Peter Rowell

peter at datahedron dot com

I am a 'geezer geek', which means I have a lot of old war stories to tell, relevant or not. I started programming in 1973 on the Plato IV project, moved to Palo Alto in 1974 to work for Patrick Suppes at Computer Curriculum Corporation. I worked on the first commercial email system, OnTyme, at Tymshare and later ended up at Xerox ASD (Advanced systems Department: next door to, but not part of, PARC) on the BravoX project. At National Semiconductor I learned that it is a Bad Idea to do a 100% new system: new CPU design (NS 32000), new language, new OS, new utilities, new everything. Remember Kids: Just Say No!

I started Third Eye Software in 1982 and accidentally created the first commercial C debugger, CDB. As successful as that product was, I still wish I had told MIPS to remove the copyright notice from the symbol table definition they borrowed from me; they hacked it into guacamole and I have been getting grief about it for 15 years. TANJ! (See http://www.datahedron.com/mips.html for more details.)

I started doing information retrieval systems in 1986 and had burned most of the profits from CDB by 1992. This project failed because it violated Rule 1 of the TheCathedralAndTheBazaar.

I am now semi-retired in Sonoma County, CA, which means I work on what I like, when I feel like it.

CategoryHomePage