I am very proud to have been named in Tariq Krim report for the government: “Les développeurs, un atout pour la France” (Developers are a key asset for France).
Even more that being mentioned in this report, I am happy to see the will to emphasize the importance of software for a country economy. The document lists 100 french developers that are recognized for their achievements. Tariq Krim is using those examples as an illustration of how the French developer community are helping French companies to get a more central place in the global economy. It is also a call for action to recognize the wealth of french developers as a key asset for the french economy.
The french tech scene has always been boiling with creativity, for example with computing labs like INRIA and a very prolific startup scene. As a paradox however, developers are often considered as raw man power, the force that translate manager ideas into code. The classical joke (and misconception) says about developers they are “machines that turn caffeine into code”.
The fact is that writing software is not about writing lines of code. It is not just typing, not translating ideas by ideas, each feature into a line of code. It is about vision and architecture. A good developer is someone that can structure a software in a flexible way, with a long term vision of what need to be achieved.
Tariq Krim report is hopefully a first step to recognize the key role of developers and the importance of their vision in our connected lifes, increasingly driven by software.
Here are the “100 developers” slides (in French). ProcessOne and I are on slide 176 and 177:
Here is a link to the web version of the report: Les développeurs, un atout pour la France.
