Category: Stories & Inspiration
Stories of science, technology, startup journeys and lessons from history.
The Decades of Infrastructure Behind the Launch of the iPhone
Apple’s flagship mobile device relied on decades of hardware, software, and networking breakthroughs created across the computing industry.
From English Lessons to Midnight: The Coding Odyssey of Mike Singleton
How former English teacher Mike Singleton used novel techniques like landscaping to build the classic 8-bit epic The Lords of Midnight.
Beyond the Failed Dating Site: How an Accessible Video Interface Transformed YouTube
How three PayPal alumni pivoted from a video dating prototype above a San Mateo pizzeria into a $1.65 billion video platform.
Six Massive Overdoses: How Therac-25 Let Software Do the Job of Hardware Safety Interlocks
On 21 March 1986, at the East Texas Cancer Center in Tyler, a patient lay face down on a treatment table for his ninth radiation…
Dijkstra Never Titled It “Go To Statement Considered Harmful.” His Editor Did.
In 1968, a Dutch computer scientist mailed a short paper to the Communications of the ACM. He called it “A Case against the GO TO…
The Famous Quake III Square-Root Hack Wasn’t Carmack’s. The Real Story Is Better.
Ask a room of programmers who wrote the most famous hack in video game history, and many will give the same answer: John Carmack. The…
Knight Capital Lost $460 Million in 45 Minutes. Code It Had Stopped Using in 2003 Woke Up.
At 9:30 a.m. on 1 August 2012, the U.S. stock market opened and one of its largest trading firms began buying and selling shares it…
Richard Hipp Wanted a Database With No Server to Go Down. SQLite Now Runs Almost Everywhere.
In 2000, D. Richard Hipp was writing damage-control software for a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer, the DDG-79 Oscar Austin, as a contractor on a Bath…
Ariane 5 Exploded Because of Code That Worked Perfectly on Ariane 4
Thirty-seven seconds after liftoff, Europe’s new rocket turned sharply off course. Moments later it broke apart and destroyed itself above the launch site in Kourou,…
Alan Kay Wanted Computers to Be a Dynamic Medium, Not Just Machines
In the early 1970s, Alan Kay was not trying to make a better office terminal. He was imagining a computer that a child could carry,…
SIGNAL TITANS