Robey Pointer
Who is Robey Pointer?
An infrastructure engineer at Twitter (@robey). Recently, I’ve been on the FlockDB & Gizzard teams there, and in the past I’ve done things like kestrel, paramiko, and eggdrop. I live in the Mission district of San Francisco, where I like to hang out at the local whiskey bars, but I grew up in Johnson City, TN. Like many people, I’ve been trying to get computers to do my bidding since I could get my little fingers on the keyboard.
Ruby or Python? Git or SVN?
I was a big pythonista when I joined Twitter, but I’ve learned to love Ruby and Python for their strengths. Python would be improved by stealing Ruby’s block syntax, IHMO, but Python’s execution model is a lot simpler and clearer to me than Ruby’s. These days, when I need to write a quick script, most of the time I’ll do it in Ruby because we use it so much at work that it’s become second-nature to me. On the other hand, Python lets you hack the bytecode, which is soooo much fun.
Git over Subversion, hands down. I still prefer the command-line syntax of Bazaar, but both Bazaar and Git are DVCS (distributed version control systems) and Subversion is not, so it isn’t even in competition.
Favorite: Language?
Scala. Seriously. I love that I can write a small amount of code, and it can do a lot, really fast. It’s a high-level language like Python, but it lets me take advantage of all the work people have put into making the JVM fast.
I used to write prototype code in Python (because it’s really close to how I think) and then port it to Java once I had my thoughts straight and had something that more-or-less worked. Now I just skip that step and always start and finish in Scala.
How do you find the idea for a new project?
Anything that needs improvement is a potential new project, so the real question is how to limit yourself to a small number of projects that you can actually make headway on. It’s hard!
Deciding *not* to start a new project can be really important. We coders tend to distrust anything we didn’t write ourselves, so even if there are a couple of projects out there that nearly suit our needs, we tend to want to just do it ourselves from scratch. It takes effort to learn a new pile of code, but it saves so much time in the long run if you can submit a few patches to make it work for you instead of rewriting the world from scratch.
What does your typical day look like?
I’m a night person, so I use mornings for reading email and getting organized. I haven’t had a desktop computer in years, so I’m just working from my laptop on the couch. I bike in to work before lunch and set the same laptop on a desk in our “infra-lounge” at Twitter. We have a communal workspace so we can move around and pair easily. A couple of lounge chairs and a mini-fridge full of Dr. Enuf encourage people from other parts of the company to visit often, which is key. If I need to focus on a solitary task, I put on headphones or “hide out” in another room.
What do you do in your free time?
Biking around the city in fun, and I learned to snowboard this season. The night life in my neighborhood is pretty incredible, so that’s hard to resist, but sometimes I like to stay in and play role-playing video games — I’ve recently started playing Final Fantasy XIII. Occasionally I participate in Song Fight, a challenge to write and record a song in one week. I play resonator guitar and mandolin, but neither of them very well. I also have a banjo uke, but I think it would be an insult to banjo players everywhere if I described my flailing on that instrument as “playing” it. It probably goes without saying that I also spend a fair amount of my free time hacking.
Current favorite apps?
I don’t think I could live without Things or TextMate anymore. There are only a few things I would change about TextMate if I had the source, and that’s high praise from me. (PS Allan please release the source!) I’m fickle, but right now Echofon is my favorite Twitter desktop app. And of course Google Reader.
What OS do you prefer?
Linux. But I use MacOS X all the time because Linux is still pretty terrible on a laptop. Sorry, guys. I’m still rooting for ya.
Small picture of your Workplace?
I’m a simple man with a simple workspace. 
Name something that has inspired you recently?
Font Constuctor. It’s a little app that lets you create simple shapes, then stretch and combine them to make letters for a font. It makes font creation easy in the same way Garageband made song creation easy. I love that kind of thing because it democratizes creativity, and the easier it is to create new things, the more cool stuff there’s going to be in the world.
