Dr. Dobb's Journal February 1997
Mo asked Joe, "So what are you grinning about?" Joe Weaver was indeed grinning over his cream soda when Maureen "Mo" McBean walked into Foo Bar that night. British journalist Larry Wilde and I had each tried to find out what Joe was so tickled about, but he was apparently waiting for a full house. Now the place was about as full as it gets, with three very regular customers and me, the relief bartender.
"Oh, nothing," Joe answered. "Well, something, I guess." He was obviously bursting with pride. "One of my leads got picked up for a cover blurb."
"So some of your deathless prose appeared on the cover of that barf bag you write for?"
"It's called Words on the Wing," Joe sniffed. "It's an in-flight magazine."
"That's what I meant. Give me a Leinenkugel, Mike. It's like that old joke about Niklaus Wirth, the inventor of Pascal. In Europe they pronounce it 'nee-claus veert', but in America they pronounce it 'nickle's worth.' It's the difference between call-by-name and call-by-value." Joe had the look of a surfer who, riding a big wave a second before, has just caught his board in the back of the head. Larry threw him a line.
"What was the lead, Joseph? I dare say it was something clever if they picked it up for the cover."
"'Don't know paperback from pay-per-view?'" Joe said, in that pompous sing-song voice writers always use when quoting themselves, "'Check out our massive media review.'"
Mo snorted. "That was your lead? It sounds like ad copy!"
There was a moment of awkward silence. I wiped the bar, chipping away with my thumbnail at a chunk of bar grit that I suspected may have been a peanut in happier times.
Mo gave Joe a sidelong look, sighed, and gave in. "Cute, though," she said, hating herself for doing it.
"Do you think so?" Joe bubbled. It's hard to keep anyone as carbonated as Joe down for long. "Cute is what I was going for. It's the hallmark of my style," he added, making it sound like another self quote.
"Yeah, well," Mo conceded grudgingly, "style matters. I guess."
"Style," Larry proclaimed, "is all. It is the sole end of all art, the true message of most speech, and the one quality that makes the humblest Briton superior to the entire Royal Family."
"Well, I write about the computer industry," Mo said. "Wouldn't you say style is less important there?"
"I would not, and I can give you an example. Last year, Oracle's Larry Ellison gave a bombastic speech telling developers, essentially, that they'd better jump on the Network Computer bandwagon before the NC crushed the PC into dust. Did his brash style alienate developers? It's possible. Style matters."
"Oracle. Isn't their net address oracle@delphi.com?"
"You make my point for me. Ellison's style invites just that sort of disparaging gag, however lame."
"Well, we all knew he was not PC."
"Please! But the whole future of these NCs, these thin clients, hangs on a style question: Is thin in?"
"Speaking of thin computers," Joe cut in, "have you seen Apple's Shay? It's a Newton with a keyboard in a clamshell case that Apple plans to sell as a laptop."
"Beastly name, 'Shay,'" Larry said, sipping thoughtfully at his white wine.
"Still, I suppose they could hardly call it the Clamshell Newt, newts being amphibians rather than crustaceans."
"Newt Gingrich is a crustacean."
"You may have something there. Doubtless you caught it from Maureen."
"Anyhoo, you have to hand it to Apple," Joe said, "the thing sure is cute."
Mo drained her glass and clunked it on the bar. "Cute. Right. I believe that's the hallmark of their style."
--Michael Swaine