This XKCD cartoon is absolutely true.

However, it does not relay the full story. I've heard several versions of this one, but here's my favorite:

It was late on a Friday night in the middle of the death march to ship Microsoft Excel 95. All hands were on deck, chained to their oars (or desks). In true nautical tradition, the captain elected to keep up morale by providing grog. Or, in this case, beer.

During an idle moment, with empty beer cups littering the table, a couple of developers started talking games. Somebody brought up Doom, then the cutting-edge first-person shooter game that had everyone in awe. John Carmack's name was mentioned reverently. (Carmack was Doom's lead programmer.)

"Hack," somebody else scoffed.

"Say what?"

"Any programmer worth the shit they crap out could write a Doom engine," said this confident lad. By engine he meant the complex code needed to create the movement and graphics of the game. "Hell, I could write it in one night."

Wagers were immediately laid.

Drunk with confidence and free beer, our developer walked back to his office, slammed the door, and started coding.

He emerged early the next morning red-eyed, hung over, and triumphant, and promptly passed out.

Dig through the old junk in some elder geek's basement, and you'll probably find a leftover Excel 95 CD-ROM somewhere. (Hell, I just threw mine out last year.) That same elder geek probably has an old Pentium PC gathering mountains of dust. Install Excel on that dusty machine, fire it up, perform an arcane sequence involving row 95 and the Help/About window, and you will discover that anonymous, unsober coder really did throw together a Doom engine.

My psychic powers tell me that in two days, Raymond Chen, an estimable, slightly odd, and incredibly bright Microsoft developer, is going to post a link to an article stating that Norway is the world leader in casual sex.

(No, it's not there yet. I said this was an application of psychic powers. Check back on the 13th.)

Anyway, the thought of Norwegian casual sex brought a smile to my face, and though I try very hard never to tell lurid stories on myself, I'm compelled to relate:

( The Tale of the Ski Instructor )