Thursday, April 01, 2004

Dan Bricklin: Programmers at Work reunion

Dan Bricklin: Programmers at Work reunion "Susan started the night off by introducing us and asking what we were up to now. Charles Simonyi is working on coming up with a better way to express programs at Intentional Software Corporation. Andy Hertzfeld has been programming for years, most recently at OSAF with Mitch Kapor, but after a year and a half is taking a break. I'm back on my own at Software Garden, starting to think about creating some new software tools and doing consulting (the event served as a way to say that publicly to a West Coast audience...). Scott Kim is a professional, independent puzzle designer. He's been designing puzzles for publications and now creating daily ones for cell phones. (That was probably the coolest current job.) Jef Raskin is consulting and still working on a better interface. Robert Carr was most recently a venture capitalist, after doing GO and helping Autodesk successfully move from DOS to Windows, but is now taking time off. Jaron Lanier is still interested in a better way of programming (like Charles), and is deep in the National Tele-immersion Initiative. Twenty years later, there are constant threads in our careers.
The panel was too intense to both participate in and take notes at the same time. You'll have to find someone else's report. The only note I made was about an anecdote that Charles told. He doesn't usually carry much in the way of ID. He was stopped at the guard desk at a company where he had an appointment. No ID, no entry. He asked if the guard had web access on the computer on his desk. He did. Charles told him to look on Google for "Charles Simonyi". Up popped his picture. Yep, that's him. He was let through."

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