Don Marti

Mon 01 Aug 2005 11:33:24 PM PDT

What Jocks and Nerds Have in Common

Brian W. Fitzpatrick advises college-student hackers to participate in open-source projects. "Not only will you get a lot of great experience working on a team, but you'll get code review and criticism (some constructive, some not so much) from your peers. Where else can you get this kind of mentoring for free?"

What does that sound like?

Open-source economics is making software management work more like managing a sports team, and I suppose that means companies get the subsidized "farm team" of college students too.

The other big way that open-source developers are more like jocks than nerds is that they have public stats and individual media brands. When do they get agents?