The Cuckoo's Egg

by Clifford Stoll

Roy treated his students and staff much as his subatomic particles: keep them in line, energize them, then shoot them into immovable objects.

“Our software is fragile as well—if people built houses the way we write programs, the first woodpecker would wipe out civilization.”

As Mike puts it, good programs aren’t written or built. They’re grown.

I was to talk to the NTISSIC, a governmental organization whose acronym has never been decoded.