I had just finished the program and had seeded it with a single animal, a mouse. I turned to my wife and asked her to play the game. She thinks of an animal and starts the program, which immediately asked her “Is it a mouse?”. She turned to me with surprise and said “How did it know?”. Of course, the animal she picked was a mouse.
I don’t think I have ever impressed anyone with my programming skills as much as she was impressed with that game.
jim weirich on the beginning of his programming career, designing a 20-questions style game around animals.