Jon Aquino's Mental Garden

Engineering beautiful software jon aquino labs | personal blog

Monday, November 08, 2004

What work have you done in the past that was fulfilling

* JUMP - Too bad this project is coming too a close, as I loved it. Visual. Uses several innovative ideas (from Alan Cooper and Edward Tufte; BeanShell; textures). Beautiful on the outside (colour theming, textures). Beautiful on the inside (meaningful method names; design patterns; no code duplication; easily extended with plug-ins).

* Object Technology International. Here was a culture of technological beauty (I picked up Design Patterns and Smalltalk here). I loved the beauty of the language of Smalltalk. I loved the culture of innovation and eccentricity (playing Starcraft on Fridays, free pop in the fridge, creating a pinball game as my first assignment).

* Creating reports in university. Actually, the content wasn't what I was interested in - that was the necessary evil to get to the good stuff: the formatting. I love creating Microsoft Word documents that look exactly like they came out of Time magazine, or Journal of Astrophysics. I am really good at imitating the style of a publication.

* UBC: Lounge Decorating Contest. I stayed up all night for three of these annual contests, in which you and your residence floormates transform your common area / lounge. The first year was the Hard Rock Cafe. The second year was the Haunted Forest. I came up with some pretty innovative props (like flashing eyes, courtesy of our TV set). And I was the most motivated worker, pushing my rez-mates to keep going. What I loved: the visual/3d nature of the work. The total artistic freedom. The amazement on the faces of our visitors and judges. The collaboration with _other_ _creative_ _people_.

In sum: creating beautiful things within a creative culture.

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