December 22, 2004

The Graphing Calculator Story [It's about a piece of math software but not boring at all]
  • Cool story. I can't imagine wanting to keep coming to work after being canned - maybe it's a sign that I'm in the wrong profession.
  • I had first heard this story at last year's MacHack (aka ADHOC, the coolest of programming conferences). Another cool aspect of the story, not listed there, is that the software was so stable that Apple uses it to test if there are flaws in hardware. If you run nothing but Graphing Calculator overnight on demo mode, and you come back and your machine has crashed, that means that you have bad hardware. People think that power in an organization comes from titles, especially if those people are looking to get a title that gives them power. As this story demonstrates, that's simply not true. The best way to get something done is to do it, and eventually the other parts will follow.
  • Then things got really weird. i'll say. great link, mare! i love people who are passionate about what they do.
  • …is that the software was so stable that Apple uses it to test if there are flaws in hardware. If you… That's really, really funny to hear. I work as an Apple Certified Tech, and have used that trick for years to troubleshoot machines. I rarely use it anymore since OS X and new tools have surfaced, but it's funny to see the trick is widespread amongst hardware techs. Works like a charm too—especially effective for diagnosing bad RAM, which can be hellishly fickle.
  • Amazing. Ever so often people surprise me in a nice way.