Do not continue reading unless you want to witness, first-handed, HISTORY IN THE MAKING.

Making out with Martin Fowler!
Asian gangs and their impact on developers worldwide!
How to GET LAID.

These aren't normally topics you see discussed in your average software developer interview.  In fact, the third one on that list is practically a black art in the software development industry, practiced only by a select few.  But this is not your average software developer interview - this is HOT DEVELOPER CORNER, a brand-new feature on Gray's Matter where I sit down and ask the questions nobody wants to ask and fewer want answered!  None of those boring BS softball questions like "Are you as scared of the opposite sex as I am?" and "Are you going to finish those 5 slices of pizza?"  No, you want hard-hitting and more importantly, *good-looking* journalism, and that is what you are getting!!  For the very first edition of this interview series, I went to have a chat with David Woods, an independent software development consultant and EDMUG enthusiast based in Edmonton, Alberta. Dave currently works on developing enterprise applications and has a blog of his own where you can read his thoughts on a semi-daily basis.

To impress upon you how amazing this interview was, I'll pass along one anecdote.  Once the interview was finished, David and I got up to leave and were stopped by a couple of guys playing Magic: The Gathering with a 20 sided die.  One of them proceeded to ask me, "What the hell was that about?  That was the most f-ed up thing we've ever heard".  Let me tell you something, friends - when someone who plays Magic: The Gathering in *public* is telling *you* that what *you've* just done is the weirdest thing he's ever witnessed, you know you've made history.  After reading this interview, I'm sure you'll agree!

--

Justice: So we're here with David Woods, who when last I joined him, was working on an ultra super-special secret mega project.  I thought I should ask - what makes you think your porn site is going to be different from the rest out there, keeping in mind that people and animals have already been done?

David Woods: I think the big thing, really, is the technicolored goats.  Take animals and add a little neon flare to it...

J: Animals *and* colors!!  Ooo.  Any lens flares in there as well?

DW: Maybe just some star-wipes...

J: Any other animals then goats?

DW: Nope, specialization is where it's at!

J: Just goat sex!  Well, you *are* filling a niche!  So, on that note, how long have you been in the industry (the development one, not the porn one)?

DW: I started pretty much right out of high school.  I got a break doing web work, web design.  And I suck at web design, so I didn't get far.  So I decided with my QBASIC programming and C++ stuff, that I'd better learn something to be useful, so I learned PHP there and then took over PHP there.  One guy did PHP there, and he was one of those developers who would say "This is going to take 13 days" and myself learning it, I thought "I could do that in a day and I'm just learning this!"

Justice: I like how you started with humility and then led into arrogance!  That is awesome!

DW: I kind of felt bad, but the guy should have been doing his job and it secured my job.  That was really when I started...to answer your question, that was 1999 and so it's been 8 years of professional software development. That's my professional experience. Before that, I was doing QBasic on my Apple II when I was 10...

J: So was the Apple II your first development experience?

DW: Yeah, I still have it...

J: Wow.  You still have the Apple II?  Do you still do anything with it or does it just sit in the corner...

DW: We cracked her open and made it repeat "Get me a beer" all night.  That was a great party...

J: So in other words this is what you keep in your apartment so you can score with women!

DW: Well...*rakish grin*

J: Now, you've been writing a development blog for about 2 years now.  I'm actually a particularly big fan of your July 20, 2005 post called "Congratulations, you've installed Dasblog."  However, what would you say are your favorite posts after 2 years of writing?

DW: My favorite posts?  Wow, that's a tricky one...I know what everyone else's favorites are but they're not the same as mine, I know that much!  I think they're mainly the little ones.  For example, I learned a little trick with string formatting, which I go back to my own blog to refer to, or how to wrap an Nunit test in a transaction.  That was the original reason behind starting my blog, for me to write down these little things to refer back to all of the time.

It's transformed a bit now that I'm writing for people, and writing for intermediate people, mainly.  "Here's some things I've run into, and here's how to avoid it."

J: Are you finding it a large shift from writing for yourself to writing for others?

DW: I think to a degree..."how to do a simple MVP implementation", for example, is easy for me to do, but a lot of people who read my blogs that are more intermediate level have no clue.  And when I stumbled into it, it was really hard to learn!  But now that I know it, I find it really easy to teach it in simple steps.  So I'm more writing it to help people move up.

J: When you're talking about your general learning...what do you think is the biggest coding WTF you've personally written?

DW: I think probably the biggest one...part of it involves rolling up payments people have made in the day into a cashout.  So I made a stored procedure that returns all of the payments, and another procedure that uses the exact same logic to save them into a cashout, rather than returning the numbers and saving them, so the logic has to change in two spots.  It's still in there today beacuse it's so big, though we've worked out all the bugs...

J: Those are some of the worst in some ways, where the WTF stays in and just lives there forever...

DW: Yeah, and it bugs me a lot of times that I can't change it.  The curveball is that I had mono and didn't know it, so at 9:30 in the morning I was drinking coffee, falling asleep, and coding this wtf...

J: Conversely, what do you think is the sexiest piece of code you've ever written?

DW: Its always the one I wrote yesterday...

J: Was this also part of the "Technicolor Goat Sex Project", as we'll call it?

DW: No! (laughs) It's just that every time I write something I do it better.  The day that comes when I think "I wrote something better before" is the day I'm not a programmer anymore...I've been doing this for a long time. I've never hit that, where I've said, "There's nothing for me to learn, I'm topped out".

J: On the theme of continual improvement, what would you consider to be your strongest weakness?

DW: Hmm, my strongest weakness...inability to multi-task.  I would say that I'm such a linear go-go-go...which sometimes doesn't work out, but if I've got 4 projects on the go, I'll tell three of them "Go away, I'm going to work on this" and I solely go down that track, which helps my sanity...

J: So if you had to punch another developer in the mouth, who would it be and why?  It can be anyone in the industry.

DW: Captain Anonymous was an old co-worker of mine who wrote a system that I now support.  And I never worked with him...I just worked next to him.  And seeing the system, this is a person who does not know how to program, should not be a programmer, and if there was an apprenticeship set up, we would revoke his card.  Every time I have to open up that project and fix something, I want to punch him.

J: You mentioned apprenticeship...what do you think of apprenticeships in the industry?

DW: I would love to see some sort of official thing.  I've worked with lots of "senior" developers who - I'm a week into the job as a junior and they're asking me questions.  I'm not tooting my own horn, it's just that it seems that a "senior developer" is a person who's worked so many hours, not someone who has continually gone back to school or had to apprentice under someone and learn from someone else.  You can always learn from a crappy person...but you could also learn more just from people talking to each other more.

J: Kind of in the same lines as your post about sharing.  Actually, your post about sharing is also the same post where you state - can you confirm for me that this is the quote? - "How many times has an xUnit framework saved me? Well lets just say its more than the number of bullets Justice has jumped in front of for me." 

So has unit testing *really* saved you more than one million BILLION times?

DW: (laughing) Yes it has, and I apologize for all those inconveniences at the airport...

J: Do you have kind of metric for this sort of stuff?  It's quite the claim...

DW: I actually have the pieces of shrapnel they took from your body the last time, so..

J: I was a little choked when I read that statement, but I'll let it slide (laughs)...Now, somewhat related to the question about punching another software developer in the mouth, what was your worst experience in the software development industry?

DW:  I think some of the worst experiences I've had have been working with people who don't want to learn, who are resistant to change.  The scary thing is that I see myself possibly becoming more like that the more I get into programming; I find something I'm good at and then I have to find something new and get good at that.  For example, mocking comes out...well, mocking has been around for a long time but I've only started to use it around a week ago...

J: The comfort zone.

DW: Right.  Because I didn't want to.  And now that I'm using it, it's great!  But it's really hard to make that transition - every new technology it's harder and harder to make that jump.

J: Yeah, there's always that mental weight you're pushing against where you're comfortable and don't want to tackle the new stuff, but then you think, "I don't want to be *that guy*"...

DW: Yeah, I could code a web site totally procedurally in PHP right now, but by learning to do things better and faster - at first it sucks, but you get over that hump and then you're comfortable with the new thing.

J: In line with that, what would you say your greatest strides have been professionally in the last 6 months?

DW: The last 6 months...that would be to start adopting TDD methodology, doing things in a single responsibility fashion.  Doing that even with legacy code and refactoring it...that's how I know it really works. 

J: We've talked about your worst experience...now, not counting this interview, what was your best experience in the software development industry?

DW: Oh, nothing can compare to this.  (laughs)

J: I'll be keeping that in for sure!  What would be your *second* best experience?

DW: I think actually teaching.  It was really great to work with other up and coming developers and see how they learned.  I like having the experience of working with others, "here's a baby step towards this"...

J: Do you think you'll do other teaching in the future?

DW: I would like to do little training sessions here and there; it's definitely not out of the realm of possibilities.

J: Getting back to our earlier question about punching another developer in the mouth...if you had to open-mouthed kiss another developer of the same sex, who would it be and why?  Once again, this can be anyone in the industry but this time it *cannot* be Captain Anonymous.

DW: (stunned silence)

J: Take your time...

DW: I think it would probably have to be JP [Jean-Paul Boodhoo], I guess. He's been the most influential person I've found.   The other most influential person has been [Martin] Fowler and his books, but he just doesn't have the same sex appeal.


J: That's a common complaint about Fowler. So (and this might be even tougher), if you had to open mouthed kiss another developer of the same sex and *THEN* punch them in the mouth, who would it be and why?

DW: (pause) I think it would be Fowler!

J: Any particular reason?  Is it just the nerdiness, all the facial hair?  Is it getting to you?

DW: No, honestly I've heard that he's a fairly arrogant person, and aside from the methdology he's brought, it's his arrogance that's the biggest problem.  He solved half of it so that's where the love comes in but it's gone to his head so that's where the punch comes in!

J: I was going to ask - do you think arrogance is the biggest problem facing the software industry today? 

DW:  I don't know if it's what you'd call arrogance, pride, or shyness...

J: Or that weird mix of all three...

DW:  Yeah, when I started out as a junior person you don't want to ask any questions because you;re all, "I don't know what I'm doing"!  Once you get out of school you know you don't know sh!t.  Every day you're learning a huge amount of things...

J: Or you think you know everything and find out that you know nothing on your first day...

DW: Exactly! So I was like, "I don't want to come off like an idiot.  I passed that interview and this job means everything to me."  So you don't say anything, and I don't know whether you just keep shutting up.  It's a combination of issues in the industry, but it definitely breaks down to communication.

J: What about discrimination against rampagingly good looking software developers?  Do you rank that as a problem beyond arrogance or slightly below?  You obviously experience it as well...

DW: Well, it's a problem I experienced when I applied at a job and there was this other good looking guy there interviewing me and I didn't get the job...

J: Obviously a case of that developer being threatened.

DW: A little jealousy yeah.

J: I think so.  Was this at a point in time, where - it's rumored - you had the craziest set of white person dreadlocks the world had ever known? 

[editor's note: this refers to a time DW came in for an interview and yours truly was one of the interviewers.  No comment on whether "dreadlock jealousy" was a factor].

Do you have a picture of that by the way?  At all?  Can I supply that picture for this interview?  I swear no editing - pinky swear.

DW: Yeah, this time.  *laughs*  I know it'll come back to haunt me...


J: *laughing* Why does everyone say that?  I don't get it...on the lines of hot developers and sexual harassment, what is the most flamboyant shirt you own?  And no, I don't accept answers like, "I'm Ready to Rock the Launch". 

DW:  No no, definitely not...those Microsoft shirts are what I call "painting shirts".  I think...it's got a subtle flamboyance to it.  It's a nice dress shirt, but it's all velcro, thre's no buttons so it can be torn off at anytime.

J: *laughing*  You are *kidding* me!  That is astounding.

DW: It's awesome - basically you just go and "whoosh" (flips arms up)...shirt is off.

J: I haven't heard of anything so insane since [Steve] Rockarts wore his leather BSDM shirt to work.  On a *completely* different note, what are you reading right now?

DW: I've not reading anything right at the moment, but I do occasionally *re-read* some stuff...Refactoring by Fowler is one example.

J: Are there any particular books on your re-read pile that you'd recommend to other developers?

DW: Yeah, I'd recommend Refactoring, the Gang of Four Design Patterns book, and Patterns of Enterprise Architecture - they're all on my list of re-reads every so often.

J: This sounds like you might be one of the few people who can get through the GOF book without passing out unconscious!  Do you actually find the book that exciting?

DW:  No, I don't find it exciting; I find it has some good knowledge in it, but it is still tough to read through.  I may just pick it up and look at a pattern once every three weeks.

J: Or is this one of those books, much like your Apple II, that just sits well-placed in the corner so that you can get laid?

DW: That one might make an appearance sometimes...the biggest ladykiller has to be "Necessary Illusions" by Noam Chomsky.  Apparently it looks well-read. Little do they know I haven't been able to get through the first 10 pages of that book without saying, "This sucks", but it's out on my coffee table...you definitely have to have those out there.

J: What about non software related books?  Managerial, fiction, personal...what do you recommend to people in the industry, or just people in general?

DW: I'm a big fan of Frank Herbert's novels; the whole Dune series was really well-written, I thought, really involving and intricate.   He also wrote one that I read recently, called The Dosadi Experiment.  I finished it and I was "Wow".  I was amazed.  It's very rare for a book to do that.    He writes so many plots within plots and it's  a really good whodunit book - at the end, you'll never get it.  But when you see it, when it's revealed, you look back and say, "Ooooooh."  You can see it clicking, the things leading up to it...it's almost kind of like software development, where you get to the end and you have this thing you never thought you'd have at the beginning.

J: Wow, nice tie-in!!  Make sure that's recording!!  *laughs*  Okay, loaded question time: Windows, Mac OSX, or Linux: which one rules supreme, and why?

DW: You know, they all have their strengths.  I used to be a very anti-Windows person.  I still have a Unix server that I run my hosting off of....runs most of the crucial stuff.  Well, it's FreeBSD so not pure Unix...

J: So, what's it like never getting laid?

DW:  Um, it's only one...*laughs*...outweighed by the 4 or 5 Windows boxes I have, so it cancels out...

J: Well, it does take at least 4 to 5 Windows boxes to cancel out a Linux box, so at least you have the right ratio..

DW: And I don't have suspenders or a bow-tie, so...

J: True, and you do look like you bathe regularly, definitely an advantage in your favor.

DW: I think Unix is incredibly powerful but it takes so much time to set up; it's not friendly to use.  But you can do almost anything with it if you know shell scripting.  With Windows, it's really easy to install stuff to add on things to other programs; everything seems to work together.  But if you don't know programming, or VBscript, you can't really customize it too much.  You can't create a batch file in DOS to do everything.  And the Mac - kind of blends both in between them.  You do have the power of UNIX, you do have the nice UI from Windows.  I like the isolation of programs.  I don't like the expense of them, and they're a pain to support when something breaks, and there's just as not as much software on them as I'd like to see.  I wish there was a lot more compatibility...I think the Mac would be a lot more popular.

J: Don't worry, I'll strike all of your negative remarks about the Mac from this interview...your favorite three blogs at this point in time, aside from your own?

DW: Actually, the one that I try to read every day is Michael Geist's, who is a lawyer and the Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce at the University of Toronto.  It's just one of those hobby things that I'm interested in, in law and the legality of internet stuff.  That's what he talks about..it's mainly all been on copyright lately, but still interesting.  So that's been one of my must-reads of the day.  Who else would I say is my favorite...hmm...well, you've got good posts...

J: I'll be highlighting that.  In bold!!  [ed: and I did]

DW: Donald has good posts - everyone has that little thing they contribute.  But a lot of times everyone's blogs... no, not interested in that topic, not interested in that topic...and it's not like they're meant to be tailored toward me, as much I wish I was the center of the universe, I know you've already taken that position...

J: I appreciate that being acknowledged!  I have so many things to bold in this interview now!   What about your *least* favorite three blogs?  Are there are any people or blogs aside from my own that you consider to be complete wastes of space and time?

DW: One that's really fallen out of favor with me is [Scott] Hanselman's.  You know, I read it all the time because he's posting all the time, and there's not really any content to it...I spend very little time reading people's blogs, I don't go through and read everything they said.  If the title grabs my attention, I'll skim it, maybe I'll bookmark it and come back to it on the weekend.  The ones that have fallen out of favor with me I just delete, so I don't even really know names of any other two.  Just that style...

J: I think you've isolated something - you start off in one direction and then sometimes when directions shift, you have a danger of alienating readers.  The Hanselman thing is something I've heard from other developers...it's still an awesome resource, for different things but its direction is very different now...

DW: I try on my blog to post resourceful things I found, and try to limit the amount of personal stuff that goes on there.  Although I think it's good to have a window into people [with the personal stuff]...

J: Do you think you'd ever take a more personal slant on your blog at some point?  I know some of your earlier stuff kind of delves into that and then comes back out...

DW: Yeah, it really depends on what it is.  I guess there's not too much going on in the personal area, I'm still passionate about code, but....

J: Buddy, you're doing a goat sex porn site, and you're also getting laid with a Gang of Four Design Patterns book!  I think those are two specific....

DW: Yeah, but that's just everyday stuff, right?  There's nothing really different...now let's say I got married to one of these girls that likes "Design Patterns".  Now that would probably be something to not only write home about, but write to the internet about!

J: That would a reverberation that would shock the development industry to its core!

DW: Unfortunately, if she *did* like Design Patterns, you don't know...

J: I think you've got a great fictional story all ready based on this premise!  It could be another whodunit...

DW: I will have a kind of personal post coming up, so you can look forard to that...it's a bit of a Dear John letter.

J: Hype *machine*!!  I was going to ask - in terms of things going on in your life, what would you have been if your direction was different?  If you couldn't have been a software developer or a professional gigolo, what would you have been?

DW: Wow, take away my two passions in life...I would be a drunk.  No, I wouldn't...

J: *laughing* This isn't the Donald Belcham interview!!

DW: I train with him actually!  *laughs*  I think I'd probably be a mechanic.  A mechanic or some sort of engineering thing, but engineering 's kind of scary, when I compare it to software...

J: You work in software development but you find *engineering* scary?

DW: But if you make a mistake in software - if there's a bug - a year later, we find it, we fix it, no real harm done.  Maybe some money got lost.  But you make a mistake building a building or bridge...it falls down, people die.  What do you do if you make a mistake?  And I make a lot of mistakes.  *laughs*

J: Speaking of mistakes - if you were forced to wear a dress to work every day, what color and design would it be?  It can't be a velcro dress either.

DW:  That's a really good question.  I think you should be in journalism...

J:  *laughing* No hint of sarcasm whatsoever!! 

DW: *laughs* None at all...

J: I'm trying to get to the root of what people want to know!

DW: Can I get away with a kilt?

J: Since you're the pioneer of this interview, you can get away with the kilt...Likewise, if you had theme music accompanying you every time you entered a meeting, what would it be?

DW: I think it would have to be "What Would Brian Boitano do?"  I think it's a question we should ask ourselves every day, and by announcing that, people will take a moment to reflect.

J: An unsung classic...back to technical questions...

DW: There are some of those on here??

J: *laughs*  Let me write that down...when you do your dependency injection, do you do it with construction or setters?

DW: Always construction...I like constructors because that's what is necessary to build the object.  If you have these dependencies, they're necessary and the constructor is the best way to ensure they're there.  Otherwise you're building a factory and ensuring that is right...and with refactoring, when there is a new dependency, by adding that onto the constructor - any other constructor that isn't using that as an additional parameter won't have that parameter show up.  This way they all show up.

J: There's no real way for me to smoothly jump to this next question...what shampoo and conditioner do you use to give you hair its lustrous sheen?

DW: I'm, uhm, I guess a big fan of the Garnier group of products...mainly because the theme music from their commercials is actually done by the lead singer of Rancid and the bassist of Blink 182. 


J: Does that include any styling products or just the shampoo/conditioner?  The whole gamut?

DW:  Yeah, I've got a membership...

J: *laughing*

DW: I'm part of that "I like your green bottle" club...

J: *regaining composure*  What is the one fashion tip you would give needy developers in the industry?

DW: Is there a fashion problem in our industry?

J: Oh, maybe not in Edmonton, but let's expand this to outside of the city...

DW: Most developers probably think along my lines, clothes are just there to cover the naughty bits.  As long as there's good coverage...it's good by me.  I'm not sure what the ladies think of the Edmonton developer community...

J: That is an interesting question, when I start interviewing some female developers I'll have to ask...

DW: And you'll find some off the street...

J: Of course, they're all around, I can't throw a stone without hitting one.  On the subject of women...Asian women.  Do you think they're merely better looking than everyone else, or are they also better people?

DW: Asian women...I'm not too sure on that, because I've been living in isolation from the Asian women. 

J: You've been living in isolation from Asian women?

DW: They're always protected by the Asian gang members, so I normally get in trouble talking to the asian women...

J: This lends quite a tragic slant to our interview.  But you would go after Asian women if it weren't for Asian gangs.  That's basically the problem with you doing a hookup with Asian women?

DW: I wouldn't go so far, because I don't know many Asian women, so I can't give any concise ...

J: To expand that question, actually, now that I think about it: with developers and, well, all men having a preference for Asian women, do you think that the presence of *Asian gangs* is one of the bigger problems that the software development industry faces?

DW: I think we should watch out for the white nerd gangs first.  They've got a huge recruitment pool from the development community - we're just going to have the Crips and the Bloods here.

J: You're right; a 10 person slap fight is only a couple of weeks away in this city.

DW: We do hair-pulling but a lot of developers don't have any hair, so...

J: *laughing*  It's funny how these questions oddly lead into my other questions even though I thought they'd have no connection...if Steve Rockarts and his fiancee had a UFC fight, what sort of betting odds would you give?

DW: Well, seeing as how I've never met Rockarts' fiancee...

J: But you know that Rockart's fiancee is like She-Ra, only about 10 times as powerful?

DW: Hmm...if I didn't know that, even, I'd still bet on her.

J: What if Steve Rockarts fiancee had two arms tied behind her back and was blindfolded - would it be 50-50 at that point or would hse still have the advantage?

DW: She probably has the advantage - still has her legs kicking him right out and Rockarts is down.

J: WHat about Donald Belcham vs. Steve Rockarts' fiancee?

DW: Depends on how much scotch Donald has.

J: True.  Do you think the scotch makes him a better fighter or a worse fighter? Is this like an Incredible Hulk thing?

DW: I think that it's on an interesting curve where it eventually numbs the pain but he can still throw down...

J: That guy is a monster by the way.  No word of a lie, he was at the gym on the weekend and my wife and I were there.  He was doing one-armed rows with 60 lb dumbells.   I seriously think he could crush somebody with his fist...

DW: Old Donald and his one-arm exercises...

J: Somehow I will work that into this interview!  Speaking of EDMUG people, do you think that EDMUG meeting coordinator Steve Yang is closer to the Asian Arthur Fonzarelli or the Asian Rico Suave? 

DW: Definitely the Rico Suave. 

J: Is it the dance moves doing it, or...?

DW: Recently I've noticed more women coming to the EDMUG meeting and I've talked to some of them, they've all said they're there because of Steve Yang.

J: Steve Yang and his Asian-Latin heat...there's just no escaping it.  It's ridiculous...so, in terms of EDMUG presenters or people we could bring down to talk - if you could pick any three people, who would you want EDMUG to bring?

DW:  I don't know...I'm not really into celebritizing people; I think anyone who can contribute something to our community is welcome here...or just to stir up us talking.  I'd love to see a round-table debate, just to have three or four people debate a topic.

J: All right, word association time.  One word for each of these things.  Starting with:
EDMUG.

DW: Beer.

J: Donald Belcham.

DW: Scotch.

J: Steven Rockarts.

DW: (pause)...can only be one word?

J: Do a couple.

DW: UFC fighter.

J: Jean Paul Boodhoo.

DW: Travelling roadshow.

J: Bald people.

DW: Uh...uhm, *laughs*  I've got no word to associate with bald people.

J: All right, I'll say "nothing polite".  Test Driven Development.

DW: Coder crack.

J: Justice Gray.

DW: Justice Gray...

J: *laughing* The associated term is "Justice Gray"?

DW: *laughs* Doesn't that just summarize it?  The adverb of the century.

J: Randy "Macho Man" Savage.

DW: Slim jim.

J: Optimus Prime.

DW: Justice Gray.

J: David Woods.

DW: I have to associate a word to me?...uh, code monkey?

J: Career monkey?

DW: Code monkey...no, you know, career monkey sounds pretty good.

J: What's your favorite development language?  I know they're all different depending on the project at hand, but which one do you like developing in the most?

DW: My favorite development language...I would have to say that it's C#.  Everything I've done...even though I come from a C style background (C, C++, PHP and all those things), I used to really like VB - just because you didn't have these nesting brackets at the end of your class.  But now that I know how to code small methods, you don't have these huge if statements with 17 brackets.  So now that language is good.

J: If you had only one technology you could learn over the next 3 months, what would it be?

DW: I think it would be electronic microchip programming; just to be able to instrument a computer to do differnet things would be pretty cool.

J: And our last question...what does the future hold for David Woods?

DW:  The future....probably more speaking.  Doing more consulting for different companies, I don't know what else I want to announce!

J: Well, admittedly your neon goat sex web site is a pretty big announcement all by itself!

DW: Yeah, and I'm thinking of writing a book!

J: Really!  Can I ask what topic?

DW: Sure - I want to make a transition book.  There are so many books  for junior people out there, and there are so many for senior people; there's nothing inbetween.  So I want to write something for the intermediate developer, really.  Saying here uis dependency injection...here's an interface!!  I went through school not understanding what an interface *did*.  I could answer all the test questions right, and I could "use" one...but it wasn't until a year ago that I started to *use* one.  And now it's obvious...so I want to write a lot of those things down.

J:  David, that brings us to the end of our interview!  Thanks very much for your time!

DW: Thank you!