New Year, New Bug - Rivalry Between Devs Led To A Deep-Code Disaster
The Register, Monday, January 8th, 2024
How badly do you want your name in the About box?
Welcome, gentle reader, and rejoice, for with the new year comes a new instalment of Who, Me? in which Reg readers recount tales of tech trouble for your edification.
This particular Monday meet a programmer we'll Regomize as "Jack" who had a rival we'll call "Irving." The two of them were programmers at a small concern that made business software for the then-popular Amiga platform. That in itself should give you some idea of the time frame in which our tragedy takes place.
At the core of their rivalry was their flagship product - a productivity application. Irving had been the principal developer of version 1 of the program, but had moved to wider responsibilities in the organization (such as it was - there were no "big" Amiga developers). Jack, therefore, did the lion's share of the work on version 2.