listen to their customers always go out of business. Companies that try to push the state of the art often
succeed.
There were some minor technical themes, like making your product hard to program (e.g. the
CDC7600 with two-level memory, or one's complement arithmetic, or the cruel and unusual
punishment of 60-bit words) doesn't help. It's not too surprising that no major common technical
theme emerged. Maybe there isn't one. One thing is certain, though: we all learn far more from our
mistakes than from our successes.
Some Final Light Relief—Your Certificate of Merit!
[Instructions: cut out from book, write your name in, and hand to boss]
Further Reading
One C book I have found very helpful is C, A Reference Manual, written by Samuel P. Harbison and
Guy L. Steele, ( Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1991). Harbison and Steele wrote this book based on
their experience developing a family of C compilers for a wide range of different architectures, and
their practical insights shine off every page.
Secrets of Programmer Job Interviews
A little hardware knowledge is a dangerous thing. One programmer dismantled one of those novelty
Christmas cards that plays a carol, and retrieved the piezoelectric melody chip. He secretly installed
it into his boss's keyboard, and connected it to one of the LEDs. It turns out that the voltage over a
lighted LED is sufficient to drive one of these chips.