BASIC
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The story of Microsoft BASIC, and of Microsoft, begins with Paul Allen catching sight of the now-famous ''Popular Electronics'' in December 1974, just after the issue hit the stands. Allen read the Altair 8800 article and raced to show it to his friend and business partner Bill Gates, telling him, "Well here's our opportunity to do something with BASIC" (Wallace & Erikson 67). The two had already had some limited success when Gates was still in high school, with a venture called Traf-O-Data that produced hardware and software to count cars. They programmed the Intel 8008 microprocessor that powered Traf-O-Data using a simulator running on a Washington State University mainframe. | The story of Microsoft BASIC, and of Microsoft, begins with Paul Allen catching sight of the now-famous ''Popular Electronics'' in December 1974, just after the issue hit the stands. Allen read the Altair 8800 article and raced to show it to his friend and business partner Bill Gates, telling him, "Well here's our opportunity to do something with BASIC" (Wallace & Erikson 67). The two had already had some limited success when Gates was still in high school, with a venture called Traf-O-Data that produced hardware and software to count cars. They programmed the Intel 8008 microprocessor that powered Traf-O-Data using a simulator running on a Washington State University mainframe. | ||
| − | By 1975, Gates was at Harvard University, and he and Allen were ready for a project with broader reach. Seeing ''Popular Electronic,'' they came up with the idea of writing BASIC for the Altair and called Ed Roberts at MITS, asking if he would be interested in having their BASIC for his system. Roberts said he would buy the first version that worked (Wallace & Erikson 74). As Gates and Allen had done when developing their Traf-O-Data system, they initially programmed on a university's computer system. They used a simulator of the Altair 8800, a computer Gates and Allen had never seen in person. In hindsight, programming for a virtual machine was an evocative echo of Lady Lovelace, writing a program for a machine that hadn't been built. At the time, though, it probably seemed like a simple expediency. What they were programming at this point was, of course, a modified and minimized version of the original 1964 BASIC. Given how often the success of personal computing is attributed to entrepreneurial and business advances and to Microsoft in particular, it's remarkable that Microsoft's first product was developed borrowing time from Harvard's computer and was (as Microsoft has acknowledged) an implementation of a freely-available programming language. | + | By 1975, Gates was at Harvard University, and he and Allen were ready for a project with broader reach. Seeing ''Popular Electronic,'' they came up with the idea of writing BASIC for the Altair and called Ed Roberts at MITS, asking if he would be interested in having their BASIC for his system. Roberts said he would buy the first version that worked (Wallace & Erikson 74). As Gates and Allen had done when developing their Traf-O-Data system, they initially programmed on a university's computer system. They used a simulator of the Altair 8800, a computer Gates and Allen had never seen in person. In hindsight, programming for a virtual machine was an evocative echo of Lady Lovelace, writing a program for a machine that hadn't been built. At the time, though, it probably seemed like a simple expediency. What they were programming at this point was, of course, a modified and minimized version of the original 1964 BASIC. Given how often the success of personal computing is attributed to entrepreneurial and business advances and to Microsoft in particular, it's remarkable that Microsoft's first product was developed borrowing time from Harvard's computer and was (as Microsoft always acknowledged) an implementation of a freely-available programming language. |
Gates and Allen devised the Altair BASIC project and did most of the programming, but there was a third Altair BASIC programmer, a sort of legendary fifth Beatle. This was Monte Davidoff, who wrote the floating-point routines. Gates and Allen were discussing how they needed to code these when Davidoff, a student sitting with them at the table, spoke up and said he could write them. After talking it over with him, they enlisted him to contribute them (Wallace & Erikson 76-77). The code of this first Microsoft project is mainly by Gates and Allen, though, with Gates listed as first author. Comments at the beginning of the code declare, "BILL GATES WROTE THE RUNTIME STUFF," which he did over a period of eight weeks at Harvard. Gates would say years later that this 4 KB BASIC interpreter "was the coolest program I ever wrote" (Wallace & Erikson 76-77). | Gates and Allen devised the Altair BASIC project and did most of the programming, but there was a third Altair BASIC programmer, a sort of legendary fifth Beatle. This was Monte Davidoff, who wrote the floating-point routines. Gates and Allen were discussing how they needed to code these when Davidoff, a student sitting with them at the table, spoke up and said he could write them. After talking it over with him, they enlisted him to contribute them (Wallace & Erikson 76-77). The code of this first Microsoft project is mainly by Gates and Allen, though, with Gates listed as first author. Comments at the beginning of the code declare, "BILL GATES WROTE THE RUNTIME STUFF," which he did over a period of eight weeks at Harvard. Gates would say years later that this 4 KB BASIC interpreter "was the coolest program I ever wrote" (Wallace & Erikson 76-77). | ||
