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Micropendium Volume 1 Number 3

13 bytes added, 19:24, 21 November 2024
SATISFACTIONS
"The biggest thrill as a programmer is when customers give you feedback that tells you your product is as good as you think," Swett says.
Lannie's view is similar: "Probablygaining satisfaction from people havingused your products and those productshaving been received well." Dollard also says it is ''"probably thefeedback I've received with the computerbusiness." He produces adventure gameswhich have "a multitude of places youcan get stuck. People I've sold gamesto have written to me. They say theythey love these games. Some say theylike mine the best of all third partygames. That really makes me proud.I've had no complaints in over 1,000letters." ==THE HARDEST THING== "The hardest thing" about being aprogrammer, according to Dollard,"is creating the idea. That can taketwo or three times as long as theprogramming.''" Emory says, "Two of the hardestthings are coming up with a good idea,first, and the next hardest thing iscompleting it. Getting all the bugsout-that's the worst."''"The difficulty is the machineitself," says Harter. "You have towork inside the limitations of themachine. That includes what's in themachine and what memory it has. Youget frustrated." However, he adds, "You have to do ita long time before you get to the pointwhere the machine's too small foryou." Another difficulty, he says, is TI gettingout of the market. "If we're going to stay, we have tofind another computer," he says.''"I deal with business people who arejust beginning to get computers intheir offices," Hughes says, "and it'shard to get them to tell me exactlywhat they want to get the computer todo.''" A computer, he adds, is "a dumbmachine'' " which will neverthelesswork very fast if given exactinstructions-getting those instructionsfrom others is a difficulty. "Regardless of what kind of programyou have, there's always goingto be somebody that doesn't like it,"Vaughn says. "I find that very difficultto take, personally." "Sometimes the biggest problem istime constraints, especially if youhave a fertile mind," Swett says. "Ihave an idea a day but I don't have astaff of 100 programmers to carrythem out. It takes so long to get thecoding polished, and by that time Ihqve have 10 more ideas. But I can onlywork on one idea at a time." "Finding time to put the ideas intothe computer" is difficult, Lanniesays. "I don't have time to pursue each· project." ==OTHER COMPUTERS== Emory says he does not write programsfor computers other than theTI. "Not for sale," he adds. "We have,just for fun. We're a pretty new companyand we thought breaking into themarket, the easiest was the TI. A coupleof computers are very expensivejust to get your game out, like Appleand Atari." 
"Shifting to another computer will
be a real burden," says Harter.

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