How to celebrate the day of the programmer, not decorating office ficus with zeros and units
Even if your team doesn’t particularly like professional holidays, you shouldn’t miss today's programmer’s day. It can turn into a good annual tradition, but for this it is important to move away from ideas like “pseudo-code conversations”. They may seem strange and forced to your colleagues. It is better to study how this holiday is celebrated in companies around the world.
Photo: Tuomas Puikkonen (license: Flickr , CC BY )
September 13 is the 256th day in the non-leap year. Some people think that it is necessary to celebrate the Programmer's Day the day before. Others argue that the holiday passed long ago on October 10, 2010 (binary 10.10.10 corresponds to decimal 42 ).
There are other opinions, but we will focus on the one that puts the professional holiday of programmers on the 13th (or 12th in a leap year) of September.
This year Mail.Ru Mail has released a congratulatory video for the holiday:
Other developers do not overlook the holiday, the plot of the holiday is on the "Vesti". And our team Mail.Ru Cloud Solutions plans to gather modestly and spend the evening in a pleasant company.
In general, in the CIS countries love professional holidays. Only in Russia there are more than a hundred. Often, such events are permeated with official and pretentious speeches. And if the celebration of the Day of Energy with a brass band and the speeches of deputies surprise no one, such a scenario is clearly not suitable for the Programmer's Day. Therefore, companies have to invent something of their own.
For the Russian community, the petition was the starting pointtwo developers - Valentina Balta and Mikhail Chervyakov. In 2002, they called on the government to recognize Programmer Day as an official holiday. In September 2009, their request was granted. Since then, universities and IT communities have organized conferences, job fairs, meetings and other events dedicated to the Programmer’s Day on September 13th.
IT companies also try not to miss the holiday. Someone even shares detailed manuals and reports on honoring programmers and testers (they have a holiday a few days earlier). For example, in this casethe corporate meeting room was reequipped for a game room: they spread out their ottomans and set up retro consoles. Of course, the holiday did not go without pizza, beer and board games after the working day, but there was also the main theme - nostalgia for childhood, and this is vintage games and drinks like Pepsi cherry.
Nostalgia, quests and consoles have become the unofficial attributes of the Programmer's Day in Russian companies. For example, in Azoft for employees they prepare ginger cookies with inscriptions on the subject of IT, arrange Mortal Kombat championships for Dendy and quizzes.
In Parallels on the Day of programmer talkedwith the children of developers - found out that they know about the work of their parents. Their answers about the profession were published on September 12, which pleased the employees and another hundred thousand users who watched the video.
Throughout the Day, the programmer touched Touch Instinct and watched The Big Bang Theory, while at SimbirSoft they decided not to order a pizza on another holiday, but to bake it on their own. Moreover, the programmers were free to choose the “drawing from the ingredients” themselves. Therefore, Java adepts decorated the pizza in their own way, and testers did not forget about bugs on their “canvas”.
We, at Mail.Ru, are trying to get the entire online community involved in the celebration. For example, in 2015, we released the online simulator of the famous “duck method” to search for bugs, and a year earlier we had a geek lottery for Habr with Anatoly Wasserman.
The programmer's day in Ukraine does not yet have official status, but things may change soon. Such a law has already been submitted for consideration.
IT companies hold events without waiting for the inclusion of a holiday in the calendar. In 2015, the Ukrainian outsourcer Daxx organized a crossfit championship among programmers. After the sporting event, the celebration moved to cocktails with talking names like Stack Overflow and Fatal Error.
Once in the Belarusian Oxagile programmers and testers on the occasion of professional holidays pushedin the battle for bugs. On the Programmer’s Day, massage therapists worked in the office, so it was a pleasure to write code. Traditional pizza and a session of competitive problem solving in Excel were waiting for developers that day.
European and American IT companies regularly congratulate their subscribers on the Day of the programmer in social networks. However, on the Internet it is difficult to find reports on bright celebrations, as in the CIS countries. However, there are some interesting ideas that can be borrowed.
Photo: hackNY (license: Flickr , CC BY-SA ) The
day of the programmer is a good reason not only to congratulate your employees, but also to find new ones. In 2011, the Estonian ZeroTurnaround published an ASCII puzzle on the front page of a local newspaper.. Behind the code was a link to a Java file with another puzzle. Having solved it, a person got an opportunity to get a job in a company.
One of the days of the programmer in the Swedish Seavus was probably a shock for the introvert employees. On the occasion of the holiday, the company arranged a “day of hugs”. The team of "embracing" went around the office and offered its services to programmers.
To come to work in the most geek t-shirt from his collection
. Last year the service Tutu.ru arranged a contest for its programmers to color white t-shirts. You can not wait for such a competition and get clothes from the wardrobe with a thematic print. There are T-shirts with phrases and memes that only coders will understand, but there are things that have almost cult status. For example, merch from IT projects like Hoodie FreeCodeCamp or a replica T-shirt from Google conference. It may be something completely strange - something like a T-shirt with LEDs on which you can play Tetris. The image of Elliot Alderson from "Mr. Robot" is also suitable.
Prepare themed drinks
A few years ago, the user Habra published recipes for cocktails that received thematic names - Ruby, Python, Severe Perl - by their characteristic coloring. Ruby is red, and Python is, of course, green. On Reddit later , their description appeared in the form of code. This idea can be borrowed for a party - on the Day of the programmer to issue orders to the bartender exclusively in this format.
Sponsor an open source project It is not
necessary to hold a holiday in a big way. It is enough to do something that has long been postponed. For example, to support colleagues and talented projects. A list of projects that need money can be found on Github . Another such list was collected on html.com. Among these projects there is definitely one that needs donate, and the Programmer's Day is a good reason to help him.
Working as if nothing had happened.
For many developers around the world, Programmer Day is a normal work day. From solidarity to colleagues, you can get rid of corporate fun and devote all day to coding.
But we still stand for the celebration and original ideas. Therefore, we will be glad to know how the Programmer's Day is celebrated in your company and how you yourself prefer to spend your professional holiday.
Photo: Tuomas Puikkonen (license: Flickr , CC BY )
When this holiday is celebrated
September 13 is the 256th day in the non-leap year. Some people think that it is necessary to celebrate the Programmer's Day the day before. Others argue that the holiday passed long ago on October 10, 2010 (binary 10.10.10 corresponds to decimal 42 ).
There are other opinions, but we will focus on the one that puts the professional holiday of programmers on the 13th (or 12th in a leap year) of September.
As noted
This year Mail.Ru Mail has released a congratulatory video for the holiday:
Other developers do not overlook the holiday, the plot of the holiday is on the "Vesti". And our team Mail.Ru Cloud Solutions plans to gather modestly and spend the evening in a pleasant company.
In general, in the CIS countries love professional holidays. Only in Russia there are more than a hundred. Often, such events are permeated with official and pretentious speeches. And if the celebration of the Day of Energy with a brass band and the speeches of deputies surprise no one, such a scenario is clearly not suitable for the Programmer's Day. Therefore, companies have to invent something of their own.
For the Russian community, the petition was the starting pointtwo developers - Valentina Balta and Mikhail Chervyakov. In 2002, they called on the government to recognize Programmer Day as an official holiday. In September 2009, their request was granted. Since then, universities and IT communities have organized conferences, job fairs, meetings and other events dedicated to the Programmer’s Day on September 13th.
IT companies also try not to miss the holiday. Someone even shares detailed manuals and reports on honoring programmers and testers (they have a holiday a few days earlier). For example, in this casethe corporate meeting room was reequipped for a game room: they spread out their ottomans and set up retro consoles. Of course, the holiday did not go without pizza, beer and board games after the working day, but there was also the main theme - nostalgia for childhood, and this is vintage games and drinks like Pepsi cherry.
Nostalgia, quests and consoles have become the unofficial attributes of the Programmer's Day in Russian companies. For example, in Azoft for employees they prepare ginger cookies with inscriptions on the subject of IT, arrange Mortal Kombat championships for Dendy and quizzes.
In Parallels on the Day of programmer talkedwith the children of developers - found out that they know about the work of their parents. Their answers about the profession were published on September 12, which pleased the employees and another hundred thousand users who watched the video.
Throughout the Day, the programmer touched Touch Instinct and watched The Big Bang Theory, while at SimbirSoft they decided not to order a pizza on another holiday, but to bake it on their own. Moreover, the programmers were free to choose the “drawing from the ingredients” themselves. Therefore, Java adepts decorated the pizza in their own way, and testers did not forget about bugs on their “canvas”.
We, at Mail.Ru, are trying to get the entire online community involved in the celebration. For example, in 2015, we released the online simulator of the famous “duck method” to search for bugs, and a year earlier we had a geek lottery for Habr with Anatoly Wasserman.
The programmer's day in Ukraine does not yet have official status, but things may change soon. Such a law has already been submitted for consideration.
IT companies hold events without waiting for the inclusion of a holiday in the calendar. In 2015, the Ukrainian outsourcer Daxx organized a crossfit championship among programmers. After the sporting event, the celebration moved to cocktails with talking names like Stack Overflow and Fatal Error.
Once in the Belarusian Oxagile programmers and testers on the occasion of professional holidays pushedin the battle for bugs. On the Programmer’s Day, massage therapists worked in the office, so it was a pleasure to write code. Traditional pizza and a session of competitive problem solving in Excel were waiting for developers that day.
European and American IT companies regularly congratulate their subscribers on the Day of the programmer in social networks. However, on the Internet it is difficult to find reports on bright celebrations, as in the CIS countries. However, there are some interesting ideas that can be borrowed.
Photo: hackNY (license: Flickr , CC BY-SA ) The
day of the programmer is a good reason not only to congratulate your employees, but also to find new ones. In 2011, the Estonian ZeroTurnaround published an ASCII puzzle on the front page of a local newspaper.. Behind the code was a link to a Java file with another puzzle. Having solved it, a person got an opportunity to get a job in a company.
One of the days of the programmer in the Swedish Seavus was probably a shock for the introvert employees. On the occasion of the holiday, the company arranged a “day of hugs”. The team of "embracing" went around the office and offered its services to programmers.
A few more ideas on how to spend a programmer's day
To come to work in the most geek t-shirt from his collection
. Last year the service Tutu.ru arranged a contest for its programmers to color white t-shirts. You can not wait for such a competition and get clothes from the wardrobe with a thematic print. There are T-shirts with phrases and memes that only coders will understand, but there are things that have almost cult status. For example, merch from IT projects like Hoodie FreeCodeCamp or a replica T-shirt from Google conference. It may be something completely strange - something like a T-shirt with LEDs on which you can play Tetris. The image of Elliot Alderson from "Mr. Robot" is also suitable.
Prepare themed drinks
A few years ago, the user Habra published recipes for cocktails that received thematic names - Ruby, Python, Severe Perl - by their characteristic coloring. Ruby is red, and Python is, of course, green. On Reddit later , their description appeared in the form of code. This idea can be borrowed for a party - on the Day of the programmer to issue orders to the bartender exclusively in this format.
Sponsor an open source project It is not
necessary to hold a holiday in a big way. It is enough to do something that has long been postponed. For example, to support colleagues and talented projects. A list of projects that need money can be found on Github . Another such list was collected on html.com. Among these projects there is definitely one that needs donate, and the Programmer's Day is a good reason to help him.
Working as if nothing had happened.
For many developers around the world, Programmer Day is a normal work day. From solidarity to colleagues, you can get rid of corporate fun and devote all day to coding.
But we still stand for the celebration and original ideas. Therefore, we will be glad to know how the Programmer's Day is celebrated in your company and how you yourself prefer to spend your professional holiday.