Acknowledgments
My career has been a series of collaborations and schemes. Though I’ve had many private dreams and aspirations, I always seemed to find someone to share them with. In that sense I feel a bit like the Sith, “Always two there are.”
The first collaboration that I could consider professional was with John Marchese at the age of 13. He and I schemed about building computers together. I was the brains and he was the brawn. I showed him where to solder a wire and he soldered it. I showed him where to mount a relay and he mounted it. It was a load of fun, and we spent hundreds of hours at it. In fact, we built quite a few very impressive-looking objects with relays, buttons, lights, even Teletypes! Of course, none of them actually did anything, but they were very impressive and we worked very hard on them. To John: Thank you!
In my freshman year of high school I met Tim Conrad in my German class. Tim was smart. When we teamed up to build a computer, he was the brains and I was the brawn. He taught me electronics and gave me my first introduction to a PDP-8. He and I actually built a working electronic 18-bit binary calculator out of basic components. It could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. It took us a year of weekends and all of spring, summer, and Christmas breaks. We worked furiously on it. In the end, it worked very nicely. To Tim: Thank you!
Tim and I learned how to program computers. This wasn’t easy to do in 1968, but we managed. We got books on PDP-8 assembler, Fortran, Cobol, PL/1, among others. We devoured them. We wrote programs that we had no hope of executing because we did not have access to a computer. But we wrote them anyway for the sheer love of it.
Our high school started a computer science curriculum in our sophomore year. They hooked up an ASR-33 Teletype to a 110-baud, dial-up modem. They had an account on the Univac 1108 time-sharing system at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Tim and I immediately became the de facto operators of that machine. Nobody else could get near it.
The modem was connected by picking up the telephone and dialing the number. When you heard the answering modem squeal, you pushed the “orig” button on the Teletype causing the originating modem to emit its own squeal. Then you hung up the phone and the data connection was established.
The phone had a lock on the dial. Only the teachers had the key. But that didn’t matter, because we learned that you could dial a phone (any phone) by tapping out the phone number on the switch hook. I was a drummer, so I had pretty good timing and reflexes. I could dial that modem, with the lock in place, in less than 10 seconds.
We had two Teletypes in the computer lab. One was the online machine and the other was an offline machine. Both were used by students to write their programs. The students would type their programs on the Teletypes with the paper tape punch engaged. Every keystroke was punched on tape. The students wrote their programs in IITran, a remarkably powerful interpreted language. Students would leave their paper tapes in a basket near the Teletypes.
After school, Tim and I would dial up the computer (by tapping of course), load the tapes into the IITran batch system, and then hang up. At 10 characters per second, this was not a quick procedure. An hour or so later, we’d call back and get the printouts, again at 10 characters per second. The Teletype did not separate the students’ listings by ejecting pages. It just printed one after the next after the next, so we cut them apart using scissors, paper-clipped their input paper tape to their listing, and put them in the output basket.
Tim and I were the masters and gods of that process. Even the teachers left us alone when we were in that room. We were doing their job, and they knew it. They never asked us to do it. They never told us we could. They never gave us the key to the phone. We just moved in, and they moved out—and they gave us a very long leash. To my Math teachers, Mr. McDermit, Mr. Fogel, and Mr. Robien: Thank you!
Then, after all the student homework was done, we would play. We wrote program after program to do any number of mad and weird things. We wrote programs that graphed circles and parabolas in ASCII on a Teletype. We wrote random walk programs and random word generators. We calculated 50 factorial to the last digit. We spent hours and hours inventing programs to write and then getting them to work.
Two years later, Tim, our compadre Richard Lloyd, and I were hired as programmers at ASC Tabulating in Lake Bluff, Illinois. Tim and I were 18 at the time. We had decided that college was a waste of time and that we should begin our careers immediately. It was here that we met Bill Hohri, Frank Ryder, Big Jim Carlin, and John Miller. They gave some youngsters the opportunity to learn what professional programming was all about. The experience was not all positive and not all negative. It was certainly educational. To all of them, and to Richard who catalyzed and drove much of that process: Thank you.
After quitting and melting down at the age of 20, I did a stint as a lawn mower repairman working for my brother-in-law. I was so bad at it that he had to fire me. Thanks, Wes!
A year or so later I wound up working at Outboard Marine Corporation. By this time I was married and had a baby on the way. They fired me too. Thanks, John, Ralph, and Tom!
Then I went to work at Teradyne where I met Russ Ashdown, Ken Finder, Bob Copithorne, Chuck Studee, and CK Srithran (now Kris Iyer). Ken was my boss. Chuck and CK were my buds. I learned so much from all of them. Thanks, guys!
Then there was Mike Carew. At Teradyne, he and I became the dynamic duo. We wrote several systems together. If you wanted to get something done, and done fast, you got Bob and Mike to do it. We had a load of fun together. Thanks, Mike!
Jerry Fitzpatrick also worked at Teradyne. We met while playing Dungeons & Dragons together, but quickly formed a collaboration. We wrote software on a Commodore 64 to support D&D users. We also started a new project at Teradyne called “The Electronic Receptionist.” We worked together for several years, and he became, and remains, a great friend. Thanks, Jerry!
I spent a year in England while working for Teradyne. There I teamed up with Mike Kergozou. He and I schemed together about all manner of things, though most of those schemes had to do with bicycles and pubs. But he was a dedicated programmer who was very focused on quality and discipline (though, perhaps he would disagree). Thanks, Mike!
Returning from England in 1987, I started scheming with Jim Newkirk. We both left Teradyne (months apart) and joined a start-up named Clear Communications. We spent several years together there toiling to make the millions that never came. But we continued our scheming. Thanks, Jim!
In the end we founded Object Mentor together. Jim is the most direct, disciplined, and focused person with whom I’ve ever had the privilege to work. He taught me so many things, I can’t enumerate them here. Instead, I have dedicated this book to him.
There are so many others I’ve schemed with, so many others I’ve collaborated with, so many others who have had an impact on my professional life: Lowell Lindstrom, Dave Thomas, Michael Feathers, Bob Koss, Brett Schuchert, Dean Wampler, Pascal Roy, Jeff Langr, James Grenning, Brian Button, Alan Francis, Mike Hill, Eric Meade, Ron Jeffries, Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, Grady Booch, and an endless list of others. Thank you, one and all.
Of course, the greatest collaborator of my life has been my lovely wife, Ann Marie. I married her when I was 20, three days after she turned 18. For 38 years she has been my steady companion, my rudder and sail, my love and my life. I look forward to another four decades with her.
And now, my collaborators and scheming partners are my children. I work closely with my eldest daughter Angela, my lovely mother hen and intrepid assistant. She keeps me on the straight and narrow and never lets me forget a date or commitment. I scheme business plans with my son Micah, the founder of 8thlight.com. His head for business is far better than mine ever was. Our latest venture, cleancoders.com, is very exciting!
My younger son Justin has just started working with Micah at 8th Light. My younger daughter Gina is a chemical engineer working for Honeywell. With those two, the serious scheming has just begun!
No one in your life will teach you more than your children will. Thanks, kids!