Along with the technology, I have always been interested in people who made things actually happen. The computing field is rife with folklore surrounding these influential personalities. Here I present some of the legends I have come across. (I am writing this from memory and don't remember the exact links, sorry).
As we all know, linux began as a project on a minix machine. So the story goes, one day linus' (creator of Linux) filesystem crashed taking with it a few days work. Linus being the uberhacker he is, fixed the minix superblock by hand, and recovered his data.
Seymour Cray (the creator of Cray series of supercomputers) once entered an operating system of his design, into a computer of his design, in octal, by hand, without error. So much for the Real Programmers.
As you might know, there is one particular 'make' (a Unix utility for building complex projects) feature that has bitten many of us. It is that the 'commands' line in a Makefile must begin with a tab. Now you can't just look and say this is a tab and this is a collection of spaces and it causes much pain. But when the original author of make, Stu Feldman was asked to fix this feature, he refused because he already had 10 users.
When Microsoft launched Windows 95, they paid a lot of attention to backward compatibility. As it happened, there was a bug in Simcity's (a popular simulation game) memory management code. It did not manifest on Windows 3.1 but caused Windows 95 to crash. Insted of making Simcity guys fix their bug, the Windows 95 memory manager switches to a different mode if it detects Simcity, so as to allow it to run without problems.
When Steve Jobs purchased a Cray Supercomputer and announced it will be used to design the next Macintosh, Seymour Cray replied, "This is strange because I am using the Macintosh to design the next Cray".
You can check folklore.org for more Macintosh stories.
As we all know, linux began as a project on a minix machine. So the story goes, one day linus' (creator of Linux) filesystem crashed taking with it a few days work. Linus being the uberhacker he is, fixed the minix superblock by hand, and recovered his data.
Seymour Cray (the creator of Cray series of supercomputers) once entered an operating system of his design, into a computer of his design, in octal, by hand, without error. So much for the Real Programmers.
As you might know, there is one particular 'make' (a Unix utility for building complex projects) feature that has bitten many of us. It is that the 'commands' line in a Makefile must begin with a tab. Now you can't just look and say this is a tab and this is a collection of spaces and it causes much pain. But when the original author of make, Stu Feldman was asked to fix this feature, he refused because he already had 10 users.
When Microsoft launched Windows 95, they paid a lot of attention to backward compatibility. As it happened, there was a bug in Simcity's (a popular simulation game) memory management code. It did not manifest on Windows 3.1 but caused Windows 95 to crash. Insted of making Simcity guys fix their bug, the Windows 95 memory manager switches to a different mode if it detects Simcity, so as to allow it to run without problems.
When Steve Jobs purchased a Cray Supercomputer and announced it will be used to design the next Macintosh, Seymour Cray replied, "This is strange because I am using the Macintosh to design the next Cray".
You can check folklore.org for more Macintosh stories.
2 comments:
I am reading the anecdotes on folklore.org, and they are really enchanting...
Folklores of a different kind.(my kind hehehe)
1)one day my (creator of nothing) filesystem crashed taking with it a few days work. Should I fix the wutever superblock by hand, and recover my data? Or Should I go and chill, and party Yipeeeeee.....Naah not a difficult choice.
2) Seymour Cray once entered an operating system of his design, into a computer of his design, in octal, by hand, without error.(Banda kaafi frustrated hoga life mein, having nothing else to do interesting in lyf then feeding hex codes)
3) As you might know, there is one particular 'make'......(essentially bug tha, usko unwanted feature bola and hence didnt fix it.smart boy.....How can you call that a feature man?.....ehehe)
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