Interspecies Pair (Purr) Programming

Some of you may recall Sleepycat Software, which was in business to support the open-source Berkeley DB until it was bought by Oracle in 2006. Some years ago I had occasion to email them about something, and thinking that a company called Sleepycat Software would still be a one- or two-person enterprise, I added in the email that I liked their name and, as it happened, I had a kitty on my lap at that moment.

The reply gave me a chuckle, as it made clear that the company had grown significantly and that some of the new employees found the name a bit embarrassing.

Anyway -- one thing I've learned about Purr Programming -- don't let the cat have the keyboard. Their code never works :-)

Reminds me of rubber duck debugging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

Reminds of Dan's review (at that time, his site was 90% about hardware & gadgets): http://www.dansdata.com/kitten.htm

Cats make great bosses. They don't know what exactly you're doing but they just love to supervise.

> Allie prefers to not have her own keyboard.

Not my experience at all. Purr programmer would demand to be part of the process and would lie across my wrists, because she needed to be close to the action.

Best damn programmer I ever worked with, even though I had to vacuum the keyboard regularly.

A little off topic, but: I like to have my small Meyer's Parrot on my shoulder when I work. Disadvantage of a parrot over a cat is that the parrot will talk to you.

Heh, I even used to let our cat join in the odd conference call. When she was new and very talkative, if the meeting was dull I'd just hold the phone out so she could miaow at people.

Nobody ever mentioned it, though they must have noticed after the first couple of times...

You are such a weirdo ! Love it !

is duct tape an acceptable facilitator of purr programming? great post... hilarious!

Hysterical!