BASIC
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Allen flew to visit MITS in Albuquerque, taking the program on paper tape. He realized during the plane's decent that he did not have a bootloader that would allow the Altair to read the tape, so he wrote one in machine language as the plane was landing. Then, he headed to see an Altair for the first time -- all of the work he, Gates, and Davidoff had done was via a simulator. The BASIC demo, of course, was a success and the intepreter was licensed by MITS. Gates and Allen moved to New Mexico to create new versions of BASIC for the Altair and to maintain the original code, and Microsoft was booted and running. | Allen flew to visit MITS in Albuquerque, taking the program on paper tape. He realized during the plane's decent that he did not have a bootloader that would allow the Altair to read the tape, so he wrote one in machine language as the plane was landing. Then, he headed to see an Altair for the first time -- all of the work he, Gates, and Davidoff had done was via a simulator. The BASIC demo, of course, was a success and the intepreter was licensed by MITS. Gates and Allen moved to New Mexico to create new versions of BASIC for the Altair and to maintain the original code, and Microsoft was booted and running. | ||
| − | In the book ''Invisible Engines,'' three authors develop of a theory of how software platforms can be two-sided (or multi-sided) in the sense of two-sided markets. In a predominantly one-sided market, such as a swap meet where people arrive with comics to trade, there is only one class of participant, a person interested in exchanging goods with other people. A classic land-line telephone company is also in a one-sided market, since every customer is more or less the same sort of participant, one who wants to make and receive calls. On the other hand, a credit card company has two different classes of customer: merchants, who receive payments and need terminals, and cardholders, who have a line of credit and who make purchases. | + | The new platform of BASIC on the Altair was not going to be as simple as Microsoft and MITS cutting a licensing deal, however; other stakeholders were involved as well. In the book ''Invisible Engines,'' three authors develop of a theory of how software platforms can be two-sided (or multi-sided) in the sense of two-sided markets. In a predominantly one-sided market, such as a swap meet where people arrive with comics to trade, there is only one class of participant, a person interested in exchanging goods with other people. A classic land-line telephone company is also in a one-sided market, since every customer is more or less the same sort of participant, one who wants to make and receive calls. On the other hand, a credit card company has two different classes of customer: merchants, who receive payments and need terminals, and cardholders, who have a line of credit and who make purchases. |
When Atari released the Atari VCS (later called the Atari 2600) in 1977, before the advent of third-party games, it had a one-sided platform. Atari made the system and (initially) all the games and controllers. The only participants in the market, and users of the platform, were the players. By the early 1980s, when Activision, Imagic, and other third-party companies had come into the market, there was another class of participant -- one that was not paying royalties to Atari for the privilege of making games for their console. | When Atari released the Atari VCS (later called the Atari 2600) in 1977, before the advent of third-party games, it had a one-sided platform. Atari made the system and (initially) all the games and controllers. The only participants in the market, and users of the platform, were the players. By the early 1980s, when Activision, Imagic, and other third-party companies had come into the market, there was another class of participant -- one that was not paying royalties to Atari for the privilege of making games for their console. | ||
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Microsoft's Windows is another example of a platform with at least two sides. On one side, computers need an operating system and desktop environment to function. This leads hardware manufacturers such as Dell to purchase licenses to Windows and to include the software with their systems. On the other side, computers are only valuable if there are applications written for them. Microsoft writes some of the applications for Windows, but third-party developers write many. The abundance of software has a network effect that is positive for Microsoft: it encourages users to stay with Windows. And, since Windows is preinstalled on many computers, companies want to write applications for it. | Microsoft's Windows is another example of a platform with at least two sides. On one side, computers need an operating system and desktop environment to function. This leads hardware manufacturers such as Dell to purchase licenses to Windows and to include the software with their systems. On the other side, computers are only valuable if there are applications written for them. Microsoft writes some of the applications for Windows, but third-party developers write many. The abundance of software has a network effect that is positive for Microsoft: it encourages users to stay with Windows. And, since Windows is preinstalled on many computers, companies want to write applications for it. | ||
| − | Of course, Windows was not the first two-sided platform, nor even Microsoft's first. By retaining the rights to what IBM called PC-DOS, Microsoft had previously been able to license MS-DOS to other companies, much as they would later sell OEM copies of Windows to them. And before that, there are continuities with the company's first product line, Microsoft BASIC. BASIC was a programming language, not an operating system, but the presence of BASIC allowed programs to be written on a computer and sometimes sold. There were two sides to BASIC: The computer companies, beginning with MITS, who wanted it on their machines and the computer hobbyists who wanted to write (and in many cases sell) BASIC programs. At Gates and Allen's company, the success of BASIC and the essential business plan used with that family of software products helped to develop the later success of MS-DOS and Windows. | + | Of course, Windows was not the first two-sided platform, nor even Microsoft's first. By retaining the rights to what IBM called PC-DOS, Microsoft had previously been able to license MS-DOS to other companies, much as they would later sell OEM copies of Windows to them. And before that, there are continuities with the company's first product line, Microsoft BASIC. BASIC was a programming language, not an operating system, but the presence of BASIC allowed programs to be written on a computer and sometimes sold. There were two sides to BASIC: the computer companies, beginning with MITS, who wanted it on their machines and the computer hobbyists who wanted to write (and in many cases sell) BASIC programs. At Gates and Allen's company, the success of BASIC and the essential business plan used with that family of software products helped to develop the later success of MS-DOS and Windows. |
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| − | BASIC continued to develop and diverge as it came into the home. To allow programs to be written more compactly, Microsoft's Altair BASIC introduced the colon (:) as a separator of statements on the same line, so that one could write lines such as: | ||
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| − | <code>160 R=16:PRINT"HOW MANY DECKS (1-4)";</code> | ||
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| − | This feature was missing from minicomputer BASICs and the ANSI standard, and Kemeny and Kurtz saw it as potentially confusing rather than helpful. When they released their much-revised True BASIC for home computers in 1983, it did not allow multi-statement lines. The colon is, however, important to 10 PRINT; this program could not be written as a concise one-liner without it. | ||
== Tiny BASIC and Copyleft == | == Tiny BASIC and Copyleft == | ||
