Perhaps the dispute over MacHeist and the week of the independent Mac developer can have some benefit after all. Jason Harris of Unsanity, who took to task Gus Mueller (and subsequently apologized), has launched A Cocoa Holiday Duel at Ten Paces. The event is a little like Ironcoder—participants will code a small (open-source!) holiday-themed app (the example given is Snö) and pick a charity. You, the Mac user, get to vote by donating to one of the participant’s charities—the winner is the coder whose charity gets the most donations. They receive a small gift from the rest of the coders valued at $20 (or two six packs of “good” beer).
Besides Harris, the participants currently include Dustin MacDonald (Wallet), John Casasanta (iClip), Jonathan Grynspan (mFurc), and Gus Mueller. As of this writing, only Grynspan has announced his charity so far, which is Penny Arcade’s Child’s Play. Apps need to be ready for download by the 20th, with the donations totaled at midnight MST on December 26th.
While I’m a favor of anything that benefits charities, I’ve got to ask this much: is a duel really in the spirit of the season? Perhaps it should be A Cocoa Holiday Codealong? Like a sing-along, but with, er, less music and more singing. Or maybe they could call it Cocoa with Marshmallows. Mmmm. Marshmallows.
