Word: wises
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...Wise's first task in writing his program was to create the objects displayed on the screen. These are actually just patterns of colored dots, with each dot controlled by an individual on-off switch. Wise sketched the images on an electronic drawing
After the objects were drawn, Wise began creating a series of small, self-contained miniprograms called subroutines. One subroutine, for example, moves the captain's jet. Another controls the enemy planes. A third fires a missile. In all, the finished program will have 400 different subroutines. Wise writes it one subroutine at a time, making sure that each new one works before continuing. A typical section of coding reads...
...code is enough to throw the whole program out of kilter. At one stage in the game's development, the computer had the captain walking in mid-air because one subroutine was inadvertently modifying another subroutine's instructions. "I almost went blind trying to find that bug," Wise recalls...
...Wise has been dabbling in software since the age of 14, when he learned FORTRAN on an IBM at Stewart Junior High School in Tacoma, Wash. He dissected nearly every radio and television set in the house and then skipped college to take a series of odd jobs on the periphery of the computer world. He repaired video-arcade games, Xerox machines and personal computers, and at one time ran the ComputerLand store in Renton, Wash. In 1979, convinced that there were fortunes to be made, he bought an Apple II Plus and began churning out video games, working...
...Wise still does his best work at night. Every evening after dinner he picks up where he left off at work. "My wife is a computer widow," he confesses. During the past month, he has been working until dawn with increasing regularity. "When I'm done, we're taking a vacation," says the 29-year-old programmer. "I'm almost getting too old for this." -By Philip Elmer-DeWrtt