533: The Garage Is Open
Transcript from 533: The Garage Is Open with Susan Lammers, Christopher White, and Elecia White.
EW (00:06):
Welcome to Embedded. I am Elecia White, alongside Christopher White. Our guest this week is Susan Lammers. We are going to talk about programming and time and history and writing and all kinds of things.
CW (00:21):
Hi, Susan. Welcome.
SL (00:24):
Thanks for having me. It is great to be here.
EW (00:26):
Could you tell us about yourself, as if we met at a dinner at the Computer History Museum?
SL (00:33):
I guess you could say my career was built at the intersection of arts and technology. I started out in publishing. I was an English major in college, but I took programming classes. I went on to end up at Microsoft, where information was becoming more and more, through optical storage, a part of what the computer did.
(01:05):
I am the author of "Programmers at Work," a book that is being republished this year from 8080 Books and Simon & Schuster. It is a 40th anniversary edition. I wrote it when I was in my 20s, back in '85 at Microsoft. It is a bit of a classic for fans, including Chris Svec, who is part of your show. I wrote it while I worked at Microsoft.
(01:37):
I went on from Microsoft to do some other interesting things in technology, including starting my own company, Headbone Interactive, in the '90s. That was a game company. I am working a lot these days, which is exciting and strange after a long break, because we are bringing the Headbone games back and this book.
EW (02:02):
All right. Mostly I have questions about the book, but now I am typing up questions about the games too. But before we get to that, we want to do a lightning round, where we ask you short questions and we want short answers. And if we are behaving ourselves, we will not ask, "How?" and "Why?" And, "Exactly what was the name of that robot?" Are you ready?
SL (02:23):
Yes, I am ready.
CW (02:24):
Favorite piece of software developed before 1986?
SL (02:33):
VisiCalc.
CW (02:34):
All right.
EW (02:35):
Favorite version of Microsoft Word?
SL (02:38):
The one I started with, maybe back in the '80s.
CW (02:44):
What is your favorite thing to do, when you are stuck on a writing project?
SL (02:49):
Go for a hike.
EW (02:50):
Music, art or poetry?
SL (02:52):
Music.
CW (02:55):
When you were young, could you have predicted your career?
SL (02:57):
Yes and no. Mostly no, but I was interested in personal computers.
EW (03:04):
Complete one project or start a dozen?
SL (03:07):
Dozen.
CW (03:09):
Favorite acronym?
SL (03:11):
Scuba.
CW (03:13):
Okay.
SL (03:14):
I just have great admiration. I am so happy they came up with that, because remembering "self-contained underwater breathing apparatus" is pretty hard.
EW (03:26):
Do you have a favorite fictional robot?
SL (03:29):
Yes. And I have a good story about that, because I encountered it when I was doing this book. I was going over to Japan to interview Tōru Iwatani at Namco and I walked into their office building and I was greeted by a robot.
(03:51):
This is 1985. There were not really robots around then. Her name was Uketsuke Komachi, which means "the beautiful automated receptionist." She was the only person there, or robot there. You logged in and then eventually the people came down to greet us.
(04:26):
There was another robot too, that served tea. It was a guy. He was like a waiter. Anyway, it was very memorable. I guess she went on to play roles in some of the PlayStation games that they created.
CW (04:47):
Cool.
EW (04:48):
It was 1985?
SL (04:50):
Yes.
EW (04:52):
Okay, so-
SL (04:52):
Were you alive then?
CW (04:54):
Yes. <laugh>
EW (04:58):
Yes, we were both alive, but we were not very old.
CW (05:03):
But I was using computers.
EW (05:04):
Yes. I think we both had started playing with computers by that age.
SL (05:09):
Good.
EW (05:11):
So "Programmers at Work," it is 19 interviews of engineers or engineering managers about programming, design, life, philosophy, and the state of the art. How did it come about?
SL (05:31):
I was working in the publishing division of Microsoft. Back then PCs were just starting to take off. There were only 120 or 50 programmers at Microsoft when I worked there. I think it was 1983, the IBM PC was named Man of the Year. They changed it to Machine of the Year.
(06:05):
It was entering the lives of not just people in business, but in everyday life, and people did not even know what a "programmer" was. I was the lone English major in a sea of technical people at Microsoft. I just felt like there was a call for who are these people and how are they doing this, creating this revolution?
(06:47):
A favorite book of mine, because really I wanted to be writing the great American novel, was the "Paris Review" series. Where they went out and did in-depth interviews with famous authors, to discuss how they went about their work, how they came up with their ideas, what their routines were, what their techniques were.
(07:12):
And we made the connection. Is that not what life is about, connecting things that have not been connected before? And I set out to write this book. I sat down with Charles Simonyi at Microsoft. I explained the idea and he was on board. From there, it just took off.
EW (07:43):
But only some of the people were Microsoft people.
SL (07:46):
Yes. That was deliberate. We did not want it to be a book about Microsoft. We could have gotten 20 great programmers there. But we wanted it to be like a round table of a handful of players in the industry, who- They all knew each other. It was such a small world then.
(08:27):
I started developing the list. Charles said, "Oh, you have got to talk to Butler Lampson. You got to talk to John Warnock." Bill Gates said, "You got to talk to the guys at Apple, Andy Hertzfeld or whoever. Dan Bricklin at VisiCalc," things like that.
(08:48):
It was very organic. Each time I talked to somebody, they would tell me about another person. I did a bunch of- Plus, I went everywhere to talk to these people. So I went into their homes and sat down, or their offices and things. That was an interesting experience too.
EW (09:19):
You talk about that some in the book. About Michael Hawley having keyboards and clutter, and some of the other buildings that were- Mostly you interviewed them in their offices.
SL (09:34):
Hmm.
EW (09:34):
No?
SL (09:38):
Well. Right. Yes.
EW (09:40):
I noticed the ones that were in the office, more than the ones that were in home.
SL (09:44):
Yeah.
EW (09:47):
Did the surroundings tell you as much about the people as what they said? Or were you mostly focused on what they said?
SL (09:56):
I was mostly focused on what they said, but definitely the surroundings impressed me. For one thing, these people, they were ordinary people too. They were just in this new industry. They were leaving, for the most part, corporate jobs.
(10:21):
I walked into Jaron Lanier's house. It was a tiny little house. It was in Palo Alto, but at the time- That was a long time ago. But it was like a million musical instruments laying around everywhere. Some old sofa. The lights were off and I wander in. He comes out.
(10:55):
Every time I walked in a place, it was a discovery. These were brilliant people, and a lot of them were big characters.
EW (11:13):
It is easy to look back and say, "Well. Wait a minute. Where was Steve Wozniak in here?" Or any of the names that I knew. But the truth is, I only knew a few names. Chris could look at the table of contents and knew who these people were, and I did not.
CW (11:34):
I know some of them.
EW (11:35):
I recognized Bill Gates, and that was it, because that is how little I care about.
CW (11:43):
But you were not- Just to divert for a second, you were not as embedded in the computing stuff as I was when I was a kid. I knew who Dan Bricklin was when I was a kid, because VisiCalc was a big thing on the Apple II, and that was famous.
(11:59):
I knew who Andy Hertzfeld was from Mac and stuff. I had grown up alongside some of these people.
EW (12:06):
Yeah, and I grew up in fantasy worlds. I had a computer, but I did not know any of the other players. I just played with my own brain.
SL (12:18):
At the time, none of these people were famous.
CW (12:22):
Right.
SL (12:22):
Except, probably the most well-known one was Bill Gates. They were just working away oblivious to the public or the press or whatever.
EW (12:42):
You said that they were great programmers. Were they great programmers? Or were they just lucky to be in an industry that was growing that fast?
SL (12:55):
Good question. I think it was some of both. But what they all, I think, demonstrated was a risk-taking, and a willingness to experiment with a platform that- If you read Andy Hertzfeld's interview, he talks about how he proposed studying the PC in graduate school, computer science. His advisors all said, "What? Why are you doing that? The PC is setting our field back 20 years. It is a terrible idea."
(13:43):
He saw the ability of it to provide a single creator control and freedom, because they all had to get time on these timesharing machines. They were all looking for a way to get out of that dependency, in order to have more creative control. It is a little bit like today with the cloud and the massive corporations. They were looking for a way to get some freedom.
EW (14:32):
We seem to go from computers that are smart, to computers that are dumb and the information is in the cloud, to the computers that are smart and local. Back and forth like a pendulum.
CW (14:46):
Except now both the computers at home are super smart, and the cloud ones, but everyone just shoves everything on the cloud anyway.
SL (14:53):
Right. I hope that is going to change. I think the time is ripe for that. The barriers the cloud erected with infrastructure costs and distribution-
EW (15:08):
Engineering.
CW (15:09):
Privacy.
SL (15:11):
Teams of- Yes, privacy. Those things in a way are coming down, with the new tools that are available today, and the platforms, but there is a long way to go. But there is an opening, I think, for the individual, for a revolution. I hope there is a revolution, an effort to put the personal back in "personal computing," and an appreciation for that.
EW (15:53):
One of the things I noted, is that there are no women in the book.
SL (15:56):
Yes.
EW (15:58):
But there were women programmers who were well-known.
SL (16:01):
Yes.
EW (16:01):
Grace Hopper being the obvious choice. There were women who were adjacent to the folks who interviewed. Heidi Roizen was a developer and co-founder with her brother, Peter Roizen.
SL (16:19):
Yes.
EW (16:19):
Do you regret that?
SL (16:22):
A little. Yes. It is hard to imagine what it was like back then. I spent my career the only woman in the room, so it was quite a different world. That is not a reason not to include people like Grace Hopper.
(16:49):
Honestly, Grace Hopper and those guys were like- One, they worked on mainframe. So our filter was more, we wanted people that were involved with personal computing. But I did not even shoot that high. She was famous.
(17:09):
I did interview a woman for the book. Unfortunately, I had technical problems with the recording. We did it in a restaurant and nothing- Did not work out. There were few other people too that did not get included in the book. I wish we could have taken some time and gone back and redone some things, but that is the way it works sometimes.
CW (17:52):
One of the people that comes to mind, since you like video games and work in video games, is Roberta Williams from Sierra On-Line, from the King's Quest series. Yeah.
SL (18:05):
Yeah, there were a few. It was Carol Shaw, Roberta Williams. There were a number of women working in that area.
EW (18:19):
One of the reasons I bring it up- It was a different time, and I do not know everything that surrounds it, of course. The idea of seeing the human side of the programmers. The big part of the book that makes them human, and makes programming both approachable and still a little magic, it was a feeling-
(18:47):
For the interviews that I liked, it was the, I know these people, I have met these people, I have hung out with these people. Not necessarily these particular engineers, but the archetype of the programmers. Archetypes, because they are definitely different flavors.
(19:05):
There is the idea that it is easier to become something you can picture yourself as, that you can see represented. I could imagine a young Chris Svec picking up the book and saying, "Oh, yeah! I get it. This is fun. I can do this."
(19:27):
So when I ask about the women, it is not really an attack on the time or the book, because things change. It is more a, I want young women to be able to see themselves doing this too, because there is nothing inherently masculine about it.
SL (19:49):
I agree, especially now. I think you are absolutely right that young women benefit from reading the stories and seeing the paths of other women. If I did it today, there would be a lot of effort and options in that way.
EW (20:16):
You said you found the programmers mainly through your work, and then ways lead on to ways, people introduce you to more people. I completely understand that. It happens a lot with this show too. How much research did you do about them, before you talked to them? And, how many questions did you come prepared with, versus decided on the spot?
SL (20:46):
I did research. But my approach was more to stay in the background, and get them talking. So I tried to ask very open-ended questions, and just see where it took us in the conversation. Because a lot of these people were very- They could go on for hours in a deeply technical way. But my goal was to get them to reveal more about their motivations and their interests, and the top level, meta level, of what they were doing.
(21:39):
The goal of the book was really to help young programmers understand what programming was, or young would-be programmers. I did preparation, but we also asked the same questions of a lot of the interviewees. That was the model of "Paris Review" also. That way you can have a common ground in a way to relate and evaluate the different interviewees.
CW (22:22):
As we have learned on the podcast over the years, some people are difficult to- What is the word I want to use? To get to open up. It is difficult to get them to talk much. Sometimes answers are monosyllabic or you have to really pull.
(22:42):
It is a skill to get people to answer questions sometimes, even if they are questions they want to answer. It is not that they are being evasive, they are just not used to answering questions. Did you encounter that a lot? Was that something you had to develop as an interviewer, to try to get that freedom of the conversation going?
SL (23:02):
Yes. That was something I encountered. That is why not all the interviews made it into the book also. Sometimes that works. The Tōru Iwatani interview. He created Pac-Man. He was so distilled and brief in his answers. That type of- And clear. It is a beautiful interview. So you need to be able to accommodate. That is the good outcome.
(23:54):
I just tried to prompt them, but also give them an opening, and a comfort level to open up. Plus, I did not know anything. It was like they wanted to tell me, because I did not have an opinion about stuff and a lot of knowledge. So that was one of my benefits of being a blank slate they could talk to.
CW (24:35):
Of course, there is the opposite problem too, where you ask one question and three hours later they are still talking. <laugh>
EW (24:39):
<laugh>
SL (24:41):
Yes, that is true. But I was not doing a podcast.
CW (24:45):
Right. Right.
SL (24:47):
I could edit.
CW (24:47):
You could take all that in. Yeah.
SL (24:51):
We did edit them, along with the interviewees. We would do some back and forth, trying to make it make sense for everybody.
EW (25:04):
Did you have any interviews where you could not get them to speak in a language that made sense? Not language, language, but-
CW (25:14):
Too technical, too...
EW (25:16):
Immediately jumped to too technical, every time! The person who was talking to me and I am like, "I understand robotics. Put it to me in that." And he just acronymed everything. I was like, "I have no idea what you are talking about. I am just nodding at this point."
SL (25:34):
Yes. Many- The Jaron Lanier interview, I had no idea what he was talking about. Back then, he had a company called "Visual Programming Languages." It was a startup he was doing after he worked at Atari. He started talking about people speaking and breathing programs, and how the computer is an empty mind and we are going to fill it up with thought and information. It depends on who is-
(26:14):
Really futuristic things that are happening today. But I was sitting there just not knowing and just trying to take it in and go with it, and not disrupt his chain of thought. Because I just thought there must be something valuable here that he is discussing. Yeah, I tried to steer it, but sometimes I had no idea where we were going.
EW (26:51):
I feel that. I feel that a lot. <laugh>
(26:56):
Okay, so the book is coming out in a 40th anniversary. Why 40th?
CW (27:02):
Because it has been 40 years. Oh! Sorry.
SL (27:03):
<laugh>
EW (27:03):
Yes. Traditionally, these things are done on the 50s.
SL (27:09):
Well, I might be dead by then.
EW (27:11):
Or the 32s, if you are in computer science.
SL (27:14):
It was a happy accident, really. I think it is partly driven by this time of disruption. All this change, and the feeling that there is a revolution happening in computing and how people interact with computers. It just so happened it is also the 40th anniversary.
(27:44):
But we were approached by 8080 Books. That is a new imprint. I have been approached a number of times over the years, but this time it worked out and I am happy it is happening.
(28:04):
It is a book that I think in some ways it is dated. It might seem quaint to people who are in the technology field. But I do think it helps people understand that the world has not always been the way it is today. These individuals changed our world, and it can happen again. So I am optimistic.
EW (28:44):
Some of the advice is still incredibly relevant. It is advice I give all the time. Things like, "Know what you are building. Understand the interface. Start with the interfaces, before you start with the implementation, for sure." Well, there were just so many things that I underlined. I am like, "Yes. Yes. Of course this."
SL (29:09):
Yes. I agree. Now I have a lot more perspective on that, because I ran some software groups after I wrote that book.
(29:20):
Butler Lampson, he is just so clear in talking about system design. And programmers that are effective, and programmers that can screw things up. They might both be brilliant, but there are approaches that work better than others.
(29:46):
I really think his interview, and also Gary Kildall's, are helpful for people that are working with AI platforms now. Where it is the front end design part that is key to get straight, as you figure out how to manage these new tools who do the coding.
EW (30:18):
I was amused at the somewhat common theme of, "I do not get to program anymore. I only get to program at night, because my job is managing or leading or architecting." You had one person who described their work-life balance, and it sounded so not balanced! "I go home, I have dinner and then I program all night."
SL (30:46):
Yes. That was Bob Frankston?
EW (30:53):
I did not keep as good- I have notes in the book, but who said what, I- Yeah.
SL (30:59):
Well, Robert Frankston, he- A lot of them worked late at night, because that is when they can get on the timesharing for cheap. It is sort of like what is happening with these token things, I think. It is uncanny to me the number of similarities to the state today, and the state that many of these people were trying to get out of, through the personal computer.
(31:31):
I am just hoping one of your listeners can create a PC or some kind of fingernail computer or something, that protects all of our intellectual humanness and gets us making some money off these things, as all these AI tools suck up everything we know.
CW (31:54):
These were mostly- They were young people of the time too, right? They were, a lot of them, in their 20s.
SL (32:00):
Yes.
CW (32:00):
And knew what they were doing, but did not know what they were doing, or just making it up as they went along. I remember being in my 20s and wanting to program all night. Now the thought repulses me. <laugh> But the 20s are different.
SL (32:17):
Right. Some of them talk about the cost it had with their marriages and things too. They had to dial it back. It was later. Most of them were in their 20s, so they were not quite- They still had crazy schedules.
EW (32:40):
With the 40th anniversary book, you wrote a new preface. But you did not make any changes to the interviews, or to the descriptions of the programmers, did you?
SL (32:54):
Not in the book, no. The reason for that was twofold. I look at the book as a time capsule in a lot of ways, through the firsthand interviews with these people. I wanted to maintain that.
(33:19):
A lot of publishers had approached me, and wanted me to add in three or four interviews from people today, things like that. I would love to do that kind of book, but I want it to be a different set of interviews, with a different group of people with a different mission.
(33:48):
Yeah, I did not want to touch it. It could be creating a lot of work and unwinding of things.
CW (34:01):
New interviews in this book would not sit.
SL (34:04):
No.
CW (34:04):
Yeah, it would be a jarring contrast perhaps.
SL (34:09):
Yes, I agree.
EW (34:12):
Did want a second half, of where did they end up. But I looked it up on Wikipedia. It was sufficient. It was a curiosity for me like, "Okay. So this person ended up a billionaire. This person ended up an academic and had won the Turing Award. This person had their business and kind of faded from sight." That part was neat.
SL (34:40):
Yes. I have that on our website.
EW (34:43):
Oh?
SL (34:45):
Programmersatwork.net. There I do an updated bio. Information about the course of their careers and where they are at, that sort of thing. Whether they are living still. Along with excerpts.
EW (35:09):
Cool. I mentioned on a show recently about how some of these people turned out not to be nice.
SL (35:19):
Right.
EW (35:22):
By that, let me just draw the line at Epstein Files and go from there, not worry about the definition of "nice" or "jerks." Does the advice stand the test of time, if the person does not?
SL (35:42):
I believe that is really hard to sort out. I read an Ezra Pound poem the other week in the "New York Times," and he turned out to not be so great. Wagner. Woody Allen. I watched a Woody Allen film recently, and it was almost as if he was enacting in his film what he was doing in his personal life. I do not defend those people.
(36:18):
Everybody makes mistakes in life, some worse than others. I am sure most of those people have learned a lot and regretted what they did, I hope.
(36:34):
I think Bill Gates- I saw something in the news a week ago or something, that he is advocating for governments to- That he sees a big disruption, destruction happening. He wants the government to tax robots and tax different corporations and things. So I do not know.
(37:09):
People do good things and they do bad things. You have to decide who you listen to. There are plenty of choices to make out there.
CW (37:21):
It is the similar question to separating the art from the artist. Sometimes that is doable, and sometimes it is less doable. But there are a lot of artists who are not the greatest people, but are still revered as artists. Yeah, it is a difficult, difficult thing to unwind.
EW (37:37):
Yeah.
SL (37:37):
Yeah. I do not think it is a binary. For most people it is not binary.
CW (37:45):
Some people you can. There are a few artists I am like, "Nope, I am done with that." But yes, it is. It is generally difficult.
SL (37:53):
True. Right?
EW (37:55):
If there was a crystal ball that allowed you to figure out where people would have ended up, and who they would have become- 20s are not even adults. Sorry for everybody who is 20. Would you have wanted that? Would you have wanted to see, before you interviewed them? Or was it really about a time capsule now, and do not try to prognosticate?
SL (38:30):
No, I would not. I do not think about that with anybody, as far as what the future holds for them. I live in the moment for the most part, and the immediacy of an interaction and a relationship. I try to make sure I surround myself with good people.
(38:54):
I had no idea, especially some of the young- Most of the people in the book, I would never have expected we would be talking about them today. And especially the young people.
(39:17):
The idea that Michael Hawley, who I was interviewing, that he had on his sunglasses and his biker shorts while I was interviewing him and a keyboard by his side. He was at Lucasfilm, Droid, working on the audio, first digital audio film technology. He was a fascinating guy.
(39:47):
Would I ever have predicted that he ends up running the MIT Media Lab, and being the first one to die? No. He ended up- Of course, I could see he was multi-talented, powerful thinker, but those people do not always land on their feet in the long run.
EW (40:19):
When you were working on this book, when you were interviewing these people, you were at Microsoft, which was very small. But you became editor-in-chief of Microsoft Press. How long did you do that?
SL (40:35):
That was a short amount of time, like a year or something or two years. Then I became head of a new division. At the time, CD-ROMs were just beginning to be incorporated into personal computers.
(40:56):
Microsoft wanted to launch into building encyclopedia and other products, that would demonstrate how information could appeal and be used on a computer in a way for the home users, for general kids and families.
(41:23):
I was in the right place at the right time, in the sense that I had experience in publishing. I also had written this book. I was at that intersection and got tapped to run this group and begin experimenting with that. What it means to put information on a computer screen, versus in print. And how to make it interactive.
(42:07):
Bill Atkinson at Apple was working on HyperCard at that point. We would go to Brown University, because they had a lab, a research lab there. They invented the hyperlink, the idea of having a piece of text that you could click on and go to another entry. Those things were just happening at that time.
(42:41):
I just felt really excited to be a part of that, even though it was extremely difficult to get an encyclopedia to work on a little computer screen.
EW (43:01):
It is funny because we have Wikipedia now. We are all used to having an encyclopedia anytime. Some of us have it locally, parts of it. But anytime I want to know something, I no longer have to go to the library. Or try to find somebody who knows it. Or find the one book about whale calls that I am interested in.
(43:25):
I can just search. Usually I end up at Wikipedia, because that is the one I choose first. But it was different then. It was so different.
SL (43:36):
Right. None of us would have predicted that Wikipedia would be the winner in the end. Because we were coming at it from the era of "Encyclopedia Britannica," where every family had a thousand dollar set of "Encyclopedia Britannica" on their bookshelves.
(44:00):
We saw that as a way of, "Okay, that is a really valuable thing. People will want to buy a computer in order to have it in digital form. It will be more functional and interesting than the print version."
(44:19):
And then Wikipedia came along and they broke all the rules. They just let ordinary people write these articles. They vetted, of course. They had a system. But we were like, "What? We have got Encyclopedia Britannica." That is what I love about this time period, was rules were being broken.
(44:52):
People were motivated for not- Nobody really talked about, "I want to make a ton of money," or whatever. They did do it to earn a living or be successful. But a lot of them said, "I want to make people happy." That is what they talked about in their interview.
(45:17):
The era was very pure in some ways. They were just fascinated with what was possible with personal computers, and the freedom that it gave people, and the individual control.
CW (45:36):
When do you think that started changing? I feel like it was the early to mid '90s, when the startup culture started to be turned into startup culture, and stock options became something people talked about a lot. It was not as prevalent as it is now, of course. But I feel like the times were starting to change in the '90s.
SL (45:58):
Yes. I agree. It was crazy. A big shift at that stage. And now, yeah, it is out of control, I would say. There is too much power concentrated in a few companies.
EW (46:21):
Back to "Programmers at Work," how did it affect your career? It turned into a much bigger book than I would have predicted, which is not saying much. Did you expect a 40th anniversary edition? Because that seems like a long plan.
SL (46:44):
Yeah. No. No. We did not have any idea how this book would do, when it came out in the first place. It was one of the first books about software to be covered in the "New York Times." It got a review in the "New York Times." That was unheard of. So no, I had no sense that here we would be 40 years later talking about this.
(47:16):
Except that it was a revolution. They were laying the seedbed of what we are experiencing now. Only in looking back could I say this is a story that people will get something out of, in a historical sense. And then also in a sense of these people were coding in a very constrained environment and doing groundbreaking things.
(48:02):
Ray Ozzie, I talked to him recently. We were talking about constraint-driven engineering and what they had to deal with back then. His response was like, "Today, we do not have constraints. Or, programmers do not have enough constraints, to help them to focus and make decisions."
(48:39):
He was, I think, considering AI tools and how they allow all kinds of AI slop to be created. He was calling for, "We need constraints today to help guide people." If you see one thing in this "Programmers at Work" book, all of them were guided by- They had to distill their ideas, because of the constrained environment that they were working within.
(49:18):
That is the other acronym I like, Keep It Simple Stupid, is something that really tested their efforts. I think it is true today too. We benefit from that. We need more constraints on everybody.
EW (49:50):
Unfortunately, so many of our engineering constraints are do it faster and do it cheaper, which are not the same kinds of constraints. That just means do it worse, because you cannot have all three.
SL (50:03):
Yeah.
EW (50:05):
But what about your career? Has it affected your career?
SL (50:10):
The book?
EW (50:10):
Yeah.
SL (50:12):
Well, it certainly enlightened me. It was inspiring spending time with these people, because they were just putting themselves out there, taking risks, pursuing their ideas.
(50:27):
In a way, I have always been that way. I grew up in Dayton, Ohio. I have seven sisters and one brother. My dad died when I was a kid. Basically, we had to make our own way, and get out in the world and make something happen.
(50:55):
I saw that in them, and that was inspiring. It probably helped me get up the courage to found Headbone Interactive in the '90s. I got venture capital for that company. Not many women were doing that. Heidi Roizen was, but not a lot of women out there getting funded. We had a great time at Headbone, so who knows how your life ends up? It is hard to predict.
EW (51:41):
Okay. You mentioned Headbone Interactive and games that are coming back.
SL (51:49):
Yes. This company I had was in the '90s. We published a lot of CD-ROM games. Elroy Goes Bugzerk, Elroy Hits the Pavement, Elroy: King of the Jungle, a series for kids called "Gigglebone Gang," another one called "Iz and Auggie."
(52:17):
My idea was to create new intellectual property, so we were developing the characters, writing the stories, all of that, and animating. The idea was we were going to put it out on CD-ROM, on the little internet that was happening, and in television. So it was called a "new media" company.
(52:51):
Those games fell into the almost cartoon interactive game category. We had a team of animators. Many of them actually have gone on from Headbone to work at Pixar down in LA, and places like that. We had a lot of success in terms of winning awards and all of that. We were riding high, and then the 2000 bubble happened. That was when we had to wind things down.
(53:44):
But oddly enough, I do not know why this is happening, but this year, some fans- This guy, Keith, is a big fan of ours, and some other people started asking us, "Can you bring the games back?"
(54:02):
I think all these people are hitting their 30s, and nostalgia is really big right now, and retro gaming is big. If you watched Elroy, it is very charming and good-hearted and a little bit quirky and fun. I think people are wanting that sort of thing.
(54:30):
So we put together- It is like getting the band back together or something, and we have worked on the games this past year. We are putting them out on Steam. The first one is up on Steam right now. Elroy Goes Bugzerk is going to launch this fall. That is the first of what we will be doing.
(54:58):
It has been an interesting coding project too. We are using modern tools and able to bring them forward for these new platforms.
EW (55:15):
Neat. It has got a Steam page and everything.
CW (55:17):
Awesome.
EW (55:19):
The programmers who were in the book, do you still talk to many of them? Any of them?
SL (55:26):
I do, since this project. Occasionally over the years, but especially since I have been working on it, they are excited. They are surprised, and they are excited.
EW (55:39):
Did any one of them say they wanted to change what they had said?
CW (55:42):
<laugh>
SL (55:45):
They all went back and read their interviews. Then they would write me back and say, "I guess I did not sound too bad." Or Scott Kim was like, "Yeah, my ideas are happening now." Things like that. So it was fun.
EW (56:07):
Susan, do you have any thoughts you would like to leave us with?
SL (56:09):
I think the main thought I have for your audience is really the personal computer revolution was not built by institutions. It was built by individuals who had this new platform, these tiny little machines that had just enough power to let them imagine something new. And they brought enough coding discipline to make that work.
(56:47):
We are told right now to fear what AI will take away, but I have seen this moment before. Last time it liberated everything. Maybe there is a chance that we can really change how we relate to the cloud, and all these other things that are taking away the personal from "personal computers."
(57:19):
I think the garage is open again. People should take advantage of this inflection point to make people happy again.
EW (57:35):
Our guest has been Susan Lammers, author of "Programmers at Work," now in a 40th anniversary edition. Available very soon from wherever you get your books.
CW (57:45):
Thanks, Susan.
SL (57:47):
Thank you.
EW (57:47):
Thank you to Christopher for producing and co-hosting. Thank you to Chris Svec for the introduction. Thank you to our Patreon listener Slack group for some of their questions. And of course, thank you for listening. You can always contact us at show@embedded.fm or hit the contact link on the embedded.fm website, where there will be show notes that include links to lots of things.
(58:10):
Now a quote to leave you with, from "Programmers at Work." This is in the Michael Hawley interview. Hawley says, "If people are adventurous about their learning, they will go out and explore old technologies as well as the new, so they can appreciate both and understand how everything fits in the big picture. There is a big risk of making shallow use of computer technology, without fully appreciating what is behind it and where it came from. But I have a fair amount of faith that people will do more or less the right things. Sometimes it is scary."