New IT offices ideal for University developers
- Updated August 19th, 2009 in Reviews
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In July 2009, most of the University of Winchester’s IT Services moved to the reburbished St James’ Hall building on the King Alfred campus. This move meant that for the first time, Desktop Development, Corporate Development, and Applications Development teams were all in the same office.
St James’ Hall | View from my window
The new offices on the Programmer’s Bill of Rights scale
1. Every programmer shall have two monitors 
Every developer in the team has at least a duel monitor 17″ setup. Twice the monitors, twice the productivity.
2. Every programmer shall have a fast PC
We all sport at least dual-cores with a couple of gigabytes of RAM. Increasing memory is an easy request process. No time wasted staring at progress bars.
3. Every programmer shall have their choice of mouse and keyboard
I’m currently using a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 and Trackball Optical, although I’m also trying out the Logitech Trackman Marble. Other keyboard and mice can be ordered as needed.
4. Every programmer shall have a comfortable chair
Nothing special — standard modern five-wheel office chair. Old or worn chairs are replaced as required.
5. Every programmer shall have a fast internet connection
The University is part of LeNSE and accesses the internet through JANET, the UK’s education and research network.
Internet connectivity and bandwidth is not a problem for development work, with a quick test on www.speedtest.net showing a download speed of about 100 Mb/s and upload of 65 Mb/s.
6. Every programmer shall have quiet working conditions
As Ted Dziuba writes about in Context Switches are Bad, but Stack Traces are Worse, interruptions and context switches can destroy productivity. The new office is up a slight hill on main campus, which reduces the number of people popping in, and separate meeting rooms are available for meetings and discussions. Although there can be as many as ten people in the office working at once, we’re all development teams and so have a similar working style.
Conclusion
The high score on the Programmers Bill of Rights reflect that the new offices are a fantastic working environment for quality development.
