Most active commenters
  • ThrowawayR2(3)

←back to thread

Microsoft’s original source code

(www.gatesnotes.com)
617 points EvgeniyZh | 12 comments | 03 Apr 25 21:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.626s | source | bottom
Show context
breadwinner ◴[03 Apr 25 22:14 UTC] No.43576119[source]▶
Microsoft got its start by Bill Gates doing some dumpster diving. Back then software wasn't seen as valuable thing, only hardware was. Source code wasn't something to be protected, so printouts of code would be thrown in trash. And that's where Bill Gates found the source code for Basic interpreter, which he ported and it became the first Microsoft product.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm

https://paulallen.com/Futurist/Microsoft.aspx

replies(5): >>43576254 #>>43576295 #>>43576337 #>>43576374 #>>43576401 #
ThrowawayR2 ◴[03 Apr 25 22:45 UTC] No.43576374[source]▶
> "...so printouts of code would be thrown in trash. And that's where Bill Gates found the source code for Basic interpreter, which he ported and it became the first Microsoft product"

Both sources you link to say Allen and Gates pulled listings of the PDP-10 operating system out (probably DEC's TOPS-10?) of the trash. BASIC is not an operating system. So your claim is debunked by your own sources.

"...digging out the operating system listings from the trash and studying those. Really not just banging away to find bugs like monkeys[laughs], but actually studying the code to see what was wrong."

https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm

"...He and Bill would go “dumpster diving” in C-Cubed’s garbage to find discarded printouts with source code for the machine’s operating system..."

https://paulallen.com/Futurist/Microsoft.aspx

replies(2): >>43576727 #>>43576794 #
1. ThrowawayR2 ◴[03 Apr 25 23:37 UTC] No.43576750[source]▶
What part of that paragraph you quoted suggests that Microsoft BASIC wasn't original work?
replies(1): >>43576862 #
2. sanswork ◴[03 Apr 25 23:45 UTC] No.43576807[source]▶
That's not what that says at all. It says that the language was slightly different depending on the platform.

Microsoft basic wasn't the first basic interpreter which is a different claim than Microsoft basic source was copied from another interpreter.

3. pdw ◴[03 Apr 25 23:48 UTC] No.43576824[source]▶
That article is a bit confusing because it's using the term "BASIC" to refer to both the language and Microsoft's implementation. But what it's trying to say is that Microsoft's BASIC implementation was licensed by many computer companies (including Commodore and Atari) and that those companies changed and extended it in incompatible ways.
replies(1): >>43576902 #
4. daeken ◴[03 Apr 25 23:52 UTC] No.43576853[source]▶
Those were their own ports, as per the page you just linked. They developed Microsoft BASIC.

"The Altair BASIC interpreter was developed by Microsoft founders Paul Allen and Bill Gates using a self-written Intel 8080 emulator running on a PDP-10 minicomputer."

5. ◴[03 Apr 25 23:53 UTC] No.43576862[source]▶
6. ◴[04 Apr 25 00:39 UTC] No.43577154{3}[source]▶
7. sitharus ◴[04 Apr 25 00:57 UTC] No.43577256{3}[source]▶
None of us write programs from first principles, it's all based on code we've read before. If I was going to write a BASIC interpreter I'd read up on the basics of interpreters, literature which would include sample code, and look at other interpreters' code.

No matter where you think the code came from, the impact of Microsoft BASIC was huge, and they were first to the market.

8. ForOldHack ◴[04 Apr 25 01:03 UTC] No.43577286{3}[source]▶
BASIC was " BASIC, developed at Dartmouth College, was initially designed for and ran on a GE-225 mainframe computer paired with a Datanet-30 processor, which handled communications with Teletype terminals. " I got into the game on HP BASIC, also with teletype ASR-33s, I was only 9.
9. pdw ◴[04 Apr 25 01:31 UTC] No.43577433{3}[source]▶
Bill Gates did not write it by himself, Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff also worked on it. And they did not have a finished product after 8 weeks -- only a demo. The first commercial release was "version 2", half a year later.
replies(1): >>43577571 #
10. ThrowawayR2 ◴[04 Apr 25 01:44 UTC] No.43577505{3}[source]▶
How would Bill Gates copy source code from a 36-bit minicomputer with 32 kilowords (no byte addressing) of memory and a time-sharing operating system to a 8 bit microprocessor with a completely different instruction set and 4 kilobytes of memory and no operating system, just bare metal? Even if he and Allen had had the source code for BASIC-10, which you haven't provided evidence of, it would be closer to a reimplementation than a port.

And DEC was in Massachusetts, Bill Gates went to high school in Washington. That would be one hell of a road trip to dig into DEC's trash.

replies(1): >>43577674 #
11. pcunite ◴[04 Apr 25 01:59 UTC] No.43577571{4}[source]▶
Podcast with Monte Davidoff

https://floppydays.libsyn.com/floppy-days-113-monte-davidoff...

Starts after about the first 15 minutes.

12. breadwinner ◴[04 Apr 25 02:21 UTC] No.43577674{4}[source]▶
I think it was C-Cubed's trash, but it was DEC's IP. See: https://www.theregister.com/2000/06/29/bill_gates_roots/