The First Programming Language Every Talented Developer Learns

two folks coding! source

I was sitting at the Toronto airport waiting to catch my flight back home when I noticed two guys nearby who were deep in discussion.

I noticed some key things:

1. Their clothes: grey hoodies — one of which had a small but obvious Google logo on the front — both of them wore jeans, and running shoes.
2. Their discussion, I couldn’t hear much, but I caught a few keywords like “big data,” “data structure,” and “documentation.”
3. Their computers, I couldn’t see what was on the screen, but there were some funky stickers slapped on them.

This combination of factors should only lead you to one conclusion, these guys are developers.

I sat there for 10 minutes, trying to listen to their conversation, and trying to see if I could chime in with some smart inquisitive remark that would allow me to join their conversation.

Of course, I gave up, and I just asked, “do you guys work at Google?”

They both looked over a little surprised, and the one without the google hoodie chuckled and said,

“He used to work there, but now he just wears the hoodie for the attention, and I’m a computer science professor at the University of Toronto.”