a play
by Michael Abbott

Magazine
Summer/Fall 2001

Some scenes from
Deadfish, Idaho

Abbott believes coders are typically more interested in the process of coding than the product. This belief is reflected by Steve, a character in Deadfish, Idaho, in the following exchange with his best friend Jake. After a particularly frustrating development process, Jake asks Steve why he bothered to write the program in the first place:

STEVE
I'm not sure I know. Do you remember my mother used to plant marigolds all around our house? Every spring. Do you remember that?

JAKE
Sure, I remember.

STEVE
I used to wonder why she chose that particular flower to plant every year. I mean, they're nice, but they're kind of mundane. Then I saw some gardening expert on TV say that Marigolds are the ultimate low-maintenance flower, the easiest variety to grow. So I figured she chose them because of that. But this past spring I noticed she hadn't put out the marigolds. So I asked her about it, and she said that she'd decided to make clay pots this year. And I said, "Couldn't you plant the flowers too?" And she said, "Oh, I don't care about those marigolds. I just like having my hands in the dirt." And it occurred to me that's why I love programming. I just love having my hands in the dirt. You know what I mean?

JAKE
I guess.

STEVE
I mean, I love it. It's this terrific series of challenges. Every day you get up and face this beast you've made. Some days you win, some days the beast kicks your ass. But ultimately, you tame the beast. It does exactly what it's told, which is always a little disappointing, but it's also the only satisfying outcome for me. After that, it's all kind of, you know, boring. I mean, bring on the next beast. I'm done with this one.

The fundamental differences between the average Windows user and the Linux geek-freak emerge in the following conversation between Steve and Jake:

STEVE
If I were Bill Gates, I would be afraid. Be very afraid.

JAKE
Oh yeah?

STEVE
Absolutely. The barbarians are at the Gates.

JAKE
Cute. You guys have a serious case of chronic self-importance.

STEVE
Who?

JAKE
You Linux-heads.

STEVE
We prefer to be called "Penguinistas"

JAKE
Whatever. You guys are a blip on the radar screen. This whole open source thing doesn't make any sense. Nobody's going to make any money giving away software for free. You've got a bunch of sexually-frustrated social misfit X-File geeks hacking out UNIX code and trolling the net for JPEGs of Sculley naked. They don't care about copyrights or licenses. They just want to bring down "the man" so we can all have free software.

STEVE
Sounds like a good idea to me.

JAKE
Meanwhile, in San Jose, the worker bees are grinding 80 hours a week on the "next big thing" and schmoozing VCs to get their start-ups funded. You've got intense competition and total commitment to winning because the stakes are sky-high and everybody's got stock options out the wazoo. That's where the real action is, not in some arcane OS that nobody can even install. Think about it. It's like communism versus capitalism, dude, and we already know how that came out. The wall is down and Mr. Bill is kicking ass and taking names.

STEVE
A lot of those start-ups are based on Linux-embedded systems. And if Bill Gates is such a genius, then why can't he release an operating system that doesn't crash twice a day? And that's a good day. How many times do you shell out fifty to a hundred bucks for some buggy incremental upgrade they say you've got to have before you finally realize they're running a pretty nifty scam. If they ever got it right -- if it ever just worked -- we might extract that upgrade needle from our arms, and then where would they get their steady cash flow? They succeed not because they're good, but because they completely dominate the marketplace. We have no choice. You either kiss Bill Gates' ass or he eats you for lunch. Just look at Netscape.

JAKE
They were idiots.

STEVE
Because they had the idiotic idea they could compete with Microsoft in the open market.

JAKE
Bill made a better product. I'm not into the whole ideology thing. I use what works. If Netscape worked better, I'd use that. If Linux worked better than Windows, I'd use that.

STEVE
Yeah? If Betamax was better than VHS, would you use that? If a RISC-based processor was better than an Intel processor, would you use that? The marketplace doesn't always choose the best product. It's about who controls the standards and which corporate alliances win. With Linux, the community sets the standards. With Windows, whatever Microsoft says, goes. No argument. No dissent.

JAKE
Okay, so you can be stupid or you can be smart. What Netscape should have done was sell the company to Bill when they were flying high. They would have made a killing.

STEVE
Sarcastically)
But they stupidly refused to cave in and sell their souls. How naïve can you be?

JAKE
Hey, if Bill wanted to buy me out for 500 million dollars, he could wolf me down and fire me out his poop chute. Give me the money.

STEVE
But then he owns you, see? And then he makes all the rules and sets all the standards. How can you innovate if you've got to run everything past Mr. Bill first?

JAKE
I thought you liked Mr. Bill. You have to admit, there's something kind of charming about a multi-billionaire with a 6 dollar haircut.

STEVE
Gates. Since he became "Uber-Geek" the guy hasn't had one original idea. He's a suit, man! A marketroid! How far can you fall? I used to like him . . . before he became Satan. You watch. Within two or three years, Linux will threaten Windows on the desktop.

JAKE
It'll never happen.

STEVE
We'll see.

JAKE
Dude, one question settles it. Is there a Linux version of Office?

STEVE
No.

JAKE
Game over.

STEVE
There are lots of great Linux applications.

JAKE
Maybe. But no Word, no Excel, no Internet Explorer— no can-do.

Jake offers this reflection on Silicon Valley as the Act II opens:

JAKE
One of the few totally positive things about Silicon Valley is that you can be yourself and live free. Nobody cares who you are, who you know, or where you're from. It's all about talent: what you know and what you can do. That's all that matters. Idiosyncrasies are tolerated.

I mean, if everybody's eccentric, then nobody is, right? Hell, you can ride to work on a scooter dressed as Madeline Albright if you want. As long as you can cut the mustard, you're gonna get work
.
One of the things I found most impressive about Silicon Valley is the collaborative relationship that most coders forge with each other. You'd think I could easily relate to this environment, given that the nature of my work in the theater is so collaborative, but what I saw there was like nothing I've ever seen. These guys—and yes, they're mostly guys—are ruthless. They rip each other to shreds with no hesitation. If you can't leave your ego at the door, you're going to be a very unhappy hacker. There's just no time for diplomacy or ego massage. It's all about optimizing performance and lowering the crash threshold. Nobody takes criticism personally. It's the work. It's always the work. And, as Jake describes it, everything happens in a pressure cooker.

It's an amazing scene. Sharp-witted, brilliant young men reduced to frantic, paranoid, caffeine-addicted dervishes. They hack and revise and hack some more until they reach a state of sleep-deprived delirium. Every professional hacker knows the routine. It's one reason why you don't see too many hardcore programmers over the age of 40. The grind is just too hard. It also explains why the burnout rate among programmers is so high, exceeded only by postal workers and middle school teachers.One of the few totally positive things about Silicon Valley is that you can be yourself and live free. Nobody cares who you are, who you know, or where you're from. It's all about talent: what you know and what you can do. That's all that matters.

Idiosyncrasies are tolerated. I mean, if everybody's eccentric, then nobody is, right? Hell, you can ride to work on a scooter dressed as Madeline Albright if you want. As long as you can cut the mustard, you're gonna get work.
...It's an amazing scene. Sharp-witted, brilliant young men reduced to frantic, paranoid, caffeine-addicted dervishes. They hack and revise and hack some more until they reach a state of sleep-deprived delirium. Every professional hacker knows the routine. It's one reason why you don't see too many hardcore programmers over the age of 40. The grind is just too hard. It also explains why the burnout rate among programmers is so high, exceeded only by postal workers and middle school teachers.

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