Easter Eggs (not chocolate... software)

Don't misunderstand:  I realize Jesus hasn't been born yet this year (Christmas is over a week away) and it sounds like I'm already trying to crucify him (Easter).  I'm not.  The term "easter egg" here refers to a hidden message or function in media that takes an undocumented trick to reveal.  The Hallelujah Chorus in an HP lab machine made me remember these, and of course they can be found on YouTube.

Here are some of the classics from the bit-heads at Microsoft:

It's old (looks really dated now) but was so neat at the time.  Microsoft Word 2.0 (released in 1990 for Windows 3.1 !) crushes the WordPerfect monster.  Yes, there actually was a time where then was a real competitor to Word.

Many easter eggs are a means for the programming team to release steam and feel like they're getting extra credit for all the hard work.  Gotta keep it hidden from the boss, though.  Internet Explorer 4.0 (released in 1997) had a basic easter egg that scrolled their names.

1997 must have been a good year for easter eggs.  In Excel 97 (a.k.a., Version 8.0), the programmers included some frame code from the Microsoft Flight Simulator!  If you fly the right direction you would see a monument with their names scrolling on it (shown in the video).  Check out the process to activate this -- it's insanely random.

Coming into the 21st century, you have to raise your game.  So the programmers releasing Excel 2000 (oddly enough, in late 1999) wrote and hid a knock-off of the classic video game Spy Hunter and paved their names on the road.  Now we're talking.  What a way to immortalize your work.  Bonus points for having to use Excel and Internet Explorer to release the surprise.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has "taken measures to eliminate undocumented features from their products" in recent years, and the easter egg harvest has been lean.  At least we have the Google pranks/hoaxes and Google Doodles (time and context changes to their corporate logo on the search page).

Interestingly, when I was a software development manager at CSC Conculting, sometimes our client partners would ask us up to put something in the program.  Of course, we never wrote an easter egg...