La storia del Ctrl+Alt+Del
O Ctrl+Alt+Canc, nelle tastiere italiane. La storia di una delle più famose combinazione di tasti per eseguire chiusure e riavvii in caso di problemi sui PC, dovuta all'ingegnere David Bradley e resa iconica da Windows, raccontata su Mental Floss.
In the spring of 1981, David Bradley was part of a select team working from a nondescript office building in Boca Raton, Fla. His task: to help build IBM's new personal computer. Because Apple and RadioShack were already selling small stand-alone computers, the project (code name: Acorn) was a rush job. Instead of the typical three- to five-year turnaround, Acorn had to be completed in a single year.
One of the programmers' pet peeves was that whenever the computer encountered a coding glitch, they had to manually restart the entire system. Turning the machine back on automatically initiated a series of memory tests, which stole valuable time. "Some days, you'd be rebooting every five minutes as you searched for the problem," Bradley says. The tedious tests made the coders want to pull their hair out.
So Bradley created a keyboard shortcut that triggered a system reset without the memory tests. He never dreamed that the simple fix would make him a programming hero, someone who'd someday be hounded to autograph keyboards at conferences. And he didn't foresee the command becoming such an integral part of the user experience.
