
Where Have You Gone, Peter Norton? (2014) - ohjeez
http://www.technologizer.com/2014/06/05/where-have-you-gone-peter-norton/
======
dlg
I'm friends with Peter. I don't think he'd mind me saying:

He didn't set out to build the empire that he did--he really wanted
independence for one person (and it just turned out that what we built was so
good that lots of people wanted it). He doesn't want to be in the limelight.
So, as the article mentioned, he's chosen to focus on philanthropy and art and
just watches our business from afar. He's a smart, great guy.

~~~
jacquesm
Peter Norton wrote some pretty tight assembly, I learned a lot about data
structures and coding from prying apart the Norton Utilities one-by-one. Super
stuff, last but not least because it brought a fairly powerful command line to
DOS which was in dire need of some tools.

~~~
bbarn
In the pre-internet era, I remember going to my local library and checking out
the programmer's guide.. probably six times before I got my own copy for a
christmas present later that year. When you couldn't just stack overflow your
problem, books like that were gold. I'd probably have ended my early teenage
obsession at 14 if I hadn't had access to it.

------
mojuba
How come Norton Commander wasn't even mentioned? Brilliant, simple, very
practical two-panel file manager with a shell prompt. I still use its GNU
clone, Midnight Commander, up until today.

~~~
andrewbinstock
How about the Norton Editor? Anyone remember that? Great editor that was fast
and had an absolutely tiny executable.

------
mixmastamyk
The knowledge passed on from Symantec employees I've heard was that they had
to pay more with Norton's photo on the box than without him.

~~~
scottshea
Agreed. At the time I was with Symantec it was bandied about that the cost of
having him on the box was becoming a pain point. They had been trying to phase
his image out for years.

------
brooklyndude
Peter is a MAJOR supporter of the arts. Big time.

> With his first wife, Norton accumulated one of the largest modern
> contemporary art collections in the United States.[30] Many of the pieces
> are on loan all over the world at any given time, and many were on view at
> Symantec Corporation. The foundation and the Norton Family Office are
> located in Santa Monica. ARTnews magazine regularly lists Norton among the
> world's top 200 collectors.

~~~
bayonetz
We have some of his collection on loan at my company. It's way cool to have
legit art to look at when taking laps around the office. Thanks Peter!

------
scottshea
Often lost in the Peter Norton mystique was the efforts of Brad Kingsbury who
wrote many of the utilities as Peter's first programmer.

------
mathattack
Per the wikipedia [0] article he went to Reed college and then got into
Buddhism, like another icon of that era.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norton)

------
kmeade
I remember buying Norton Utilities on a 5" "flippy" disk. It was like a vinyl
record in that you flipped it over to access side 2. And Norton Editor was a
godsend in the days of Edlin and Wordstar.

------
bitwize
"Pink Shirt Book. Guide to IBM PCs. So called due to the nasty pink shirt the
guy wears on the cover."

------
shmerl
For me Norton associates with Norton Commander. Midnight Commander is still a
great tool today.

------
u14408885
Which of his books would you recommend if you were interested in detailed
information on programming old IBM PC hardware?

~~~
ghaff
Probably Peter Norton's Assembly Language Book for the IBMPC. Ray Duncan's
Advanced MSDOS was another essential. If you want a bit more esoteric, The
Undocumented PC by Frank Van Gilluwe.

I could name a few more but I probably shouldn't be admitting that I'm pulling
these off my shelves :-)

~~~
u14408885
Ah thank you! I currently have the MS-DOS Encyclopedia (not the first first
edition
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2004/06/14/do...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2004/06/14/does-
anyone-remember-the-original-ms-dos-encyclopedia/) which was apparently a
little _too_ detailed) which is pretty informative. I'll track down your
recommendations though.

------
patmcguire
The nation turns its lonely eyes to you...

