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Chimps "Get" VB.NET & ASP.NET Training
Simplicity of Microsoft's .NET Technology Triggers IT Evolution

MENLO PARK, CA: People laughed when Mark Bajek purchased his first chimpanzee and trained it to perform software maintenance, do system testing and create Crystal Reports ™. No one is laughing now.

His company, Primate Programming Inc, has received 10 million in 1st round financing from five Menlo Park venture capital firms. That first chimp, named Brainerd, is now leading several primate-only software development teams at the company’s headquarters.

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Alpha Animal: Brainerd is an old pro by primate standards. He was trained to walk on two legs and code in VB at 2 ½ years old. Now he runs software projects.

What Bajek discovered about primates was groundbreaking. “At first, I was just kind of hoping that Brainerd would show some interest in looping, variable types, that kind of thing,” explained Bajek. “Who knew he could handle .NET debugging, conditional compilation or the Windows® registry?”

Bajek said he first got the primate programming (PP) idea after learning about Koko, a female gorilla that used an Apple Mac to communicate with her handlers. Koko held regular webchats on the Web and became famous for her utter mastery of language. One surprise is that Koko is now demanding to move to Maui, Hawaii. “Prima donna” behaviors in programmers are well known, but no one saw this one coming from a primate just starting out in the business.

Bajek is considered the dean of PP and lives nearby the Iowa Primate Research Center in Des Moines, Iowa. His proximity to that facility led him to a fascination with higher primates. He moved quickly to establish his business after reading the report “Higher Primates Can Program” that appeared in this journal. Bajek provided VB.NET training and ASP.NET training to 10 chimpanzees. The rest is history.

This Gorilla and many like him may be able to manipulate a Mac and use language, like Koko. Koko became a celebrity and is now demanding relocation Maui, Hawaii.

IT Deflation Drops Consulting Rates to 45 Cents Per Hour

The Primate Programming trend is a signpost that the IT industry has matured. Routine IT tasks can now be handled by chimps, baboons and orangutans.

A chimp costs about $15,000 to purchase, train and deploy in an IT setting. They provide up to 30 years of service with support costs of about $400 a year. The hourly rate for PP comes in at just under 45 cents an hour. This compares very favorably against just about any IT model you want to select, including offshore outsourcing.

And the code quality is higher. Chimps, for example, are producing more lines of code per hour than a comparable human IT worker did in 1983. This is what attracted the attention of the Menlo Park venture capital community.

Research Drives the PP Model

Primate research has proven that training them to walk upright increases programming aptitude. According to Prof. Shigemi Mori and other researchers at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, they have succeeded in training monkeys to walk erect smoothly, as humans do, by working with them from the age of 2 1/2 years.

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They laughed when PP pioneer Mark Bajek trained his first primate to handle routine IT tasks. Nobody’s laughing now, except Bajek—all the way to the bank.

Indeed, a cottage industry is growing around PP. Business analysts and publications such as ITWorld are providing tips on managing primates in IT. Others are getting funding for job sites dedicated to PP. In California alone, there are nearly 250 ‘Nonhuman Great Apes’ are available now on a contract basis for coding and maintenance on one job site dedicated to primates. This is already effecting IT compensation in the Bay Area.

The Emerging Primate Business SubCulture

An entire subculture has developed around technologically advanced great apes. These are being celebrated at locations such as the Great Apes In Science and Technology site.

Some Primate Programmers are publishing their own Blogs. Because of their very granular manual dexterity, primates can type, and produce documentation and web pages. The Blog trend has been pioneered with the site “Rambling of a Code Monkey”, authored by a chimpanzee programmer with 7 years experience in VB and Java, named Milbertus. The Blog details the emerging alpha-chimp cyber-punk subculture.

It is rumored that high profile VC firms in Menlo Park CA are funding several promising primate programming startups. Start-up firms such as Code Monkey Design Services and Monkey Stone are rumored to be getting up to 5 million each in first-round funding. Entreprenuers worldwide are studying the research and scrambling to catch the PP wave.
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