"FWLS66" - читать интересную книгу автора (A Future We'd Like to See)

company, Macroware.

"Jensi coded up this silly little GUI program for the
leading OS of the time. It wasn't much, just an overblown menu
interface for launching executables. It had an internal
executable language so you could run applications native in it,
and I coded up some calculators and rolodexes and stuff. Just a
few toys to go with the package, right? Jensi never liked what
he made, because he said you couldn't run a proper demo under it.

"In fact, Jensi wanted us to just scrap the thing and go
work on a demo idea we had brewing. Instead, I swiped the
binaries and widebanded them.

"The next day our mailbox was pouring. EVERYBODY loved it.
It was easy to set up because it wasn't powerful enough to be
really complex, but it was powerful enough to let the guys who
were scared of computers launch applications with ease. Some
company out in Denver offered five million for it.

"Jensi and the others freaked. I took it in stride and
turned down the offer, which made my friends calm down a lot.

"I didn't want to lose our golden egg.

"I built up Macroware with the others, under the presumption
that we'd get off the apps and get down to some REAL coding
sooner or later. I was never planning on doing it. The guys
found out a year later when we were number five on the Fortune
500 and still working out of my garage, and they left me. Fuck
them, I didn't need them.

"Macroware rolled from that point on, without the dead
weight. I was the coding god of the universe, taking Jensi's toy
program and making it an OS to be reckoned with. I wasn't as
good of a programmer as he was, though, and I had a lot of bugs.
A lot. Still, the audience ate it up and I was rich, rich, rich.

"We, meaning me an the toadies I decided to hire, moved the
deal off to what is now Macroworld. I got the women, yeah, and
the fine wine. The lower downs took care of biz for me.

"That was the problem.

"I should have never done that. Macroware grew out of
control, run by my board of directors. We became the application
king of the universe. One day I'm booting up the latest release
of Jensi's old code and I notice something : It's shit. Pure and
total shit. Someone had taken our neat idea and made it into
something any coder in his right mind would scream in horror at.