I'll Be Your Best Friend 我会成为你最好的朋友

作者： Andy Hertzfeld 日期： August 1979 人物： Burrell Smith, Andy Hertzfeld, Wendell Sander, Steve Wozniak 主题： Origins, Personality, Hardware Design, Apple II 概括： Burrell Smith was creative in more than just engineering.

Toward the end of my first week as an Apple employee in August 1979, I noticed that someone had left a black binder on my desk, with a hand-written title that read, “Apple II: Principles of Operation”. It contained a brilliant, concise description of how the Apple II hardware worked, reverently explaining details of Woz’s epic, creative design hacks, in a clearer fashion than I’d ever read before. I didn’t know who left it there, but the title page said it was written by “Burrell C. Smith”.

1979 年 8 月，我作为苹果员工的第一周快结束时，我注意到有人在我的桌子上留下了一个黑色活页夹，上面手写着标题：“Apple II：操作原理”。
它包含对 Apple II 硬件工作原理的精彩、简洁的描述，以我以前读过的更清晰的方式虔诚地解释了沃兹史诗般的创意设计技巧的细节。
我不知道是谁把它留在那里的，但扉页上写着它是由“Burrell C. Smith”写的。

Later that day, in the late afternoon, I was approached by a young, animated, slightly nervous guy with long, straight, blond hair, who entered my cubicle and walked right up to me.

那天晚些时候，下午晚些时候，一个年轻、活泼、有点紧张的家伙走近我，他有一头金色的长直发，他走进我的小隔间，径直走到我面前。

“Are you Andy Hertzfeld? Wow, it’s amazing to meet you. I read your articles in Call A.P.P.L.E. and Dr. Dobb’s. Apple’s lucky they got you to work here. I want to shake your hand.”

“你是安迪·赫茨菲尔德吗？哇，很高兴见到你。我在 Call A.P.P.L.E. 和 Dr. Dobb's 上读过你的文章。Apple 很幸运他们让你在这里工作。我想和你握手。”

With exaggerated formality, he extended his right arm stiffly, almost in a parody of a handshake offer. “I’m Burrell. Burrell Carver Smith. Pleased to meet you. I wrote that manual I left on your desk.”, he said, pointing to the black binder on my desk. We shook hands and then he suddenly turned around nervously and darted off, without explanation. “See you later!”, he said, without looking back.

他以一种夸张的礼节，僵硬地伸出右臂，几乎是在模仿握手。
“我是伯勒尔。伯勒尔·卡弗·史密斯。很高兴见到你。我写了留在你桌上的那本手册。”他指着我桌上的黑色活页夹说道。
我们握了握手，然后他突然紧张地转过身，没有解释就跑开了。
“待会儿见！”他头也不回地说。

My cubicle in Bandley 1 was in the hardware engineering section, since my first project was writing the firmware for the Silentype thermal printer (see What Hath Woz Wrought). It was across the aisle from Wendell Sander’s office. Wendell was the designer of the Apple III and an extremely brilliant and seasoned engineer, who used to design RAM chips for Fairchild and understood the Apple II hardware design inside out. All the other hardware engineers on the team, except for Woz, usually came to Wendell for advice.

我在 Bandley 1 的小隔间位于硬件工程部分，因为我的第一个项目是为 Silentype 热敏打印机编写固件（请参阅 What Hath Woz Wrought）。
它位于温德尔·桑德办公室的过道对面。
Wendell 是 Apple III 的设计师，也是一位极其才华横溢且经验丰富的工程师，他曾为 Fairchild 设计 RAM 芯片，并且对 Apple II 硬件设计了如指掌。
除了沃兹之外，团队中的所有其他硬件工程师通常都会向温德尔寻求建议。

I began to notice that Burrell, even though he was supposed to be working in the service department in a different building, often hung around outside of Wendell’s office. Sometimes for hours at a time, waiting for Wendell to have a free moment, so he could ask him to verify his latest insight about the Apple II timings. Sometimes, when Wendell was busy, he would try the insight out on me instead, or discuss a fine point of the Apple II firmware. Soon, we started to occasionally go out for lunch together.

我开始注意到伯勒尔，尽管他应该在另一栋大楼的服务部门工作，但他经常在温德尔的办公室外面闲逛。
有时一次要花上几个小时，等待温德尔有空闲的时间，这样他就可以请他验证他对 Apple II 计时的最新见解。
有时，当 Wendell 很忙时，他会在我身上尝试一下见解，或者讨论 Apple II 固件的一个优点。 很快，我们开始偶尔一起出去吃午饭。

The first time we went to lunch, I found out that Burrell’s creativity extended beyond his engineering work. He would often try to convince our waitress to concoct variations of the standard fare on the menu, thinking of something different every time.

我们第一次去吃午饭时，我发现伯勒尔的创造力超出了他的工程工作范围。
他经常试图说服我们的女服务员在菜单上炮制出不同的标准票价，每次都会想到不同的东西。

For example, after he successfully persuaded a waitress to divide his pizza toppings into thirds, he asked her to do fifths the next time. Or he would sometimes try to order mixed sodas as if they were cocktails, in ever varying proportions, like three quarters Coke, and one quarter Sprite. Often, the waitress would balk but Burrell was sometimes charming enough to eventually convince her to comply. He would also obsess on certain foods, becoming fixated on Bulgarian Beef sandwiches from Vivi’s for a while, and then a Pineapple Pizza phase (see Pineapple Pizza), evolving to his most enduring favorite, sushi, which provided a new range of interesting choices and combinations.

例如，在他成功说服一位女服务员将披萨配料分成三分之一后，他要求她下次分成五分之一。
或者，他有时会尝试点混合苏打水，就好像它们是鸡尾酒一样，比例不断变化，例如四分之三的可乐和四分之一的雪碧。
通常，女服务员会犹豫不决，但伯勒尔有时足够迷人，最终说服她遵守。
他还会痴迷于某些食物，有一段时间迷恋 Vivi's 的保加利亚牛肉三明治，然后是菠萝披萨（参见菠萝披萨），演变为他最持久的最爱，寿司，它提供了一系列新的有趣的选择和组合。

Burrell also had a distinctive way of expressing himself, applying technical jargon to ordinary life (like a situation that was “meta-stable”, or someone being a “state machine”), mixed with a dash of baby talk (like adding plurals to people’s names). An attractive woman was referred to as a “good prototype”, or a “good proto” for short. Burrell had a great sense of humor and periodically performed hilarious impressions of everyone else on the team, caricaturing their personality quirks with an incisive phrase or nickname (see I Invented Burrell). He also liked to make fun of various language conventions; for example, if he was pleased with new software, he’d say “Happiness comma software”.

伯勒尔还有一种独特的表达方式，将技术术语应用于日常生活（例如“亚稳定”的情况，或者某人是“状态机器”），并混合了一些儿语（例如在人的名字）。
有魅力的女人被称为“好原型”，简称“好原型”。伯勒尔很有幽默感，经常给团队中的其他人留下搞笑的印象，用尖锐的短语或昵称来讽刺他们的个性怪癖（参见我发明了伯勒尔）。
他还喜欢取笑各种语言惯例；例如，如果他对新软件感到满意，他会说“幸福逗号软件”。

One of his favorite expressions was “I’ll be your best friend”. He offered “best friendship” for a wide range of activities, like making some change in the software for him or getting him a Coke from the gas station. “Best friendship takes place”, he would declare if pleased with the results. He also had a habit of reducing things to initials, like “B.F.R.” for “Best Friendship Relationship”.

他最喜欢的表达方式之一是“我将成为你最好的朋友”。
他为各种各样的活动提供了“最好的友谊”，比如为他修改软件或者从加油站给他买一瓶可乐。
如果对结果感到满意，他会宣称“最好的友谊发生了”。
他还习惯将事物简化为缩写，例如“B.F.R.”为“最佳友谊关系”。

Once, right after Burrell conferred best friendship upon me, I heard him offer best friendship to someone else, for a different favor. “Wait a second”, I challenged Burrell, “How can you give out best friendship to someone else? There can be only one best friend at a time, can’t there?”

有一次，就在伯勒尔给予我最好的友谊之后，我听到他为了不同的恩惠而向别人提供了最好的友谊。
“等一下，”我向伯勒尔挑战，“你怎么能把最好的友谊给予别人呢？一次只能有一个最好的朋友，不是吗？”

Burrell had a quick reply, delivered with a smile. “Of course there can be only one “best” friend at a given instant of time. But best friendship relationships may be highly dynamic. The average length of a best friendship is three to five milliseconds. So there’s no problem in having a new B.F.R. a second or two later.”

伯勒尔微笑着很快给出了答复。 “当然，在某一特定时刻只能有一个“最好的”朋友。
但最好的友谊关系可能是高度动态的。
最好的友谊的平均长度是三到五毫秒。
所以拥有一个新的 B.F.R 是没有问题的。一两秒后。”