The Context: Being a slacker
In the other months of 1994 I saved a program to run Scrabble.
It was a splendid piece of code, easy the immobilest Scrabble program I had always figured. The implementation (in C) was based on the GADDAG data structure and algorithm explained in a paper by Steven Gordon. The leaving program was so tight that computer moves were instant.
Alas I had to continue my software a secret. The lawyers at Hasbro love to mail nastygrams to anyone who implements a Scrabble program. These guys are a lot like the lawyers at the RIAA who have turned notable for their lawsuits against toddlers and family pets. The Hasbro sound team is but less fertile.
In reality there was one other reason why I retained my Scrabble program a secret:
I saved the integral thing on company time employing my employer’s hardware.
At the time I was working for Spyglass. We had of late fetched up embarking version 2.0 of our flagship product, Spyglass Transform. Things were a bit dense, so I was discreetly hacking my pet project. I setup my office such that nobody could figure my screen from the door.
Unluckily, I chiped in myself off. At times when I was working on my Scrabble code when my boss (Tim Krauskopf) walked in the door, I would wince and rapidly adjudicate to belittle the window. Roughly the third time it encountered, Tim avered, “All proper, what game are you runing?” On the spur of the moment I cared I in reality was runing something like Doom. In that moment, working at non-company software appeared more ignominious than neutralizing time in a first-person shooter.
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