Good evening, world.
Something unexpected happened today.
It started with BluSup.
It ended with forty-year-old memories.
I've spent the last few weeks building software with an AI engineering partner. Somewhere along the way we realized something interesting.
Every time we solved an engineering problem...
...an old memory would come back.
Today it was two of them.
The first involved Mark Zachmann, founder of ZSoft Corporation.
He came to Seattle to visit Microsoft, go salmon fishing, and ask if I'd write assembly-language scanner drivers for PC Paintbrush.
The scanners arrived at my house.
I'd write the drivers.
Test them.
Ship the scanner back.
Ship the code back.
It was a wonderful system.
The thing I remember most isn't the software.
It's the trust.
I even left Mark, his partner, my computer, and my five-year-old son together while I ran an errand.
That's how much trust existed in those days.
Later another memory surfaced.
Early in my IBM System/3 consulting career I met with InterOcean Steamship Corporation in downtown San Francisco.
I proposed a custom shipping system.
They awarded me a contract that lasted more than four years.
As the company president and I rode the elevator down after our first meeting, he smiled and said,
"I'm looking forward to working with you...
but there's two P's in shipping."
I'd misspelled the very business they were in throughout my proposal.
I have never forgotten that lesson.
Neither story appeared because I was trying to remember.
They appeared because we were talking about engineering.
One memory reminded me of another.
That made me realize something.
Maybe it's time to preserve these stories.
Not because they're about old computers.
Because they're about people.
About trust.
About mistakes.
About craftsmanship.
About a lifetime spent building software.
I think BluSup may have just found its next family.
I think it's going to be called...
The Programmer's Bench.
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