Cleve on Titan
I work at the MathWorks. When most people think of the MathWorks, they think of Cleve Moler. Cleve wrote MATLAB originally, and is in many ways still the heart of the company even though we don’t get to see him every day anymore.
He and I actually worked together once before this. He was at a west coast startup named Ardent, and I was at an east coast startup named Stellar. We were archrivals for a couple of years. Then, in 1989, the two companies were combined to form Stardent. The merger actually happened while Chris & I were off the grid for several weeks (it was easier to do that back then), and the office was deserted when I came in on Monday because I was still on European time. I thought that the signs around the office about the merger were an April Fool’s joke because we had been such rivals, but it turned out to be great to work together as one David against the Goliaths of the industry instead of fighting between ourselves.
Over on his blog, Cleve has started sharing some of his stories from those days. His stories brings back a lot of good memories for me. Those were fun days. We created a lot of interesting technology, and we had a really great group of people working together. A bunch of us got together a couple of years ago and had a great time catching up.