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Comment by willberman | Hacker News Reader

"I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out it was an awful lot of fun. Of course the paying customers got shafted every now and then and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful error-free perfect use of these machines. I don’t think we are. I think we’re responsible for stretching them setting them off in new directions and keeping fun in the house."

- Alan J. Perlis

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"How dare you insinuate that my latest amateur radio transceiver firmware is capable of loading a working copy of Contra for the NES!"

-People who give me hope

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBE-BQNaCh4

That’s awesome, though I’m a bit disappointed it wasn’t Metal Gear!

It does have Super Mario as well https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?threads/a-new-transceiver-k...

I've been trying to change my MacBook startup chime to the Contra intro sound for quite a while now...

Dang didn't know I wanted this. Would be real cool to get the SEGA startup from the Megadrive.

I believe the MacBook startup chime is in ROM, somehow, or at least it used to be.

Feynman wrote that his Nobel prize came from his determination to have fun while computing.

To quote, he makes the following observation:

“Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing–it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with...

I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.”

He started looking to have fun with physics, and claims the breakthroughs came from that.

When I founded my previous start-up, I used to describe my job as "professional creative play". I got some serious anger from a few employees about that description. So I stopped saying that's what I do, but it's exactly what I do.

As the founder of the company you serieus anger from YOUR employees?

Huh?

It's a compelling quote but I think the seriousness came when bugs in software started to cause major mayhem in the real world. Yes please keep fun in computing, but keep the fun where fun belongs.

Like most things in life, I believe the answer involves finding balance between the two :)

I think this Perlis comment is not really related to the subject, which is clearly a bit of fun and good on it for being so, but the bit about Perlis feeling not responsible for "successful error-free perfect use of these machines" badly puts my back up. I'd say over my career I've lost literally years to shitty software and its twin, shitty documentation.

To the extent that you are responsible for the errors in these you are very responsible, else you're wasting amounts of human capacity (and generating it's twin, unhappiness) proportional to the size of your user base, and that can be absolutely huge.

Or could be I'm taking his quote just a bit too seriously.

The quote says "we in computer science". I'm not sure I've been impacted by computer scientists in that way. Although, I don't think of any random person with a CS degree as being "in computer science".

Ha! I would agree that you might be taking it a bit too seriously. I was trying to make the point that sometimes things that might seem purposeless are useful simply because they are fun, scratch an itch, and might lead to a new way of looking at something. That exploratory process might be worth it in certain projects even if it introduces more bugs accidentally. I should have elaborated more rather than just leaving a quote. After all, quotation in absence of analysis contributes very little novelty.

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