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The Last Lecture

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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Last</strong> <strong>Lecture</strong><br />

Tommy turned out to be just that kind of team player. After I got<br />

tenure, I brought Tommy and others on my research team down to<br />

Disney World as a way of saying thanks.<br />

Tommy Burnett<br />

When I moved on to Carnegie Mellon, every member of my team<br />

from the University of Virginia came with me—everyone except Tommy.<br />

He couldn’t make the move. Why? Because he had been hired by<br />

producer/director George Lucas’s company, Industrial Light & Magic.<br />

And it’s worth noting that they didn’t hire him for his dream; they hired<br />

him for his skills. In his time with our research group, he had become an<br />

outstanding programmer in the Python language, which as luck would<br />

have it, was the language of choice in their shop. Luck is indeed where<br />

preparation meets opportunity.<br />

<br />

It’s not hard to guess where this story is going. Three new Star<br />

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