Joyent, the outfit that, at of the time of this writing, is providing smerpology.org with a place to squat, is looking for software developers. Joyent developer Mark Mayo recently posted this call for programmers on Twitter:

btw, yes, we’re looking for programmers @joyent. send code, not resumes. dm me for details.

This interested me, so I sent an email introducing myself to Mark. There was just one problem.

I didn’t have any code to send.

While this didn’t stop me from sending the email, I did feel more than a little foolish. After all, what the Hell have I been doing with my time? Shouldn’t I have some code out there that I can point to with pride?

Rafe and I talked about this, which (I guess) inspired him to write a blog post that posed the question of whether or not a Github profile and a blog would be the programmer’s résumé of the future. Personally, I think he’s on to something. After all, If I were looking to hire a developer, it would be wonderful to see examples of how that person solved problems in code before bringing them in for a face-to-face interview. It would be a technical analog for an artist’s portfolio.

However, as useful as having a portfolio would be, I don’t think that code samples will — or should — replace the traditional résumé. There are many capable programmers who spend their time toiling under the auspices of “Work for Hire” in a closed-source environment and then choose to spend their free time doing something other than hacking on Open Source. Should these people be passed over? I guess the answer to that depends on the kind of person you want to hire.

Regardless, having an active online presence on Github, Bitbucket or Launchpad is a net positive for a job-seeking programmer because it demonstrates technical curiosity, a willingness to get involved, and demonstrates that person’s skill at coding (for better or worse). I’d also wager that being involved as a answerer of questions over at Stack Overflow is probably a good thing, too.

For what it’s worth, it’s inspired me to get off my ass and get out there. So, here’s my fledgling Github profile along with my nacent Bitbucket profile. Neither are active at the time of this writing, but I plan on doing some actual hacking RSN, so these are good places to hang my hat. Frankly, I’m more likely to use the Bitbucket account as I’m currently more conversant with Mercurial than Git. This, of course, may change.

Finally, I also have my own Mercurial repositories hosted on smerpology.org. Perhaps they’ll get moved to Bitbucket (and then I won’t have to continue maintaining them, either).