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Weekly Concerns: Halt, Catch Fire, and Roll

July 18, 2014 mgroves 0 Comments
Tags: Weekly Concerns entertainment gaming

Welcome to another "Weekly Concerns". This is a post-a-week series of interesting links, relevant to programming and programmers. You can check out previous Weekly Concerns posts in the archive.

  • Are you watching AMC's Halt and Catch Fire? So far, a decent show. Lots of nerd meat in there: topical 80s computer industry references, Mythical Man Month contributing to a plot point, and so on. It's mostly fictional, but what makes it unique to me is that it's not a story about all the gleaming genius visionaries in Silicon Valley like Microsoft, Apple, Xerox, etc., but about hackers everywhere, scratching out market share, challenging IBM, and grinding out results.
  • AMC posted a web version of Colossal Cave Adventure to promote the show. Why Colossal Cave Adventure? Because it's a plot point in the show. See? You should be watching.
  • I've said it before, but one of the best things about this show is the intro credit sequence. Though I think it stands on its own, the music, colors, graphics, everything, also fit the tone of the rest of the show well.
  • In a recent episode, Ada Lovelace (featured in a Brief Bio) was mentioned, as was Grace Hopper (subject of an upcoming Brief Bio).
  • There's lots of stories and urban legends about the "Halt and Catch Fire" phrase. I'm sure most of them are apocryphal, but it's entertaining apocrypha.

If you have an interesting link that you'd like to see in Weekly Concerns, leave a comment or contact me.

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Matthew D. Groves

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Matthew D. Groves lives in Central Ohio. He works remotely, loves to code, and is a Microsoft MVP.

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