Priyanka transitions from Java code to Java drink!
The regular readers of our blog will have noticed a few off-topic posts slipping in from time to time. The common theme is coffee and beer. As a group of passionate computer programmers and tech geeks it’s no surprise that we have developed a strong corporate coffee culture. Coffee is our secret weapon! Over the past 10 years we’ve changed programming languages, compilers, and development practices, but one factor has remained constant: Coffee. It must be the pillar for PaperCut’s success.
Coffee is very much part of our culture. The company funds a continuous flow of lattes, cappuccinos and macchiatos (Hendrik’s favorite) all arriving from the coffee shop directly opposite the office. Most of us have espresso machines at home (e.g. Rancilio Silva) and discussions on brewing techniques seem to pop up in developer meeting agendas unannounced.
Recently management decided that attending a formal coffee barista course would be a good idea. Traditional businesses would have called this a “cooperate team building exercise”, however for us it’s “core competency training” 
The whole Melbourne development team (minus Tom) spent a day at a coffee training academy learning the finer points of coffee production.
Lessons included:
- The art of wasting lots of milk perfecting the perfect froth.
- The amount of coffee one must waste to calibrate the ideal 25 second espresso pour.
- Latte art: The art of convincing someone that the shape on the top of their coffee was deliberate.
- How to make beverages unknown to computer programmers (chai lattes, and hot chocolates)
The day finished off with a competition. We paired up into teams and had to make 8 coffee variants in 8 minutes. Congratulations to Matt and Jason who took out the title.
To take a slight deviation, my favorite pieces of coffee trivia:
- The magic number on Java
.classfiles is0xCAFEBABE - The embedded framework we target for our HP embedded MFP development is called Chai
Overall it was a very fun day. We even got to walk away with a formal certificate – we’re now qualified Baristas! If we all get sick of writing print management software we now at least have a fall back option – open a Cafe!
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- Priyanka perfecting her milk froth
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- Jason (tech support) attempting the perfect espresso shot
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- Peter loading the group head for his next attempt at the perfect shot
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- Matt doing some Latte Art (free pour)
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- Chris and Tim reading the manual!
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- Ann (sales support) practising froth
Thanks to Jason for the great images!
Hilarious! Good times. I need to come work for you folks if you are having this much fun! Did you mail Rick any samples?
Warmest Regards,
Ken
Hi Ken,
Mail is so 1990. We gifted him an perfect 25 second espresso shot on Facebook instead
Chris
Hi guys and girls
What a nice environment you live there, were at Micro I/O Electronic Services, I’m always talking about your achievements, your company is for me a roll model off all software houses.
I hope that your commercial and technical relation, maintains solid has it is now forever.
Best regard´s from Aveiro, Portugal
Keep the good work,
Miguel Gaspar
P.S. Do you ever taste any Portuguese Coffey?
Hi Miguel,
I don’t think I’ve ever had any single origin (simple source) coffee from Portugal. I may however have had it in a blend. I’ve recently been trying a few single origin coffees from various regions. A lot of the good coffee in Australia comes from local sources in the region like Indonesia. I’ve also had some very good coffee from Brazil and I’ve read that Portugual was responsible for introducing coffee production into Brazil? Like most European countries, I’m sure you have a great coffee culture and some fantastic cafes. I’ll have to visit one day!
Thanks for your positive comments about PaperCut. Writing print management software is a fun area to work as far as software development goes, however it’s important that it’s not all work and no play. Coffee is a good social outlet for us all! We do a lot of complaining about driver bugs, MFP firmware issues, and of course bugs in Windows. It’s always a lot more fun complaining about this over a good cup of coffee
Cheers,
Chris
Hey Guys!!
Congrats to the team (specially Priyanka…she looks very absorbed…) for the initiative and unity of the team around a drink so tasty and historic as coffee.
Take the opportunity to leave an invitation for a coffee in Brazil!
LOL
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How the Brazilians started with coffee plantation.
The portugueses understood in 1727 that the land in Brazil would be excellent for coffee plantation. However no beans or coffee tree. The north governor from Para sent to the French Guiana an officer to ask the FG governor M. DÓrvilliers to give some samples of the beans. However he denied. The history says that the officer known as Mr Padilha was very handsome and Mr Dorvilliers wife turn to be Mr Padilha lover and gave him a flower bouquet with some coffee beans inside. This is how everything started in Brazil.
Chris, when possible I will send you some single perroir coffee for you to try.
Cheers
Tony Guarizo
Interamericana
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Our organization is leaning very strongly to purchasing PaperCut, and I took a look at this blog while researching your site. Enjoyed this article! I’m enough of a geek that I followed the “magic number” link to discover that “Compiled Java class files (bytecode) start with hex CAFEBABE. When compressed with Pack200 the bytes are changed to CAFED00D. ” Hmmm – compress a CAFEBABE and you end up with a CAFED00D. Not too sure what to make of that; in fact, I think its wisest to just leave it alone
@Jim I agree. Best to leave that one alone
There is a full list of fun magic numbers here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexspeak
Another one I had a laugh at was DEFEC8ED. This is the magic number of Solaris core dumps. How apt. I wonder how many hours went into thinking up that one!
Hope PaperCut testing goes well for you. If you need a hand, just make sure you email tech support after they’ve had their first coffee for the morning
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