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Let us see a practical (and sad) example of how assholes can bring a software development project to its knees, in this case, Gentoo Linux, a very popular distribution during the pre-Ubuntu years from 2002 to 2006, at which point the project lost almost 20% of their developers in the space of a few years. Why did this happen?
This is the story of four videos by Rob Pike, one of the creators of the Go programming language, each marking important milestones throughout the past 15 years: from the introduction of the language to the world in 2009, to its time of meteoric growth during 2012 and 2015, and finally to a review of the first 14 years of existence in 2023.
I had a revelation during the preparation of this article. Legend has it that Gary Kildall, as Forbes put it, "could have been Bill Gates", if it were not that he was busy flying his airplane the day IBM knocked on the door. Most analysts dealing with this foundational moment in computing history, however, leave aside a particular piece of information, which I think explains why IBM chose Microsoft over Digital Research as the provider for the operating system of the original IBM PC, even though Bill Gates himself told IBM to knock on Gary’s door instead.
It is not uncommon for software engineers to be eventually decorated with the grade of "software architect" in their careers. Logic would suggest that the latter, the better, but I have seen many a fresh graduate with such a stamp on their job offer, and a correspondingly worried look upon their faces. For the responsibility is high, yet the job description is as vacuous as one might expect from the almighty software industry. Graduate students get very little coaching from their alma maters before becoming "architects", so they wander in life asking themselves how to become one, let alone how to be good on the job.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of English (second edition, revised 2005), the word "Grotesque" comes from the mid 16th century French word "crotesque". This is confirmed by Le Robert Dictionnaire Historique de la Langue Française, by Alain Rey et al. The word derives from the Italian adjective grottesca, related to grotto, or cave. It was first used to designate a certain type of art found in ancient Roman basements that apparently hurt some sensibilities. The Oxford Dictionary gives the following two meanings to the word: first, "comically or repulsively ugly or distorted". Second, "incongruous or inappropriate to a shocking degree".
In our 50th issue, we reviewed some of the greatest classics in the field of programming and computing humor. Before that, we had reviewed the work of Kathy Sierra, a pioneer in the art of making computer programming books accessible and fun. Today, we will review a YouTube channel that combines the best of both.
The tech industry is a fertile ground for anecdotes starred by individuals qualifying as brilliant jerks, psychopaths, and other atrocious types of personality. Suffice to say that, from the height of their positions of supposed leadership, many chose the easy path of advancing a twisted agenda that feeds into their hubris, in the detriment of the wider advancement of society.
It is challenging to summarize the influence of Niklaus Wirth in the daily lives of otherwise unsuspecting programmers worldwide. The more one digs into videos, papers, books, and obituaries, the more information surfaces and fights for a place in the spotlight. There are, however, at least two major guidelines that drove his passion for software. One was simplicity through clear understanding and lack of ambiguity; the other, closely related to the first, was teaching.
The same way kids are addicted to TikTok nowadays, I was addicted to TV as a kid. In the place and time of my teenage years, that is Argentina during the 1980s, it was the times of hyperinflation and eternal crisis (which begs the question: has anything changed in forty years?) Such a tense situation also meant that there was not much content on the telly about a subject that I was definitely interested in since a young age: computers. I mean, you could barely afford food, so, understandably enough, computing was scarce. Maslow's pyramid, yadda yadda.
On Sunday, July 20th, 1969, at precisely 20:14:19 UTC, just a mere three minutes before touchdown, the voice of Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr. confirmed the "Go for landing" order received from Mission Control together with a phrase nobody wanted to hear at that moment: "Program alarm - 1201."