MacPaint and QuickDraw Source Code

The Computer History Museum:

For those who want to see how it worked “under the hood”, we are pleased, with the permission of Apple Inc., to make available the original program source code of MacPaint and the underlying QuickDraw graphics library.

The crown jewels of the original Macintosh: the most amazing part of the system software and the best app. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that QuickDraw’s source code was the most valuable in the world.

Love this anecdote about Bill Atkinson:

A reporter asked Steve Jobs, “How many man-years did it take to write QuickDraw?” Steve asked Bill, who said, “Well, I worked on it on and off for four years.” Steve then told the reporter, “Twenty-four man-years”. Obviously Steve figured, with ample justification, that one Atkinson year was the equivalent of six ordinary programmer years.

★ Tuesday, 20 July 2010