What would you work on if you dont have any money constraint?

Question

Imagine you have millions of dollars and can reach to the best programming/creative minds in the world.

1- What would you build/work on?

2- Who would you hire?

3- Where would your office will be and how would it look like?

Answer 1

1 - helping the open source community to build samrt and usful apps for every one. 2 - the best you can have. 3 - closer to home.

Answer 2

I'd build a sentient time machine.

I'd hire Knuth at first, then I'd go and fetch Feynman, Turing and Lovelace from the dead when the first prototype's complete.

The office would be in the torch of the statue of liberty, that way I can see the bad guys coming to get me from a distance.

Answer 3

I'd get enough smart people to research and develop a real group-memory tool for software projects.

We spend too much time debugging and redoing work because we lose such a high proportion of the knowledge that we form as we work. So we wonder what exactly somebody did, why they did it that way, etc. Similarly, we make mistakes because we don't know that somebody else had some other piece of knowledge that we're not aware of.

Who I'd hire? Brilliant researchers and developers who care about "meta" work for the benefit of their own profession.

The perfect workplace would be something similar to the European research "minicities" like they have for the accelerator. Close enough to collaborate, but with enough privacy for each person to work in peace and quiet when necessary.

Answer 4

DirectX for Linux

Happy people

Good cycle ride from home, lots of windows, lots of plants

Answer 5

Develop the user interfaces of a number of creative free projects up to at least the industry norm. Blender, Gimp and Openoffice all have backends which are powerful enough for most purposes, but the UIs are way behind the best of the commercial alternatives. UI development seems to need a tightly focussed team, and keeping such a team together costs money.

Creativity should not be limited by access to tools which cost more than most people can save in a year.

Answer 6

Imagine you have millions of dollars and can reach to the best programming/creative minds in the world.

1- What would you build/work on?

Invisible nono-tech droids to explore, index and search the real universe.

2- Who would you hire?

Send me your resume, and I'll get back to you :) .

3- Where would your office be and how would it look?

A 10 square kilometer translucent oval facility in low orbit around the earth -- chasing the sun, and positioned so that it's always twilight.

Answer 7

1- I'm fascinated by games and storytelling, I would certainly want to get to work on a game that created itself, building worlds and stories that the player could drop themselves into at any point and change history. One could choose to drop into the world at one point and play through a character's life and then drop in again five hundred years later and see how the world has changed and evolved in that time...

2- The guy from Dwarf Fortress, no question, David Braben, a lot of people from the world of AI and bringing in some good consultant geographers, sociologists and so on as the need arose.

3- It would probably be quite distributed, a series of smaller offices in locations convenient for the developers in question that could be linked up for epic genius-level brainstorming...

Answer 8

1. I have plenty of open-source stuff on my plate already that I'd love to prop up and give more TLC to. In addition to that, I've become fascinated with FPGA-based development, so given an unlimited supply of money I'd probably have a go at serious development, learn VHDL, perhaps design my own PCI card for something cool (like a RAM drive).

2. I'd generally try to hire people who know more than me - which, in the world of embedded development, is pretty much anyone :)

3. I think the idea of 'office' is so outdated it's ridiculous. People should just telework from their homes. If face-to-face mettings are required, one can meet around someone's house. But we're heading towards a fairly distributed model of software development, which is pretty good I reckon (if not a bit antisocial).

Answer 9

1. Create a Software which will optimize the games such that they can work on any system. I know lots of people who can't play the games because the system requirements is too high( me included)

2. The best guys in business

3. It will be closer to my home and it will have many systems which will be running all kinds of games

Wishing everyone a happy new year

Answer 10

1-Life Automation and Helping others(ROBOTS Mainly) ("I ROBOT" I mean) Build softwares with their HW to automate the tedious tasks we are making everyday, Help others, stop incorrect decisions

2-I'd hire fresh developers but intelligent enough also I'd hire acadimic researchers

3-In any place having good weatcher, political stability and something of luxury

Answer 11

1. I'd work on building my own computerized "glass cockpit" for light aircraft.

2. Not sure. Would try to do as much as possible myself, but obviously would need some help.

3. At home part of the time and out at the airport part of the time.

Answer 12

I'll have a two phase answer if I may...

1.

PHASE 1: I'd spend a year getting all the web publishing projects I've started but not finished up and running ... just to stop my wife from saying I'm not a 'completer finished'. At the same time finish the real world building projects I've also not finished.

PHASE 2: I'm not a gamer because I think most current games are rubbish but I think that's where I'd end up - something epic in scale.

2.

PHASE 1: Matt of Wordpress fame and a couple of Sustainable building experts would do me.

PHASE 2: Open Source it ... in effect hire anyone who wants to play.

3.

PHASE 1 & 2: Offices are old hat - I need the ability to work from anywhere so I don't lack inspiration.

Answer 13

I'd probably start with cleaning up Git's Windows support. In particular, a good explorer addin and putting its file server in a Windows Service would be good places to start.

Generally stuff like that. What can I say, I'm a tools guy.

Answer 14

1. my abs (I can't find them!)
2. a tan
3. cutting-edge cool/fun stuff