Save a slap for the dude who invented slaps!
Only tangentially related, but: I'm a school bus driver and a very popular name for kids these days is "Rhys". I really enjoy asking them why they're named after chocolate-covered peanut butter as it drives them crazy.
Put money in your 401k! Nothing else really matters as much.
c-suite
CEO, CTO, CFO etc. In a '90s Internet startup like the company I worked for, the "C" really stood for "clueless".
giant printouts of insanely over-normalized databases
Over-normalization is a database thing - a simple example of normalization would be a "People" table where instead of having the "Salutation" field just contain text like Mr, Mrs. etc., you have a separate "Salutations" table with all the possibilities listed and keyed with an ID (usually just a sequential number), and then the "People" table stores a Salutation ID for each entry instead of the actual text. It's a valid and standard thing to do with database design, but it can be taken to extremes where absolutely every possible trivial thing that can be normalized is, producing an overcomplicated mess that is extremely difficult to work with programmatically.
Printing out this over-normalized mess of a database on multiple sheets of paper which are then taped to the wall is utterly useless.
How is a database a trick?
The printout is the trick - it fools the bosses into thinking you're doing something amazing and productive when you're really just fucking around. It only works on the technically incompetent, of which there was no shortage in '90s Internet startups (or today).
Its pretty similar
No, that was the sequel.
Plot twist: Richard Gere was actually George Washington!
Yeah, BeOS was awesome. I remember a coworker showing it to me in 1996 - he also taught me how to wow the c-suite with giant printouts of insanely over-normalized databases, a parlor trick that has served me well over the years.
As I recall, Gasse was offered something like $440 million for BeOS by Apple and he turned them down. Not sure it would have made any difference in anything by this point, but at least Objective-C wouldn't have been littered with classes with the "NS" prefix.
Is BeOS still floating around?
They have the close, minimize and full screen buttons in the upper left corner instead of the upper right.
/s just in case.
They get taken over by sales & marketing types
Like Steve Jobs lol.
My ancient macbook has a cd drive, but it stopped recognizing the drive years ago and of course there's no physical eject button. It Just Works!