The Perils of Outsourcing

This blog tells the story of a programmer whose job was outsourced. But it's not any old story. He started a startup, whose business model appears to be to get people to work for free.

First product: computer-programmed VCR. Not just using IR, mind you (he's proud of this) but with custom-designed chips tacked on. He got hardware engineers to work for free, which seems to me to be quite an impressive accomplishment.

Then, there was the second product. Here's where things start to get a little peculiar. The second product is not clearly described, but appears to be some sort of magic program (written in Lisp!) which will produce algorithms, thus speeding up software development thousands of times. Or something.

He had two rounds of fundraising; in the first, he sold his car, and in the second, someone actually invested 17 thousand dollars in his ideas! He also keeps muttering vaguely about an inheritance; not sure what the story is there.

Reading through the whole thing is fascinating; it just seems to get madder and madder. He posts about 10 articles a day. He's also utterly incapable of spelling 'conquer'.

Some of the better quotes follow.

Komodo Dragon will run on either a cluster of PS3s or a Cray or
IBM supercomputer and generate 1M + algorithms per second.
Translation: 1 million algorithms per second.

The purpose of Komodo Dragon is to generate algorithms at
lightning speed and create the structure of software so that
any project (even exceeding 1B lines of code) could be viewed
in 3D at all levels.

He loses the source code - it's on the laptop of one of his star developers. (Remember, he is not paying these people).

Here, he compares himself to Newton and Einstein, saying that he has no equal. Hmm. Is this an example of what the more nauseating variety of American calls 'affirmation'?

I think he may be turning into Archimedes Plutonium.

I will admit that working on Komodo Dragon is fun and exciting
because everyone deems it impossible. Once again, it's not
impossible, the solution only needs to be discovered. Even a
worm hole defies the logic of travelling beyond the physics
limit of a photon of light which travels at 186,282 miles per
second.

Oh, dear, it's Paul Graham's fault:

I think that Dr. Paul Graham should get the congressional medal
of honor for being an advocate for Lisp.

What?

If I hadn't started Big Bear then Brontosaurus
and the idea of creating the algorithm engine to
speed up and streamline software development
wouldn't have emerged from the swamp of the code
that was incomprehensible

.
Remember, he's not paying them:

The key, I think, is finding the right engineers
with passion to follow through and do what they
say they are going to do instead of making
excuses.

"Lisp isn't easy to grasp. It's deep and strange." - MUCH LIKE YOURSELF, THEN.

"I have to pay rent soon" - Yay! (Apparently, he currently lives with friends for free, or something).

More mad-person-from-sci.physics-talk:

Secondly, I want to marry a woman
from Boston. Women on the West Coast just don't
look like the woman from New England.

Eh? Do they use babies, or something?

I was also pondering how the roads are salted on
the East Coast and that turns me off.

HE GROWS TIRED OF LISP:

Lisp is the most awkward, backwards, and alien
programming language I've ever encountered.

And more tired:

When I write code I don't want to have to think nor deal with
the tiny details of how to represent a statement. Most of
Lisp is pretty backwards and nonintuitive. I have a history of
changing that which I don't like and I'm changing Lisp so that
I can control it so that it doesn't control me.

His ideas of being rich include being able to go to Starbucks every day, and owning a Honda Civic.

Here's one of his job ads.

Okay, that went on longer than expected. Anyway, suffice to say that I'm glued to my seat with anticipation for his next post. Oh, I do hope he keeps it up! I've subscribed, and I suggest you do the same.