

The Graphing Calculator Story - a developer who refused to leave - cavedave
http://www.nucalc.com/Story/
the project was canceled. A year of my work evaporated, my contract ended, and I was unemployed.<p>I was frustrated by all the wasted effort, so I decided to uncancel my small part of the project. I had been paid to do a job, and I wanted to finish it. My electronic badge still opened Apple's doors, so I just kept showing up.
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gvb
(2004), but I gave it an upvote because (a) it is a great story and (b) it has
a great quote in it:

 _It is a cliche in our business that the first 90 percent of the work is
easy, the second 90 percent wears you down, and the last 90 percent - the
attention to detail - makes a good product._

~~~
replicatorblog
I feel like there should be a "meme museum" or "hacker history" website that
catalogs and celebrates all these stories in perpetuity. It seems like a few
classic stories pop up on HN, Reddit, et al. every 6-9 months, seemingly
discovered anew. I don't think its a bad thing, but it does suggest there
isn't an organ that gives a permanent home or chronological history of these
important ideas.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I've started a project for exactly that. It's not in stealth, as such, but
it's in early pre-alpha.

It's ugly, bug-ridden and deeply flawed, but if anyone wants to have a play,
email me.

------
lsc
There is something /very interesting/ there. I think organizations work in
spite of themselves because people like this are sometimes willing to stand up
and fight to do something good/cool outside of their own self-interest.

how do you inspire that? Was it just that apple had a large enough platform
that it was worth it to continue developing it for the apple vs. releasing
freeware/shareware/open source? was it that apple just hired the right people,
people who valued releasing something cool to the world over months of their
own time?

It's hard for me to understand just 'cause I'm too mercenary. In their case,
I'd release the product freeware/open source/something and figure I'd benefit
from the reputation boost. it wouldn't occur to me to push it through as a
skunkworks project where it was likely I wouldn't get any credit /or/ money.

~~~
wyuenho
"It is a cliche in our business that the first 90 percent of the work is easy,
the second 90 percent wears you down, and the last 90 percent - the attention
to detail - makes a good product."

I've had the good fortune to work for a group of people who are exactly like
that. There was an extreme dedication, not because they were forced to, but
because they were really addicts in a very real sense. I've personally seen
what the last 90 percent could do to a product. It really makes a world of
difference. Once you've seen an example, you will immediately adopt the addict
mindset and start chasing for that euphoria that comes after you've finally
finished the last 90 percent. Once you've done it once, you are likely to do
it again, and in the process, lead by example and inspire more addicts.

------
phaedrus
There's also a great Google Tech Talk video of the author telling his story:
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7497796873809571567...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7497796873809571567#)

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elblanco
I remember seeing this in a computer store right after the Power PCs were
released. My friend and I spent the next hour or so visualizing equations. It
was immediately intuitive and powerful, like a TI calculator on steroids. It
was everything a school kid could want and played a huge part in buying one of
the machines.

While there are certainly more powerful mathematical software applications
available today, It's a shame this type of easy to use application (my friend
and I figured it out within 30 seconds) seems very rare.

~~~
ryanf
A version of Graphing Calculator (as Grapher) still ships with every Mac
today, so it seems about as available as ever.

~~~
0x5a177
I was wondering about that...is Grapher based on the same code base as
Graphing Calculator?

~~~
wyuenho
No. Grapher is completely different according to the author in the Google Tech
Talk video.

------
lanstein
God, I love this story, along jwz's story about shipping Mosaic
(<http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html>).

~~~
arethuza
Slight nitpick - that story is about shipping what became the Netscape
browser. NCSA Mosaic had been out for over a year at that point.

------
bdb
Great story -- inspiring. I've read it several times over the years. But can
you imagine what would happen to these guys today (and everyone who had helped
them) if the Worldwide Loyalty Team were called in?

~~~
refulgentis
Probably nothing. The 'Worldwide Loyalty Team' was at best a hyper exaggerated
version of reality, at worst a complete fiction used for page views by
Gizmodo. Ask anyone who works at Apple...although perhaps they'll just deny it
because they're worried about the Worldwide Loyalty Team ;)

~~~
niekmaas
Link to the Gizmodo article about the Worldwide Loyalty Team
[http://gizmodo.com/5427058/apple-gestapo-how-apple-hunts-
dow...](http://gizmodo.com/5427058/apple-gestapo-how-apple-hunts-down-leaks)

------
dennisgorelik
> we made everything retroactively legitimate by licensing the software to
> Apple for distribution

Does it mean that they were eventually getting paid for that successful
project?

~~~
InfinityX0
This is what I left most curious about. There is no mention of compensation
that I see - were they eventually appropriately compensated?

It seems strange for them to leave out this detail - but perhaps not since
money was clearly not part of their motivations.

~~~
VBprogrammer
This is one of the questions asked at the end of the Google Tech talk video.
The author responds that they licensed it to apple for a nominal fee. He also
says that he got paid pretty well as a contractor for apple so didn't feel bad
not getting paid for a few months. He also apparently still works full time on
this program and spoke passionately about upgrading it to take advantage of
GPUs.

------
atuladhar
Like many others have said, an oldie but a goodie. When I was TAing the Intro
to CS class in college, I sent this out to the class as "extra reading" though
it was only marginally related to what the professor was talking about (pair
programming, I think). It was such a great story that I couldn't pass up the
opportunity for people to read about how cool and passionate programmers can
be.

------
jiganti
This reminds me of what Clay Shirky talks about in "Cognitive Surplus:
Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age". It's the difference between
intrinsic motivations and extrinsic (generally financially related)
motivations. These guys wanted it to work, and operated with the earnestness
of a startup. That passion is powerful stuff.

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SkyMarshal
An oldie but a goodie. It keeps showing up periodically on Progit and other
developer sites, and I keep rereading and upvoting it every time.

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Samuel_Michon
Great story. Also, it includes a link to commentary on Appleturns.com. IMHO,
'As the Apple Turns' was the greatest Apple website out there. I still miss it
dearly.

[http://web.archive.org/web/20050219104130/http://www.appletu...](http://web.archive.org/web/20050219104130/http://www.appleturns.com/scene/?id=5115)

------
dionysiac
"..Dozens of people collaborated spontaneously, motivated by loyalty,
friendship, or the love of craftsmanship. We were hackers, creating something
for the sheer joy of making it work."

This.

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paolomaffei
Sort of like the forgotten employee story reversed.

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zwetan
love this story :)

