The Graphing Calculator Story

> I view the events as an experiment in subverting power structures. I had none of the traditional power over others that is inherent to the structure of corporations and bureaucracies. I had neither budget nor headcount. I answered to no one, and no one had to do anything I asked. 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 is one of my favorite programming anecdotes of all time. I have probably read it more than a dozen times. And I plan to keep re-reading it. The story highlights the mindset of hacker that is hard to communicate to regular folks—the simple joy of making things. And why they would hole themselves in their room to make random shit for no good reason.

I remember being always like that. But it seems the ambition of making it big has infected my passion. For anything I want to build, I am obsessed with the possibility of monetizing it. The story of SaaS millionaires only reinforces the thought process. I remember this never being a question when I first started programming. Maybe that's just curse of seniority. I do wonder if it's possible to get back to doing things just for "the love of craftsmanship."

> 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.

Wait, so... was he getting paid?

> We got resources that would never have been available to us had we been on the payroll.

So... no? Seems like this whole process was maybe only a couple months though?

Aha

> Why did Greg and I do something so ludicrous as sneaking into an eight-billion-dollar corporation to do volunteer work? Apple was having financial troubles then, so we joked that we were volunteering for a nonprofit organization. In reality, our motivation was complex. Partly, the PowerPC was an awesome machine, and we wanted to show off what could be done with it; in the Spinal Tap idiom, we said, "OK, this one goes to eleven." Partly, we were thinking of the storytelling value. Partly, it was a macho computer guy thing - we had never shipped a million copies of software before. Mostly, Greg and I felt that creating quality educational software was a public service. We were doing it to help kids learn math. Public schools are too poor to buy software, so the most effective way to deliver it is to install it at the factory.

This could definitely never happen today, for so many reasons. Which is a bit sad honestly.

> 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.

When and if you get a chance to participate in such a collaborative project, I think it is one of the most meaningful things available to do.

Previously discussed

2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1584501

2004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16780276

Still very entertaining story about a calculator app for the mac, that the programmer finished despite not working there anymore…

There is video of him telling the story at a Google Tech Talk.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl643JFJWig

Btw, I wrote that, Ask Me Anything.

Graphing Calculator was incredibly helpful for me when I was learning Calculus in school since it let me visualize everything I was learning interactively. Grapher just isn’t the same!

I have read this story quite a few times, but I just realized that the default Grapher app on macOS is not the same as the Graphing Calculator. I was inspired by the demos and the story to buy the latter (on the mac App Store) even though I don't have any immediate use for it!

Amy O'Leary tells my favorite version of this story on This American Life:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/284/should-i-stay-or-should...