Word: coded
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...dawn, Shawn Fanning lay on the brown carpet in the shadow of a converted bar counter, consumed by the idea. He had been awake 60 straight hours writing code on his notebook computer. In his daze, the idea appeared to him as something tangible--a hard, shiny piece of black metal--that he had to forge and form so that it became usable, so that the hard black metal was transformed into a friendly tool, so that the 0s and 1s, the Windows API protocols and Unix server commands, were all somehow buffed and polished and worked to a fine...
Fanning only dimly recalls that period in mid-1999, when he wrote the source code for the music file-sharing program called Napster. He can't remember specific months, weeks or days. He was just hunched over his Dell notebook, writing the software and crashing on his uncle's sofa or the floor. Then he'd shake off fatigue, scarf a bowl of cereal and sit back down. He worked feverishly because he was sure someone else had the same idea, that any day now some software company or media conglomerate would be unveiling a version of the same application...
...users, Napster has become another appliance, like a toaster or washing machine. Call it the music appliance: log on, download, play songs. The simplicity of the program is part of its genius. Since he took only three months to write the source code, Fanning says he didn't have time to make it more complicated. He had to learn Windows programming in addition to Unix server code, which he had taught himself. It is exceedingly rare for one programmer to excel at client and server applications, but Fanning had no choice. "I had to focus on functionality, to keep...
...Sean Parker. The tables are strewn with old pizza boxes, empty Coke cans and, Napster notwithstanding, actual digital discs, both video and audio. The furniture is rented, the brown sofa often serving as a crash site for Fanning's 13-year-old brother Raymond, who is teaching himself to code while he stays with Fanning. They have never bothered to get a phone line installed; the cell phone works just fine...
Back then, he thought he would just write the application and set it free--his name would be embedded deep in the source code and known only to the other hackers and programmers who care about such things. He misses that simple time, before magazine covers and TV interviews and Britney Spears and having to put on a goofy black suit and necktie to appear in court...