Harry Chesley

Harry is working on his own these days. You can find his weblog at http://www.mememotes.com. Previously, he worked at Microsoft, Macromedia, Apple, SRI, etc., etc.

Harry thinks of himself primarily as a hacker. He'd like to write programs that do something in a way that's never been done before, and that people look at and say, "hey, cool." Being useful would be nice too, but isn't essential.

His most successful projects have been ones where he came across two large areas of existing technology, or human resources, that were almost, but not quite touching, and he added the final piece of bridge technology. For example: Shockwave (connecting multi-media artists, Director, and the Internet); or PackIt? (connecting Mac users, online services (pre-Internet), and compression algorithms); or Rumor Monger (connecting Apple employees, AppleTalk, and epidemic distribution algorithms). These often don't involve fundamentally new ideas, just new combinations of connections.

Among Harry's past projects:

• ShockWave
• Pack It - An early shareware file packaging, compression, and encryption utility for the Macintosh. Later superseded by StuffIt?.
• RumorMonger chat system that caused quite a stir at Apple
• The "random graph" mode in the popular After Dark screen-saver
• Worked with JimBesemer ProgrammingTheIlliac IV
• An early PFiles-based electronic mail system (which inadvertantly violated PUCC's strict policy AGAINST using computers for online communication)

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Harry quoted in http://www.zenda.com/hichesle.htm...

Actually, I have a whole new theory on the social interaction side of things: I think anonymity is everything. I think I was years ahead of myself with Rumor Monger. Think about the real world. There are dozens of places where you use anonymity.

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Harry shares with WardCunningham the ability to seed violent social change with a few lines of code. -- KentBeck (hi Harry, long time no see!)

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