4 ms·

If Microsoft Word were written by a single programmer that programmer would have been famous!

giardini 16y ago
Most of Microsoft Word was written by one programmer, the late Willoughby Whigginton, formerly of Microsoft. "Will", as his friends knew him, despaired and committed suicide after the 8,234th time an unwitting stranger greeted him yet again with the expression "Word®, Dude!".
- silkodyssey 16y ago
  Well the point I was trying to make was that people become famous when they can be linked to something that a lot of people care about. We see this in the entertainment industry where it's easy to associate a blockbuster film with the stars or directors of the film. This is not typically the case in the software industry where the Blockbuster software so to speak are produced by Companies and not lone programmers. That is to say the company is the face of the software. I used Microsoft Word (maybe I should have used Office) because it's an example of a software application where the company that makes it is well known and I thought if it were possible for one person to create an application with as large an impact as Microsoft Office has had in the world then surely that person would be remembered. One notable exception to the rule I think is Linus Torvalds. He still remains the face of linux although what linux is today is due to contributions from a large number of people.
  - basugasubaku 16y ago
    Raymond Chen tells a story that Notepad won some industry award in the late 90s, but no one at Microsoft could remember who the original author was: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/02/9915989.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/02/99159... And follow-up post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/17/9923309.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/17/99233...
arethuza 16y ago
Which Word? The newfangled Word for Windows thing or the old one that even ran on Unix variants? ;-)

Most of Microsoft Word was written by one programmer, the late Willoughby Whigginton, formerly of Microsoft. "Will", as his friends knew him, despaired and committed suicide after the 8,234th time an unwitting stranger greeted him yet again with the expression "Word®, Dude!".

silkodyssey 16y ago
Well the point I was trying to make was that people become famous when they can be linked to something that a lot of people care about. We see this in the entertainment industry where it's easy to associate a blockbuster film with the stars or directors of the film. This is not typically the case in the software industry where the Blockbuster software so to speak are produced by Companies and not lone programmers. That is to say the company is the face of the software. I used Microsoft Word (maybe I should have used Office) because it's an example of a software application where the company that makes it is well known and I thought if it were possible for one person to create an application with as large an impact as Microsoft Office has had in the world then surely that person would be remembered. One notable exception to the rule I think is Linus Torvalds. He still remains the face of linux although what linux is today is due to contributions from a large number of people.
- basugasubaku 16y ago
  Raymond Chen tells a story that Notepad won some industry award in the late 90s, but no one at Microsoft could remember who the original author was: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/02/9915989.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/02/99159... And follow-up post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/17/9923309.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2009/11/17/99233...

arethuza 16y ago

Which Word? The newfangled Word for Windows thing or the old one that even ran on Unix variants? ;-)