Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

What happened to programming for fun?

Author:Ralph Hempel
Posted:8/25/2000; 12:16:02 PM
Topic:What happened to programming for fun?
Msg #:20231
Prev/Next:20230 / 20232

Brett Glass wrote in <http://discuss.userland.com/msgReader$20212>

You may use this software for free
In your own programs, if you agree
That if you do quote it
You'll tell folks I wrote it
And if there are bugs, don't blame me!

With Brett's permission, I'd like to use it as a licence for my public domain (open source, freeware whatever) pbForth language for the LEGO Mindstorms RCX brick.

Besides being funny, which is an advantage when talking with stuffed shirts, this accurately describes the intent of most software which is released to the public domain. I'll extend the definition of Open Source software to any code that you expect others to use and modify to their will. If they can turn it into something more useful, then they get the benefit, not you.

Dave's base-64 encoding software is a perfect example of how software development used to work in the hobbyist days. If you visit just about any hobby interest site, like <http://www.lugnet.com>, what you will encounter is a group of like-minded people eager to share their knowledge and mistakes, which eventually enriches everyones lives.

This is what programming used to be like - where a really devoted group of tinkerers that had fun writing new disk formatting programs for their IMSAI 8080s and all kinds of other fun stuff. For some insight into how tinkering is changing in the digital world, here's my remarks during the "Extreme Mindstorms" panel at MIT's Mindfest.

<http://www.hempeldesigngroup.com/lego/mindfest/panel.html>

By the way, I met Bob Frankston <http://www.frankston.com/> of Visicalc fame there, and he's a prime example of the kind of fun guys that were involved in the early days...

I'm not saying anything new here, but I have to believe that it was more fun to program back in the old days, before we had to fear some unscrupulous individual stealing our code and making money from it. I was just in it for the fun!

Cheers, Ralph Hempel

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