And as long-time followers know, I learned a lot from being a bit player in that failure. Still haven't watched the documentary, though.
Sample things I learned from General Magic:
Founders & executives lie to employees, because the amount of money they have at stake warps all all their thinking.
Founders, execs, & VCs make money. Not you.
Founders & executives lie to employees, because the amount of money they have at stake warps all all their thinking.
Founders, execs, & VCs make money. Not you.
(To be fair, those are lessons everybody learns from their first startup, so it's not like Magic was out of the ordinary there.)
A three AM meeting to discuss the results of last-minute release testing that half the company attends is not a sign of healthy work attitudes. Or healthy planning.
Particularly when you learn mid-meeting that you have to release no matter what, so it was pointless.
Particularly when you learn mid-meeting that you have to release no matter what, so it was pointless.
Super-smart people can build amazing things that were useless things to build all along because nobody was ever going to be able to sell them.
Reading the source and documenting the internals for an entire operating system is pretty fun.
Every programmer has a unique and personal code style. Eventually you can know who wrote what at a glance.
Every programmer has a unique and personal code style. Eventually you can know who wrote what at a glance.
The programmers who made the $ that I saw were the ones who ditched Magic to go work for Netscape. Or Ebay. One of them founded Ebay. That worked out well for Pierre.
I still learn things about writing software when I think back on the experience of being dragged along by programmers like Darin Adler doing pair-programming before that was a hip trendy thing.
I think about that a lot when pairing with younger programmers now.
I think about that a lot when pairing with younger programmers now.
Writing user-interface text is a specific skill.
Working with great editors improves your writing every time. Permanently, if you let yourself learn from them.
Sucks that we as an industry no longer allow ourselves to afford editorial staff to support our writers. When we still have writers.
Sucks that we as an industry no longer allow ourselves to afford editorial staff to support our writers. When we still have writers.
Limit the scope of your ambitions.
The Magic device itself was a giant undertaking. It was written in a Smalltalk-inspired C variant programming language. The company maybe didn't need the whole new SECOND programming language to run its backing services.
The Magic device itself was a giant undertaking. It was written in a Smalltalk-inspired C variant programming language. The company maybe didn't need the whole new SECOND programming language to run its backing services.
I dunno. Maybe that ambition wasn't such a stretch? Startups were rarer and larger things in the pre-Netscape era. (The post-iPhone era shrank them and accelerated them even further.)
Danger and its Sidekick phone delivered on all the promises for things I longed for from the General Magic device.
Well done, Rubin. Well done you selling Danger 2.0 to Google right under Hank's nose.
Well done, Rubin. Well done you selling Danger 2.0 to Google right under Hank's nose.
Working for Magic changed the course of my career.
❤️❤️ @scottknaster ty for hiring me. I still remember that interview with you & Sloo outside, talking about Vin Scully calling that last inning of a Koufax perfect game.
❤️❤️ @scottknaster ty for hiring me. I still remember that interview with you & Sloo outside, talking about Vin Scully calling that last inning of a Koufax perfect game.
One more thing:
The printout pinned up in Adam H’s cube that read “Your message could not be delivered because 4.”
The printout pinned up in Adam H’s cube that read “Your message could not be delivered because 4.”
Final summary: Find or make a group brilliant good-hearted people. Become one of them. Learn all you can. At least try to build something worthwhile.
Money probably won’t come, but you’ll have made yourself a better human.
Money probably won’t come, but you’ll have made yourself a better human.
