Thanks Jeff, for the most thoughtful and insightful post I’ve seen in a blog for a very long time.
I’ve noticed plenty of fellow readers seem quite unhappy that you’re writing something ‘pedestrian’. Well don’t stop, please. It’s the pedestrian posts that kept me coming back to your blog, because it makes the blog more than just a ‘tip of the day’ feed. There are plenty of those on the web already; your blog is unique.
I love your blog, and I’ll keep coming back for more. Keep it rolling. 
Is it just coincidence that Microsoft Bing is sort of a Web version of Microsoft Bob and Bing Crosby is the older, more successful brother of Bob Crosby? I mentioned this on Twitter when Bing went live, but it didn’t get much traction and haven’t seen it noted anywhere else.
@ John W You’d have a hard time not getting a question like “describe a time when you failed miserably” at a job interview. If your answer is “Bob”, then I guess you’ve answered well.
I am still looking for a program to do everything Microsoft Bob claims to do on the box. But I somehow feel the problem was to trying and put all those functions in one box.
“the engineers at Williams - the only remaining manufacturer of pinball machines in the United States”
Stern were (and still are) going. They are now the only manufacturers of pinball machines worldwide.
The Williams pinball 2000 machines (Revenge from Mars and Star Wars Episode 1) is considered by a lot of people to be a ‘toy’ pinball. They are very simple (almost always just going for the centre shot) and get boring very quickly.
I work at a place that specialises in pinball sales and so have seen a very broad range of the pins out there.
There is no doubting that the innovations of pin2000 were exiting but in the end they did nothing to reinvigorate the industry. Too much attention was spent on the screen to the detriment of the rest of the game (the ‘traditional’ pinball part).
In fact there is very little difference between pins manufactured now (by Stern) and pins manufactured in the '90s.
Oh, and definitely a +1 for the Simpsons Pinball Party - possibly the most complex pinball ever made (in terms of rules). What a great machine.
Not everyone who becomes a “success” rides on the back of failure. Facebook is a good example of that - the creator was originally just the programmer, but “backed out” and stole the code for himself. He never failed, and now is rich because of it.
It’s so sad that pinball is dead today. I’m only 31 and yet pinball’s high water mark was just when I was a teenager. The early 90s pins were incredible (Twilight Zone being my favorite for its depth and challenging ceramic ball). As recently as 1999 I was actually cash flow positive on pinball for the year due to tournament winnings. I’m glad Stern is around because after Williams demise they figured out through trial and error how to make a good machine (Simpsons Pinball Party is incredible when everything works).
The problem today is that the remaining pinball machines in public are poorly maintained, which means they are no fun because often the flippers are so weak or elements are broken so that it’s impossible to actually play the game. Casual players are then put off by how boring it is without even realizing what the problem is. The sad part is that video games are still a pale pale shadow of the physicality of pinball. Maybe in 30-40 years they will be able to create a video game that has the realism to simulate the pinball experience, but I doubt it. Guess I’ll have to become a private collector like everyone else who still loves pinball. $0.50 hobby turns into a $1000.00 hobby overnight.
You have a boxed copy of MS Bob. I have a full-sized battery-powered rotating Bob display unit. (Only the head is in my cube; the rest is at home.)
The Recaptcha on this message is “cilantro Bob” …!
Bob was a failure not because it was badly programmed, not because it did not do what it was specified to do, not because the technical specification was bad… it failed because it was a program looking for a problem that did not exist, the only people who liked it played with it rather than get stuff done, most people thought it just got in the way …
Well, I suppose I’m all set for the biggest success ever…
c’mon jeff. Bloopers from MS BOB are still built-in features, originating from not thoroughly thinking through what should and should not go into a product.
This is why I always ask “of all the projects you worked on, what was the worst failure and why did it fail” at interviews and why I have a hard time trusting any candidate that denies participating in a failure.
Personally, I was involved in a software development effort that got written up by CNET under the title “worst ten software disasters of 2005”. There were a lot of good people on that project and, of course, a lot of really, really stupid ideas.
“Failure is de rigeur in our industry.” N.B. Misspelling it as “de rigeur” is, I’ve found, de rigueur, in our industry and in many others.
Great post, failure is inevitable and something we should not fear but rather embrace. We stand to learn more from failure than from success sometimes.
Jeff, you’ve lost me at this point with the prose, but it is boldly visionary and elegant writing. Get back to coding – that’s your day job.
I can’t quite follow what project is failed or not, but yeah: there’s probably not many projects where you learn nothing.
This was a nice one…after a long time!!
enlightening indeed…
The worst failures are those that endure, they have a greater failure “cross section”.
I’m working on a project that is clearly doomed to failure. Everyone involved can see it. Everyone shouts loudly everyday about the elephant in the room. Only the PM’s are oblivious and keep throwing more and more resources at the project, thereby ensuring it’s failure. Maybe they want it to fail?
I’m determined for it not to get me down as I know it will help me develop for the future, but damn it’s hard bloody work.
From the Dunning-Kreuger effect wiki:
I grew up in a small town where bowling and pinball were the only things for a kid to do. This has me remembering the days of my youth when, according to my father, I “wasted my quarters” on pinball machines. Fast-forward to today when I catch myself nagging at my own kids to turn off the Nintendo-DS or Wii so they can be engaged in more productive activity for their minds. Makes me wonder if I would see pinball as an acceptable line item on that mythical list of activities.
D