по направлению

14:06 | 06-12-2011 | Culturology, Software | 3 Comments

замечательная история из жизни динозавров — о выборе логотипа для Netscape Navigator:

I thought a compass made sense, because the product was called Navigator now, right? Well, I lost the argument, and we went with the meteorites. But I really liked that compass, so I changed the code on the Unix version of the browser so that when you went to any URL that contained the string /jwz/, it would change the throbber to be the compass instead of the globe! Click a link to another site, and you were back to the meteor shower, but my pages all got the compass. To throw people off the track, my home page contained this HTML:

<ANIM KEY=zs7NzcrM1dfG29PM SALT=29PZ HASH=38jT68fN38hZ68lN01HRT2vnWdVX91NZZ1N3>
<!-- Questions about the preceding line will be gleefully ignored. -->

That did absolutely nothing at all, but as we had also just released SSL, people spent a long time trying to figure it out, assuming it had something to do with the new crypto libraries built into the browser. Despite the comment, I got a lot of mail about it!

Eventually people figured that out, though, leading to a plethora of web sites whose URLs contained /jwz/ in them (despite containing no jwz-related content) just to get the compass.

не хуже и сегодня, между прочим.

Джейми jwzjwz Завински, однако, и так прекрасный без меры, я всегда говорил. в конце концов, пройти дорогу от разработки XEmacs, Netscape и проч., до собственных кабаков — это ли не заветная мечта каждого?

But in 1999 I took my leave of that whole sick, navel-gazing mess we called the software industry. Now I’m in a more honest line of work: now I sell beer.

ему же принадлежит и один из фундаментальных законов разработки программного обеспечения:

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

что в наши дни мутировал в предсказуемое:

(Weak): All apps evolve until they add photo sharing
(Strong): All apps become photo sharing apps.

так и живем.

  

3 Responses to “по направлению”

  1. s says:

    прекрасный, говорю же.

  2. s says:

    а avva таки смешной.

  3. […] мне всегда была по душе чудесная история Джейми Завински: [I]n 1999 I took my leave of that whole sick, navel-gazing mess we […]

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