Whatever happened to... gang screens?

Q As you waited for programs to load on my Windows 3.1, you could push certain key combinations to access a picture or little animation. I believe these were known as ‘gang screens’, and they could be fun. In an early version of Microsoft Word, for example, you got an animation of pin men bashing a rival word processor into the ground. Have gang screens vanished because software now loads too quickly? Or is there some other reason? Thelma Brown

A We love this question, if only because we’d more or less forgotten about the term ‘gang screen’, which we probably last heard used casually in the mid 1990s. So much time has passed that it’s really impossible to remember now whether or not that particular term was ever really in widespread use, but at some point the preferred label became ‘Easter eggs’.

Whatever you want to call them, these software surprises never really went away — but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What has certainly happened over the past two decades is that software development progressed from being the preserve of small, tight-knit teams to become a sprawling corporate monster.

A program such as Microsoft Word now represents the combined efforts of dozens or even hundreds of programmers around the world. The first version was written by literally just a couple of people, probably working in the same room. With fewer pairs of eyes on the program in its formative stages, a programmer could sneak Easter eggs into their part of the software – though even then they were running the risk of being spotted.

However, not all companies are uptight about what programmers put into their code, so Easter eggs abound even today. For example, visit www.google.com and search for ‘Do a barrel roll’ or ‘askew’. That’s just two to get you started, but there are thousands more to be found, and in all kinds of software. Visit www.eeggs.com, click Software and away you go.

Want to know what happened to your favourite program, website or technology? Email noproblem@computeractive.co.uk