Kythra Suntamer

You can just imagine what would have happened if Basic happened in this era where we're all connected by the internet. Shit would have spread like wildfire so much faster.

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This is part of what makes it fascinating.

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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.

Harvard’s computer and was (as Microsoft always acknowledged) an imple-
mentation of a freely available programming language from Dartmouth.

Given how often the success of personal computing is attributed to entre-
preneurial and business advances and to Microsoft in particular, it’s remark-
able that Microsoft’s first product was developed by borrowing time on

What they were programming at this point was,
of course, a modified and minimized version of the original 1964 BASIC.

They
used a simulator to program the Altair 8800, a computer Gates and Allen
had never seen in person.

Rob-
erts said he would buy the first version that worked (Wallace and Erikson
1992, 74). As Gates and Allen had done when developing their Traf-O-Data
system, they initially programmed on a university’s computer system.

Seeing Popular Electronics, 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. R

By 1975, Gates was at Harvard University, and he and Allen were ready
for a project with broader reach.

They programmed the Intel
8008 microprocessor that powered Traf-O-Data using a simulator running
on a Washington State University mainframe

The two had already had some limited business success when
Gates was still in high school, with a venture called Traf-O-Data that pro-
duced hardware and software to count cars.

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 and Erikson
1992, 67). T

The story of Microsoft BASIC, and of Microsoft, begins with Paul Allen
catching sight of the now-famous January 1975 issue of Popular Electron-
ics just after it hit the stands.

At the same time, the 10 PRINT program participated in a context of BA-
SIC sharing and exploration that was strongly influenced by the People’s
Computer Company

The BASIC for this system
is—although this is not visible on the startup screen—a Microsoft product.

licensed to MITS, the Altair’s manufacturer; and Tiny BASIC, which origi-
nated at the People’s Computer Company or PCC. The Commodore 64’s
BASIC is directly descended from Altair BASIC, by the company whose
name was later standardized as “Microsoft.”

The BASICs that led in these
directions were Microsoft’s Altair BASIC, the official BASIC for the platform,

it does highlight two extremes in soft-
ware development: one commercial, closely coordinated with hardware
manufacturers and highly tied to licensing and cost structures; the other
community based, nonprofit, and “copyleft.”

There were two successful efforts to develop a BASIC interpreter for the
Altair. Their varied histories have had a lasting impact on modern comput-
ing and modern culture. While this tale of two BASICs is not about the best
of BASIC and the worst of BASIC,

I live in Oregon. none.