Unlike most people, the first time I ever came across Darude: Sandstorm, which was back in the year 2000, was in the most unexpected of mediums: a secret executable inside Norton Utilities 2001.
Back then, when commercial software was still cool, it was common for programmers to include hidden "easter eggs" that did cool or unexpected stuff — and an animation of various developers "dancing" to techno was just one of the known easter eggs that Norton had at the time.
Given that Sandstorm was hugely popular and even achieved meme status before Never Gonna Give You Up did, and the fact that the Symantec included a copyrighted song (presumably illegally) in a commercial software package, it is surprising that literally no one (besides me) ever brought this up, at least as per my Google-fu.
On a related note, does anyone else find it a bit sad that most software these days do not include any easter eggs, and have even become downright boring? It feels like developers used to have more fun back in the day.
I agree with the Easter eggs, it feels like it’s not common anymore or they are really good hidden. But, I‘m also a developer so I try to do my own Easter eggs. I discovered fartjs (https://fartjs.com/) and try to incorporate it here and there.
Back then, when commercial software was still cool, it was common for programmers to include hidden "easter eggs" that did cool or unexpected stuff — and an animation of various developers "dancing" to techno was just one of the known easter eggs that Norton had at the time.
Given that Sandstorm was hugely popular and even achieved meme status before Never Gonna Give You Up did, and the fact that the Symantec included a copyrighted song (presumably illegally) in a commercial software package, it is surprising that literally no one (besides me) ever brought this up, at least as per my Google-fu.
On a related note, does anyone else find it a bit sad that most software these days do not include any easter eggs, and have even become downright boring? It feels like developers used to have more fun back in the day.