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Living Amongst the Wizards of Cray Research

Cray Research built the world's fastest computers. Creating the world's fastest software brought unique challenges, which we met with a unique style.

Edward Barnard

Cray Research built the world's fastest computers. Creating the world's fastest software brought unique challenges, which we met with a unique style.

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About the Book

Cray Research supported the National Security Agency's philosophy of NOBUS (Nobody But Us) by building the world's fastest supercomputers. Charles Murray tells that story in The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards behind the Supercomputer (John Wiley, 1997). The first Cray Research supercomputer was bare metal. We supplied no software whatsoever! The second supercomputer (CRAY-1 serial number 2) never existed--until the NSA declassified its delivery decades later. Serial number 3 included operating system and Fortran compiler. That's how our Cray Research Software Division was born.

What was it like, walking the hallways of "Nobody But Us"? We created "The Cray Style", a description of our environment, expectations, mutual respect. Within Cray Research I developed an intuition, a deep understanding of how computers work, that has served throughout my career. I'll be walking you through these experiences. I find that the fun is in the challenges. Thus, I assure you, we'll have fun along the way! I'll even show you how we programmed "Big Iron" (the large mainframes of the era) as "Bare Metal" (straight-up assembly language with no operating system getting in the way). But don't worry! If "bare metal" is not your thing, I'll show you how to safely skip ahead to the next adventure.

Imposter Syndrome, and striving to be "the best of the best", often travel hand-in-hand. Imposter Syndrome remains quite common in our industry. Therefore, I'll show you the likely origin of my own variant and how I slowly reached past its effects. In fact, you may find this perspective the most important part of the book!

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Edward Barnard

No Time to Be Beginners

What was it like to stand in the breach, with nobody else to take the decisions, and do-overs are too late? Margaret Hamilton, the first programmer hired for the Apollo project at MIT, explained:

Because software was a mystery, a black box, upper management gave us total freedom and trust. We had to find a way and we did. Looking back, we were the luckiest people in the world; there was no choice but to be pioneers; no time to be beginners.

During the Cold War when it was "nobody but us," our decisions and solutions were shaped by constraints. At Cray Research constraints and barriers pointed us to the best point of leverage. To remain the best in the world, we had no other option. But before considering leverage, we carefully identified and proved relevant capabilities. Those capabilities showed us what solutions might be plausible. We also found that if it wasn't fun, it probably was not worth doing.

This forced way of working, where responsibility could not be abstracted away, has been mostly lost to time.

My Role as Custodian of Lost Skills

I am bringing you those skills because they were never passed to the next generation. I created a primary source document showing what it was like: Nobody but Us: A History of Cray Research's Software and the Building of the World's Fastest Supercomputer. But I wrote a second primary source, reproducing the Cray Research skills for you right now, in 2026. The Wizard's Lens: Learn to Think Like AI is an apprenticeship drawing you in to experience, not merely read about, how we continuously "achieved the impossible" at Cray Research.

Those Cray Research skills did not begin with software, or even hardware. They began outdoors. Experiential education, with real risks and real consequences, has also been abstracted away. That is where judgement is formed. For this I wrote Surviving Spring Break on the Mountain: The Power of Experiential Education.

Pure Entertainment

If it isn't fun, it probably isn't worth doing. I continued practicing the most important debugging skill I know: spotting patterns and connections that others miss. I wrote Unexpected Histories to show you shifted perspectives, purely for entertainment, but showing real history that matters today. In each case, once you see it, you cannot "un-see" it.

Episode 317

An Interview with Edward W. Barnard

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