Tim O’Brien wrote on twitter:
We’re starting a reality TV shows to judge Maven plugins, “Maven’s Worst Documented Plugin” I’m playing the part of a cranky Simon Cowell.
And this got me thinking about reality TV show names and concepts based on existing reality TV shows.
If you are not technical, and don’t know what Maven is: it is what we Java developers use to build software. It is like a workmate: great tool, but every time (once in two years) you want to use it to do a project, you cut your fingers unfolding the workmate (at least I do). Maven is similar in that every time you want to do something different than what you are currently doing, it will cut your fingers. Suffice it to say I have a love/hate relationship with workmates (and Maven).
The list of TV shows I figure will be great hits among Java developers (and Rubyists wanting to make fun of Java developers):
Hardcore pom, based on Hardcore pawn, will feature Jason van Zyl in a shop called Maven Central where project leads stand in line having to argue with Jason about the contents of their pom’s to get them in the central repository.
Keeping up with the Plugins, loosely based on the ‘reality’ soap family the Kardashians, will show the lives of Maven plugin maintainers living under one roof and watch them striving to win the coveted 3 +1′s for their release votes. See their ups and downs as they run the integration tests to prove backwards compatibility.
O’Brien’s Maven Nightmares well known author of Maven books, Tim O’Brien visits Java shops that are on the verge of collapse, analyses what is wrong with the build, pulls out some corpses from the build closets and drills the Java developers with proper Maven procedures. Once he has left the team with a working, pristine Maven build, O’Brien returns 3 months later to see how they have done so far. Viewer discretion is advised due to strong language.
The Fear Reactor, where 4 developers face the dread of all Maven builds: a multi-module reactor build. In each of 3 rounds a developer will be eliminated. The first round is performing some task on a multi module build under time pressure. The developer with the slowest time is eliminated. The second round involves finding an error in a reactor build by having to wade through Maven’s output using mvn –debug level output. The third and final round involves determining what the hell one of the Maven plugins does based on just their documentation (no one has ever passed this round).
Let me know on twitter if you come up with other reality TV shows based on Maven (or Java or C# or Scala or …) Use hashtag #realityshowsincode