VC Ship Party
Last week was our Everett ship party. For those who don't know, it's traditional in Microsoft to have a party at the end of a product cycle to celebrate and reward folks for shipping product (shipping product is a highly valued activity at Microsoft). For Everett our ship party was a two-day trip to Disneyland.
I had never been to Disneyland before but I'm really not an amusement park aficionado either. Luckily, they had an alternative activity one of the days: a trip to Disney Animation studios. They could only take 12 people and luckily I replied quickly (they decided which 12 people could go on a first-come, first-served basis) because my wife and I were among the 12.
The day started with a presentation after breakfast by one of the Disney developers on how they use C++. Some of the interesting stuff:
They are basically a Linux shop because the apps that they use were written on Linux. Folks at Disney pretty much live in the apps they use for their work. The only other capability they use heavily is the NFS file system.
They like the flexibility of scripting but sometimes need the performance and control that they can only get from C++. They highly value applications that allow you to add plug-ins and are scriptable. It sounded like their scripting language of choice is Python.
They have a fair amount of in-house-written apps and modules because there's nothing commercially available that does what they need to do.
After the presentation, they bused us up to Disney animation studios and we had an informal guided tour. It was really interesting to see how they do their work. It was also interesting to hear the artists' view of using computers for their work. There is a definite love of doing art in the traditional way (paint and brush) over doing things digitally (one guy even mentioned that when he's working digitally one of the things he misses is the smell of paint). On the other hand, they recognize the great benefits they get from working in the digital medium for things like editing and having to make changes to existing art.
Saturday was our last day at Disneyland - our flight out was in the afternoon - but we went to the park early in the morning to get in a few hours. When we got to the park it was pouring rain, though. Since we were not prepared for it, we bought some Disney rain ponchos and walked around the main streets. After a while the sun did come out but it was time for us to head for the airport. All in all, a welcome couple of days off. But today it was back to work...
11:07:34 PM 
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