If not, what
> change(s) would make it credible for you? Or is it so
> far off base that I may as well make Jeremy and
> Leonard auto mechanics?
> 
> What types of software projects might actually be done
> in 6 months?

There's lots of regulatory stuff that could easily be
accomplished in 6 months.  These projects are basically
designing front-ends on databases to allow people to
track things.

The larger the project, the more people would be involved.
You could even have a portion of a project (i.e. replace
all the DMV systems with new hardware, then upgrade the
sofware)

Governments are full of software projects, because so
much of what they do is tracking data.  Imagine how much
data there is to track just keeping track of each soldier's
records in any one branch of the military.

> Could the above scenario illustrate the superior
> effectiveness of the UNIX philosophy in software
> development? I think it would be cool if Leonard said
> something like, "This program's too big because it's
> doing five things. We need five programs that do one
> thing each. Think small, people." Or, "A pretty
> interface can't save an ugly program." But it would be
> truly cool only if it were credible to geeks.

Very easily.  Something along the line of "why are you
developing this complicated binary format to pack the
data in, use XML."  That would be much cool.

> It's okay to respond offlist. Thanks!

I figured I'd keep it on-list, but if anyone has a problem
with that, let me know and I'll followup directly to you.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com