Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

fun," he later explained. Knowing some people were militantly opposed to BASIC,he insisted that the journal not be limited to BASIC but publish software ingeneral, to help all those hardware hackers who had set up their machines andwanted the incantations to move the bits around inside them.The journal's very name was indicative of the atmosphere around PCC andHomebrew around then: because Tiny BASIC saves bytes of memory, it wasdubbed "The Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia ...Running Light Without Overbyte." Why not?Dr. Dobbs Journal (DDJ) would be, Warren editorialized in the premier issue,about "free and very inexpensive software." In a letter sent out to explain themagazine, he elaborated: "There is a viable alternative to the problems raised byBill Gates in his irate letter to computer hobbyists concerning 'ripping offsoftware. When software is free, or so inexpensive that it's easier to pay for it thanduplicate it, then it won't be 'stolen.'"Warren saw DDJ as a flagship of the hacker dream. He wanted it to be aclearinghouse for assemblers, debuggers, graphics, and music software. Also, hesaw it as a "communication medium and intellectual rabble-rouser." But thingswere happening so fast by 1976 that more often than not the hardware news heheard or the software solution to a problem couldn't wait for publication, and hewould rush to the next meeting of Homebrew where he became a familiar figure,standing up and spouting all the news that had come over his desk that week.Warren's vocal lobbying for a public-domain approach to software was not theonly course of action. Perhaps the most characteristic hacker response to the threatthat commercialization might change the spirit of hacking came from anadamantly independent software wizard named Tom Pittman. Pittman was notinvolved in any of the major projects then in progress around Homebrew. He wasrepresentative of the middle-aged hardware hackers who gravitated towardHomebrew and took pride in associating with the microcomputer revolution, butderived so much satisfaction from the personal joys of hacking that they kept theirprofiles low. Pittman was Lee Felsenstein's age, and had even been at Berkeley atthe same time, but did not live the swashbuckling internal life of Felsenstein.Pittman had been going faithfully to Homebrew since the first meeting, andwithout making much effort to communicate he be came known as one of thepurest and most accomplished engineers in the club. He was a slightly built fellowwith thick glasses and a wide, flickering smile which signaled, despite an obviousshyness, that he'd always be willing to indulge in conversation about hardware. Hehad built an improbably useful computer system based on the relatively low-power