I’m not an OS X programmer, but I’ve really enjoyed 2 recent episodes of the NSBrief podcast. First was Mark Dalrymple’s interview. Here was my 140 character description:

So much geeky fun in @borkware's interview. AOLserver, dtrace, OpenDoc, MPW, need I go on? nsbrief.com/59-mark-dalrym…

— Vinod Kurup (@vkurup) August 16, 2012

Today, I listened to Mark Aufflick’s interview where he talks eloquently about starting your own business. I love the perspective he had on his first business and how shutting it down gave him the necessary (though painful) experience to make his current business work. He also talked about the importance of computing history especially given the availability of interesting subjects. He ended with great advice on the importance of professionalism. Paraphrased: “Make sure your team is the most professional side of any relationship.”

I know Mark and Mark from the OpenACS glory days and it’s great to hear how well they’re doing. Computing history was a prominent part of both talks. I think this is important. Old ideas are always new again. Some of the ideas that these pioneers had were only limited by the horsepower we had to work with at the time. Now thanks to Moore’s law, those limitations are gone, so we should re-investigate those ideas. Or maybe we’re all just getting old and like to talk about the good-old-days. :-) It’s nice to see that they both mentioned the OpenACS period of their programming lives as important. It certainly was for me. It was also great to hear Mark Aufflick’s voice for the first time, even though I feel like he’s been a friend for many years.