Personas

Every group (in MS) has personas. In the developer tools, we have Mort, Elvis, and Einstein. These guys are respectively, the typical VB developer, the typical C# developer and the typical MC++ developer. We have a detailed description of them in very specific vivid detail, which include not only the relevant job habits, but also their lifestyles (how they have fun, what they do on weekends). These get very specific, that you wonder if they are talking about a real person.

I had a quick read of the profiles a long-time ago and I don't remember any of the details, but I reconstruct some probable personas based on my own intuition. Mort is your most common developer, who doesn't have a CS background, may even be a recent newcomer, and doesn't quite understand what the computer is doing under the covers, but who writes the dinky IT programs that make businesses run. Elvis, more knowledgeable, cares about code quality, but has a life too. Einstein writes some serious-ass piece of code like device drivers, wants to get things done, needs to be able to go low level and high level, needs a language without restrictions to get his job done.


From Wesner Moise's blog

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