Angus Kidman24 June 2008, 12:00 PM
IN PICS | Last year, we revealed that Google developers were a lot skinnier than the fatties that waddle round Microsoft conferences. But at this year, we were shocked...
At Google Developer Day 2007, APC pointed out that the average developer was a lot skinnier than you'd see at Microsoft Tech Ed. At Google Developer Day 2008 in Sydney this week, lean and mean was still pretty much the go — but Google seemed to put more dietary challenges in place for the unwitting geek with too much code to write and not enough time to exercise.
The slight shift in focus was apparent right from breakfast. Yes, there was plenty of fruit and low-fat yoghurt on offer. But there was also a huge collection of disturbingly unhealthy pastries — so many, in fact, that there was a whole separate table offering nothing but pants-stretching baked goods.
"Don't need yoghurt! Must have chocolate! I wonder if they'll give away an Android prototype . . ."
"This display is symmetrical. My stomach won't be if I eat any of it."
This year's venue (Sydney's Wharf 8) was rather more compact than last year's, so everyone was forced to crowd into one main area during breaks. This had a hidden exercise disadvantage: it didn't take years to roam from room to room, as it had in 2007. Maybe we were supposed to save our energy for writing down code snippets.
At lunch, there was a choice of noodles, pizza, pasta, burgers, and weird Japanese fish stuff. We were too busy stuffing our own face with pasta to poll every attendee about their meal choices, but there were long queues for every option, so someone was eating the fatty stuff. Well, someone else apart from us.
Now, it's clear we're still a long way from Team Google achieving the sheer bulk evident when the Microsoft coders get together. But if this gradual trend to fattier food does continue, we'll be looking at some massively massive parallel coding by around 2012.
