I am pretty excited about this month’s Developer Faceoff: Scott Bellware vs. Jean-Paul Boodhoo – The War of the Short, Bald, and Passionate.

Scott Bellware is a software product designer and developer living in Austin, TX. He is probably best known for his brutal honesty and “get-off-your-ass” attitude, but only because Scott is super-human active in the conference and organization circuits having founded AgileATX, co-founded the Austin .NET UG, and organized numerous DevTeach and ALT.NET conferences. He has been a Microsoft MVP since 2004. His current passion is preaching the benefits of Agile and BDD development practices.

JP Boodhoo is an independent consultant best known for his tagline – Develop with Passion! He has a passion for sharing information with the development community by being featured on .NET Rocks, Polymorphic Podcast, and is a MVP. When not developing, he can be found relaxing with his wife and their four kids.

Although I hear JP has been growing some hair, I can’t think of a shorter, balder, and more passionate faceoff. Here we go!

	Scott Bellware	JP Boodhoo
1. How long have you been developing?	17 years professionally. I wrote my first code in 1981 on a TI-99/4A.	8yrs old to 9 yrs old -> 22yrs old to now (29). Total dev time = 8 years.
2. What is your favorite language to date?	Ruby, presently.	I love C# 3.5
3. What is your favorite pattern/architecture?	I try hard not to end up with a favorite pattern or architecture for having seen how pattern fixation can ravage a project.	I love smart client architectures.
4. Is formal academic education necessary for development?	Yes, but I believe that formal and academic education can be self-directed and that entitled, traditional institutions do a poor job of it.	It can definitely help, but it is no substitute for drive and passion.
5. Are software developers – engineers or artists?	Both. There’s engineering in art and art in engineering.	My business card title is Software Artist, creativity is key.
6. Do you blog? If so how long and how many subscribers?	I have blogged. I have no idea how many subscribers.	2 years and 1 month, ~2500 subscribers (jpboodhoo.com)
7. If you could read only one blog, which one would you pick?	The value of my blog roll is its diversity. If there were only one possible blogger to read, I’d stop reading.	Tim Ferris, 4 hour work week baby!!
8. What is the biggest mistake you made along the way?	I’ve invested faith into things that in retrospect are obviously faith-resistant.	Going through periods of youthful arrogance where I discounted opinions of awesome coworkers.
9. Anyone in the software community you are star struck around?	No, not really. There are probably a couple dozen people tied for first, and the list constantly adapts organically.	Nope. Everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time.
10. What is the secret of your success, expressed in one word?	Analysis	God

This contest is going to be super simple and super quick.

Like I said last week, free software is on its way! Atlassian was kind enough to give away a free copy of their flagship bug tracking software – Jira.

This is the only thing you have to do to enter – in the comments below argue your case why you are in most need of a new bug tracker.

Tell me your horror stories with your current bug tracker.

Tell me the new and creative ways you would leverage software like Jira.

Tell me why winning this issue tracker license is the only thing that will keep you at your current job.

The comments will be open only for a few days, and the winner will be announced on Friday. Be sure to spread the word – anyone linking to this contest will be linked back on Friday!

Good Luck!

P.S. – Already have Jira? Atlassian has a ton of software development tools, I am sure Jon would work something out…

Alright everybody I have some really cool news…

Jon Silvers of Atlassian saw the point tracking video and he thought it was so killer he decided to give a away some free software on Codesqueeze!

We are still working out the details, but it sounds like he will be giving away a copy of either their flagship bug tracking system – Jira or their continuous integration build server – Bamboo.

Either way, be on the look out for the contest on Monday…