Aardvark’d

A few years ago, Joel Spolsky decided to show the world how software is created. He invited a documentary crew to film the summer interns at his company Fog Creek create what was code-named Project Aardvark. It would be later branded as the product Copilot. This documentary was named Aardvark’d: 12 Weeks with Geeks and sold on DVD. The entire movie is now available on Youtube here.

When there is some problem on their computer, a lot of people ask their family or friends to help fix it. Most of the time the helpers are physically far away. So, Project Aardvark set about creating a website which could connect the seeker and the helper, the helper could view and interact with the seeker’s desktop and hopefully fix the problem.

Aardvark’d follows the four interns: three programmers and one marketer as they go about learning and creating this software. I have nothing more to say because this Aardvark’d is super-boring, watching paint dry would be more exciting than this. Neither do we get to see the daily hustle-bustle life of a Fog Creek employee nor are we given the technical insight into Project Aardvark. Instead we are fed shots of the interns sitting at their computer working, some stupid contests and some talking points from Joel Spolsky and Paul Graham.

Aardvark’d is a mega-bore of a documentary and I highly recommend avoiding spending the one hour or so of your life on it. Just watch the trailer, believe me when I say that there is absolutely nothing more to see in the movie than what is shown in the 2 minutes of that trailer.