I've heard a much different story regarding "Digital," but it wasn't where MS-DOS originated, but how IBM became involved with Microsoft. It wasn't "DEC" (Digital Equipment Corp) but "DR," "Digital Research." And MS-DOS wasn't based on it, it was a competitor. IBM wanted to buy an OS for its new computer, and the owners of DR were too busy to see the IBM reps, on vacation, or refused to sign the NDR, depending on which story you listen to.
And not if it's running Linux, in which case quite a bit was was influenced by Andrew Tannenbaum.
Though you may be more correct that you realize. One of the chief architects of Windows NT, Dave Cutter, was was hired away from DEC, who was behind the VAX11/780 and VMS.
Mark
my sister claims (if i recall correctly and if not, it’s my fault not hers) that gates worked there and that she recalls seeing him at The Mill.
As you go on to explain, Digital Research (another small company like Microsoft) put off IBM, so they went down the street, figuratively, to Gates. Now I had to look this up, but it appears that Bill saw the opportunity and grabbed at it with both hands. He went out and quickly bought a little system called QDOS from another software house called Seattle Computer Products and used this as a basis for MS-DOS, whose Rev 1.0 he was able to deliver pretty quickly.
And not if it's running Linux, in which case quite a bit was was influenced by Andrew Tannenbaum.
Torvalds gives explicit credit to Tannenbaum's Minix project. However, ultimate credit is due to Kernighan and Ritchie of Bell Labs, with their Unix.
One of the chief architects of Windows NT, Dave Cutter, was was hired away from DEC, who was behind the VAX11/780 and VMS.
One of my former colleagues was fond of pointing out what happens when you step the letters of the acronym VMS one letter forward in the alphabet.
Love VMS! In fact, when I was at BBN in the early 1990’s, I wrote a full screen editor for DCL using DCL. Very cool language.
I started before high school with DEC’s RSTS-11 BASIC-PLUS, before picking up Data General COBOL for a summer job in high school. In college, learned FORTRAN and 8080 Assembler.
After college it was VAX VMS COBOL, then APL, and C. By the time OO coding came around, I was doing enterprise app implementations (e.g. Oracle Applications), but 95% of the work was PL/SQL and ODBC for querying databases.
Haven’t done much coding, save the occasional VB Script or Excel macro, in the last 10 years or so. It used to be fun; now PM and org change are more interesting...