The Soul of A New Machine

Not Everything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Well.

What goes on here is not part of the real world.” “How so?” “Mmmmmmmmmh. The language is different.” Some of it was, and a phrase book, such as the Penguin Dictionary of Computers, could be useful. ECO—each letter pronounced—meant “engineering change order.” Hence this remark: “A friend of mine told his girlfriend they had to ECO their relationship

He also said: “No one ever pats anybody on the back around here. If de Castro ever patted me on the back, I’d probably quit.”

West sits in his office and declares, “The only way I can do this machine is in this crazy environment, where I can basically do it any way that I want.”

West didn’t seem to like many of the fruits of the age of the transistor. Of machines he had helped to build, he said, “If you start getting interested in the last one, then you’re dead.” But there was more to it. “The old things, I can’t bear to look at them. They’re clumsy. I can’t believe we were that dumb.” He spoke about the rapidity with whic

Software compatibility is a marvelous thing. That was the essential lesson West took away from his long talks with his friend in Marketing. You didn’t want to make a machine that wasn’t compatible, not if you could avoid it. Old customers would feel that since they’d need to buy and create all new software anyway, they might as well look at what ot

West came to Data General in 1974, joining Carl Alsing and the other engineers who were attempting to bring the first Eclipse to life. To Alsing, West appeared to be just a good, competent circuit designer, but strikingly adept at finding and fixing the flaws in a computer. “A great debugger,” Alsing considered him. “He was so fast in the lab I fel

Some of the engineers closest to West suspected that if he weren’t given a crisis to deal with once in a while, he would create one. To them he seemed so confident and happy in an emergency.

When they chose their lawyer, who would deal with the financial community for them, they insisted that he invest some of his own money in their company. “We don’t want you running away if we get in trouble. We want you there protecting your own money,”