As it happens, this computer came with the BASIC programming language pre-installed. You didn’t even need to boot a disk operating system. You could turn on the computer and press Ctrl-Reset and you’d get a prompt. And at this prompt, you could type in an entire program, and then type RUN, and it would motherfucking run.
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Mark Pilgrim
I think that almost all programmers have some version of this story from their childhood.
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let’s stop this talk of action because action comes easy it’s the moments just before that are hard, when i’ve got to get my voice and my fist on the same page as my heart. let’s stop this talk of them because the things we find deplorable in politicians, ceos and cops are the same things that will tear ourselves apart. and let’s stop this talk of words because words like dishonesty selfishness and greed aren’t as distance to us as we’d like to believe.
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Defiance Ohio, I Don’t Want Solidarity If It Means Holding Hands With You
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A fellow programmer once told me that software is never finished, it’s “temporarily completed.
Never forget, a small group of people can change the world.
No one else ever has.
Most people imagine their personal paradises as something like sipping drinks on a beach and doing nothing. To me, that would be hell. I’d rot into boredom and depression from mental atrophy.
Lots and LOTS of good quotes in here. Worth a read.
The impact of the 60 hour work week, or any rigidly defined number of hours, is that smart people loaf around. Rather than be efficient, clever, and wise, and go home, people feel obligated, are in some cases are rewarded, to linger, to pretend, and to give pretense about how long it takes to actually do things. This is all kinds of bad. We should reward people who kick significant ass and then go home. Early. Not those who pull all-nighters for things that were never that complex to begin with. All sorts of goodness happens when managers learn to reward results, not effort. And this starts but getting past the stupid pretense of effort known as hours.
The tech industry will be in paroxysms of future shock for some time to come. Many will cling to their January-26th notions of what it takes to get “real work” done; cling to the idea that the computer-based part of it is the “real work”.
It’s not. The Real Work is not formatting the margins, installing the printer driver, uploading the document, finishing the PowerPoint slides, running the software update or reinstalling the OS.
The Real Work is teaching the child, healing the patient, selling the house, logging the road defects, fixing the car at the roadside, capturing the table’s order, designing the house and organising the party.
The reality is that not everyone can be a doctor, not everyone can be a professional athlete, and not everyone can be a writer. You may be a precious snowflake, but if you can’t express your individuality in sterling prose, I don’t want to read about it.
Yes, there is much jealousy from iPhone developers at the sacks full of money being made by Zune and Windows Mobile app developers.
