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CP/M creator Gary Kildall's memoirs released as free download

(spectrum.ieee.org)
244 points rbanffy | 8 comments | 18 Jul 25 10:22 UTC | HN request time: 2.46s | source | bottom
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POSSIBLE_FACT ◴[18 Jul 25 11:46 UTC] No.44603645[source]▶
Absolutely loved when I randomly caught an episode of Computer Chronicles back in the old time days.
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rbanffy ◴[18 Jul 25 12:04 UTC] No.44603765[source]▶
I think that, by now, I have watched every episode. He was the Bill Gates we needed.
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whobre ◴[18 Jul 25 12:14 UTC] No.44603845[source]▶
He was nothing like BG. Gary was an inventor, educator and most of all a visionary. He hated running a business, even though he started DRI after failing to convince Intel to buy CP/M.

Yes, there are quite a few videos on YouTube about him, named “The man who should have been Bill Gates” but that’s just click baiting. Watch the special episode of “The Computer Chronicles” about Gary Kildall and see what his friends and business associates say about him.

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1. FuriouslyAdrift ◴[18 Jul 25 12:53 UTC] No.44604163[source]▶
Just like Jobs. He was the marketing and sales guy. Woz, et al. were the visionaries and engineers cranking out the product.
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2. rbanffy ◴[18 Jul 25 13:53 UTC] No.44604659[source]▶
Jobs had a key difference from Gates - he had taste. He insisted on the injection molded case for the Apple II instead of sheet metal because he wanted it to look like a finished product. He insisted on not having lines dividing the color bands in their logo, which made it more expensive to print (but much nicer to look at).

Jobs would never let something like Windows 1 escape the lab.

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3. FuriouslyAdrift ◴[18 Jul 25 14:33 UTC] No.44605064[source]▶
He also refused to have fans in the first several models causing a high failure rate...

Form follows function. Just ask Ive.

4. esafak ◴[18 Jul 25 14:46 UTC] No.44605239[source]▶
Good thing Microsoft fixed it with 2.0!?
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5. ido ◴[18 Jul 25 18:22 UTC] No.44608124{3}[source]▶
They arguably fixed it at 3.0, the first truly popular version of windows.
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6. FuriouslyAdrift ◴[18 Jul 25 18:42 UTC] No.44608331{4}[source]▶
3.11 was the first really decent one.
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7. canucker2016 ◴[18 Jul 25 20:05 UTC] No.44609194[source]▶
Jobs had control of the hardware and the software.

Gates (well, the MS programmers) had to make the software work on the PC hardware of the time (CGA/EGA video cards including non-square pixels and terrible colour palette, see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20100625-00/?p=13...)

8. rbanffy ◴[18 Jul 25 21:44 UTC] No.44610150{5}[source]▶
3.1 was a massive upgrade over 3.0 - it introduced TrueType. 3.11 had peer to peer networking and, at least in Brazil, doomed Netware in the small business segment.