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Programmers At Work, 22 Years Later
Firebones writes "In 1986, the book Programmers at Work presented interviews with 19 programmers and software designers from the early days of personal computing including Charles Simonyi, Andy Hertzfeld, Ray Ozzie, Bill Gates, and Pac Man programmer Toru Iwatani. Leonard Richardson tracked down these pioneers and has compiled a nice summary of where they are now, 22 years later."
killer site design....
So, like 8 years ago when I was a sophomore in High School, my friend and I used Yahoo! people search to find Andy Hertzfeld, then used Dialpad.com (back when it was free...) to call him.
We left a really, really long voicemail message on his answering machine saying how "insanely great" we thought he was and stuff. He never called us back but changed his phone number to an unlisted one shortly thereafter...
I hereby declare myself the biggest Mac "fanboy" ever. and first post.
I recognize most of the names on the list, but who is this Bill Gates character?
Thank God for evolution.
I've always wondered whatever happened to Bill Gates.
Damn microsoft keyboard....
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Wow, it's the original Duke Nukem Forever dev team!
This was a very good book. Probably my favorite bit was hearing the history of Pac-Man
Best Quote:
"I thought that one of the things women like to do is eat. So I started working on a game concept based on eating."
--Toru Iwatari, inventor of Pac-Man
Hearing about the SwyftCard idea was cool too.
Some of the best things were the artifacts, from in house materials to source code to random sketches and napkin plans:
I made some banners for The Gamers Quarter with the early sketches of Pac-Man:
http://kisrael.com/viewblog.cgi?date=2007.11.13
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Three years! In (Moore's) computer years that's like 18 generations, prior to the great depression of dotcoms or even the Civil (browser) War.
It's amazing that some employer is kind enough to provide this old geriatric coder a job. I try to stay out of the way of the new blood and stave off death for a few more years but my old concepts of "EJBs" and "Java Server Faces" is just embarrassing to them.
A new recruit came in the other day, I told him not to feel bad and we'd make him 1337 soon enough. He just chuckled and patted me on the head and said, "There there, old timer, we'll get you some streaming Matlock off the server while we clean up your mess."
I miss my friends that have already moved on from this life to the next, those that are managers already. I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up DOES rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friends.
So please, when you see an ancient dinosaur like me lumbering around trying to figure out what the f*ck ruby is and why I have to put it on rails and then wonder how that was any different than what I used to be doing, please be kind. Have patience, my mind isn't as nimble as it once was. Three years of Jack Daniels and coding ravages a man and leaves him a dusty shell.
Just promise me you'll never forget me when I'm put in the basement next to a pile of boxes next month. Please come visit, please!
My work here is dung.
So while we may not be able to reconcile our differences now, I realize that at the end of the day we might find ourselves in the same spot of alienation and place of decay.
In a different reality, I might have called you friend
My work here is dung.
He still looks just like he did on the box covers in the 80s.
Lucky bastard. Hell, I look like the box itself now.
Table-ized A.I.
Bill Gates popularized the word super????
!@#$@ off!!!
Superman comics were out in the 1930s. Credit where credit's due.
Bill Gates popularized the phrase "blue screen of death" by demonstrating it at CES.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer