What is good what not so about The Code Room?

Update on 12/13/2004: I have read my post again, and I feel now that it is too harsh on the people that make The Code Room. So, for anyone interested in my feedback, have you ever had a bad day? I still think you need a turn in the direction I state in the post, but you are not that far. Apologizes.

Today, Robert Scoble pointed us to the debut video of a new MSDN TV show called The Code Room. Right now, the first episode is only available at TheServerSide.NET.

So the wave of reality shows has finally arrived to computer geeks? Actually, there are a number of things I don't like about the video. I have already posted too many comments on Scoble's blog (sorry Robert!), so I will use my own blog to elaborate a little bit.

I think you could understand the issue just looking at The Code Room's logo.

The small text under the title reads:

src="/images/code.gif

I can picture the designer feeling very geeky when he did that. The problem is:

1. It is wrong, you need to close the quotation marks at the end for this to make sense.
2. If you look at the actual code of the home page, it says src="images/thecoderoom_logo.jpg".

I know this is just a couple of stupid details, but from a geek's perspective, it is a a shame. It means that the text in the logo is like an "Access Granted" sign covering all the screen of a computer in a stupid Hollywood movie! A chill goes all the way trough the spine. Are you trying to sell me something? Are you trying to wash my brain?

I read on TheServerSide.NET that there is actually Hollywood people involved. This is no surprise. It reminds me of the day I saw Independence Day. Not only it was one of the worst "science fiction" movies I have ever seen. When they connected a laptop to an alien mainframe using TCP/IP and infected it with a virus, I almost vomited.

So, it is ok guys if you are not geeks, just don't pretend to look like geeks, or it will only make you look fake.

Finally, I have to mention that as it was the case with Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, the three "human" participants trapped in the code room looked like cool, plain normal, real life geeks. Of the three, Chris Menegay and Scott Bellware have blogs, and I am reading them right now.

It is not clear for me what the target audience of the program is. In any case, if MSDN TV wants to improve it, perhaps having some geeks to "sanitize" the show will do it. Otherwise they can try asking the directors to make it more Dogme 95 like (what Scoble & co. do at Channel 9), or perhaps recording some extreme programming scenes using bullet-time effects ;).