{"id":5178,"date":"2013-10-17T11:25:49","date_gmt":"2013-10-17T16:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/?p=5178"},"modified":"2013-09-30T14:46:15","modified_gmt":"2013-09-30T19:46:15","slug":"open-mic-spotlight-dan-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/open-mic-spotlight-dan-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Mic Spotlight: Dan Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"9998950f4ac00c8f357d1f9640d4860e\"<\/a>This post is part of the OpenStack Open Mic series to spotlight the people who have helped make OpenStack successful. Each week, a new contributor will step up to the mic and answer five questions about OpenStack, cloud, careers and what they do for fun.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Smith is a Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat. He works\u00a0primarily on Nova, is a member of the core team, and is generally\u00a0focused on topics relating to live upgrade. You can follow him on\u00a0Twitter @get_offmylawn<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

1. If you couldn’t be a developer, what would your dream job be?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ll try to answer this by quoting some code from dansmith.py:<\/p>\n

try:<\/p>\n

import developer<\/p>\n

except ImportError:<\/p>\n

raise Exception(“Cannot continue without the developer module!”)<\/p>\n

2. What behavior has helped get you the furthest as a developer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’d say: Figuring out who the smart and productive folks are and\u00a0learning to do as they do. OpenStack is a great project for that\u00a0because it’s chock full of smart folks to learn from.<\/p>\n

3. What is your favorite project that you’ve contributed code to?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It sounds contrived, but, definitely OpenStack. I can’t recall a past\u00a0project that had me as motivated to review patches in the car on the\u00a0way to a weekend vacation or rebase\/resubmit my patches on a Saturday\u00a0morning. The incredible velocity and high density of excellence on this\u00a0project makes it fun. I feel privileged to be able to work on OpenStack\u00a0for my day job.<\/p>\n

4. How did you learn to code? Are you self-taught or did you learn\u00a0in college? On-the-job?<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was very young, I was given a Commodore VIC-20 with no game\u00a0cartridges and some empty cassette tapes. It didn’t do much unless I\u00a0made it happen, so I had to learn to write code for it. I still have\u00a0the thing in the attic, but I keep the reference manual on the\u00a0bookshelf with other technical books.<\/p>\n

5. Be honest – are you more likely to know your project\u00a0collaborators by their IRC nic or their actual name?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The only reason I know a few people by their actual names is because\u00a0their IRC nicks haven’t been on the badges at recent design summits. I\u00a0hope that will change in Hong Kong \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is part of the OpenStack Open Mic series to spotlight the people who have helped make OpenStack successful. Each week, a new contributor will step up to the mic and answer five questions about OpenStack, cloud, careers and what they do for fun.\u00a0 Dan Smith is a Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[474],"tags":[465],"class_list":["post-5178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-mic","tag-openmic"],"yoast_head":"\nOpen Mic Spotlight: Dan Smith - OpenStack Blog | Open Infrastructure Foundation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.openstack.org\/blog\/open-mic-spotlight-dan-smith\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Open Mic Spotlight: Dan Smith - OpenStack Blog | Open Infrastructure Foundation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This post is part of the OpenStack Open Mic series to spotlight the people who have helped make OpenStack successful. 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