+++
title = "It will be done when it's done"
author = ["George M Jones"]
publishDate = 2022-03-24T00:00:00-04:00
lastmod = 2023-12-06T05:46:05-05:00
tags = ["life", "100DaysToOffload", "history", "gif"]
categories = ["blog"]
draft = false
+++
Steve Wilhite died last week. Yes, he created GIF, but that was just
a side project among mountains of mostly single-handed coding projects
that were a large part of what kept CompuServe going for years in the
face of AOL and the Web.
[One of my coworkers recalled](https://www.megiefuneralhome.com/obituaries/Stephen-E.-Wilhite?obId=24311617#):
> ...many times when asked about a delivery date Steve would answer "it
> will be done when it is done."
I laughed when I read that. It was so Steve. It would have been said
authoritatively, matter of factly, and any poor project manager
involved would have to take that as the final word, because Steve was
right ... and consistently delivered.
{{< figure src="/ox-hugo/steve.gif" caption="Figure 1: [\"CompuServe Languages and Tools Group c.a. 2019\" by George Jones](http://curious.galthub.com/ox-hugo/steve.gif) is licenced under [CC SA 4.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)" width="200px" >}}
You got the same type of response when asked how to pronounce GIF. To
quote Steve "Choosy programmers choose GIF", echoing an old JIFF
peanut-butter commercial, soft "g". It didn't matter that the
[president of the United States disagreed](https://news.yahoo.com/-this-is-how-president-obama-pronounces--gif-153554734.html). The president was just
wrong. End of story.
Steve was laconic, matter-of-fact and almost always right. He had a
knack for knocking out the right project at the right time, be it the
3 DEC10 compilers in the 70s and early 80s, the "Host Micro Interface"
(HMI) protocol that let the Information Service move away from
text-only command line interfaces, to WinCIM (the CompuServe graphical
Interface/UI/Information Manager on Windows). I used capabilities
provided in WinCIM to write FTP and Telenet gateways that allowed
users to access the Internet. Steve also wrote libraries included in
WinCIM that provided enough functionality for me to write a web
browser....that was never released :-(. It allowed users without a
direct Internet connection (most people) to browse the web which
was full of GIFs then.
A lot of the reporting about Steve and his "Webby" award for GIF
refers to him working on it with "his team". I guess I was part of
that "team" ... he had hired me out of college and I was in "his"
Languages and Tools group (Compilers and Runtime Systems) and was 2
doors down when he was parading people in to see the fruits of a
project (one of the MANY) he did on the side/at home called GIF that
displayed, if I recall correctly, on DOS systems, Windows systems,
Atari STs, Amigas, all which Steve had either in his office or at home
or both. We did a little collaborative coding to port MicroEmacs to
the Amiga which became today's mg (nee Micro Gnu Emacs) editor, but
GIF was just Steve.
Sandy Trevor (CompuServe Executive Technical VP) and others were wise
just to let Steve do his thing.
Beyond the code, I think Steve stamped a lot of his outlook on a young
me. That's probably part of why I've dodged management at every
opportunity. There's too much "real work" to do :-). Years later, I
worked at Amazon for a bit and grew very quickly to appreciate the
leadership principals:
. Turns out,
in retrospect, I think they were describing the Steve I knew to a "t":
He was right, a lot, dove deep, delivered results, earned trust, was
always learning and curious, thought big and was forever inventing and
simplifying. I think Bezos was somehow taking queues from Steve.
Steve also had one quality that a lot of utterly brilliant people
lack: He took you (me) where you were. Not everyone went home and
read Knuth and CACM cover-to-cover for bedtime stories. He got that.
He took you where you were as a programmer and a person. That gave me
room to grow personally and professionally at a critical time in life.
There was way more to Steve than GIF. His output was prolific and
in his laconic let-your-code-do-your-talking kind of way, he was
inspiring. I was privileged to have a front row seat to watch a
master at work.
\#19 of #100DaysToOffload take 2,