Randy Wigginton
| Randy Wigginton | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Software engineer, Square, Inc. |
| Years active | Apple, Inc. (1976-1985) |
| Known for | Creator of MacWrite, Full Impact |
| Children | 2 |
Randy Wigginton was one of Apple Computer's first employees (#6), creator of MacWrite, Full Impact, and numerous other Mac applications. He used to work in development at eBay, Quigo, Inc and Move.com. In November 2010, he left his position as a "site reliability engineer" at Google Inc., purportedly after leaking news of a $1,000 holiday cash bonus to employees.
Wigginton was a student at Bellarmine College Preparatory in San Jose, California, interested in computers just as the earliest microprocessor-based computers were being assembled by hobbyists. Around the age of 14, he had heard about the Homebrew Computer Club, but had no way to get there until he started getting rides with another club member, Steve Wozniak who lived down the street from Wigginton's family home. The two became friends, and Wigginton became one of Apple's earliest employees in 1976, and was present with Wozniak when the Apple I was first presented to the world at a Club meeting.
Wigginton collaborated with Wozniak on the circuit design and ROM software for the Apple II in 1977. As Wozniak wired up color graphics circuitry, Wigginton wrote machine language graphics subroutines, and Chris Espinosa, another high school student, wrote demo programs in BASIC. Wigginton wrote several early programs for the Apple II, including a checkbook-balancing program co-authored with Apple's vice-president of Marketing Mike Markkula. Wigginton was one of the Apple employees who adapted Microsoft's 6502 BASIC for the Apple II; it was dubbed Applesoft BASIC. The Applesoft BASIC Reference Manual includes a section entitled "Rounding can be Curious", in which it is documented that the ROUND function, which rounds a number to a prescribed accuracy, is not monotonic: in other words, for some x and y, such that x<y, ROUND(x)> ROUND(y). (The problematic ROUND function does not appear in Applesoft II, the version that most Apple II users are familiar with.)
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