Philosophy of Constitution and Bylaws

What's the difference between an introverted and an extroverted computer scientist? An extroverted computer scientist will look at your shoes in a conversation, instead of their own! Indeed, yesterday's programmer could afford the luxury of antisocial behavior and lived a comfortable existence in a single apartment. Sadly this is no longer the case. As more and more people choose programming professions, nerds have been increasingly forced to come out of their shells and engage with the outside world.

Programming has become an increasingly social discipline. This need for community engagement and networking is reflected in Baltimore Code and Coffee's growing attendance numbers. Rising unemployment and the success of GPT4 in writing code have put our field in an unprecedented position. The world is looking to us to see what's going to happen.

Following a dreadful global pandemic, something interesting was happening at Spark and Digital Harbor Foundation buildings. The nerds were coming together in mutual understanding. Powered by coffee and donuts, they were conversing and building and learning! For a time, the world didn't seem so scary.

But after a while, it became clear that something was up with the state of computer science. People were getting burned out at their jobs. They were resigning en masse. Large corporations descended into decay. And then.. the layoffs. At first it was seen as a temporary thing. People said, Oh, it's just the excess workforce picked up during pandemic, or Oh, it's just the season for layoffs. But they just kept coming, month after month, company after company. Google, Intel, Amazon. Startups became scarce. Interest rates rose, yet inflation was rampant. Housing costs and medical bills rose dramatically. It seemed there was no hope.

The Organizers met privately after every public meeting for a private retrospective. Sponsors and partners came and went. The organizers themselves had lives and jobs and family to take care of. Yet they stayed strong and took care of each other. Armed with nothing but a shoestring budget and a little bit of know-how, they prepared for the coming days.