Posted on 04/02/2006 2:57:40 PM PDT by wagglebee
I wonder: If Gates & Allen hadn't been the first ones to develop a programming language for the Altair, would we all have been programming in Pascal (or some kind of Tiny Algol) a lot sooner instead of BASIC, or would CP/M assembler be the top-dog language, or <shudder> FORTH?
Medved said the same thing on his show Monday. He's usually pretty careful about information that he shares.
oops, should clarify--Medved said the same thing that you said Rush is saying.
However, the marketplace ate it up. QB was a lot "RADder" than TP, and it didn't take long for QB to eat TP's lunch. Borland fought back by coughing up "Turbo Basic" -- intended to be a QB-killer. Ah, but Gates out-Borlanded Borland! Shortly thereafter, MS delivered "Quick Pascal 1.0" -- a TP "near-clone", with almost identical syntax, more features, and a much nicer, easier to use UI.
Kahn got the message. Borland dropped TB, and MS dropped QP. QP 1.0 was the beginning and end of that dialect (and "Microsoft Pascal", a "full-price" compiler, faded into history too).
CP/M didn't come along for some time after MS's BASIC hit the streets, and, there were a variety of non-MS BASICs that were written for it. They all eventually failed, because they were by comparison crude, and lacked the support that MS could afford to deliver. I began with the TRS-80 dialect -- first tape, then the disc version; I remember how excited I was when they released the upgrade that recognized full variable names! Prior to that, only the first two letters of a variable name were recognized. "Total" and "Top" were both "To" as far as the interpreter was concerned -- and, they were both syntax errors too! ("To" was a reserved word.)
If there was any "language for the common man" that would have stood a chance for doing for "personal computing" what MS's BASIC did, it was Vulcan, AKA DbaseII. It would not have taken much to turn it into a general purpose programming language. If not for BASIC's ubiquity, I suspect Ratliff may have gone that route. In fact, after he sold off dBase, he started selling a new Vulcan -- a new, hopped-up version. I bought a copy, and upgraded it once, and while it's been so long that I don't remember much at all, I do seem to recall it having been beefed up into a fairly decent "close to general purpose" language.
Ah, memories...
(BTW if it seems that I am partial to Basic -- at least the modern dialects -- it's because I am. I not only cut my teeth on it, but, ended up seguing from my original career to become a software developer, and then, a "famous author" writing book and magazine articles on the language. MS Basic has been good to me.)
Anyway, I learned BASIC in high school in the mid '70s. They had a timeshared teletype machine that we wrote & ran our programs on. When the TRS-80 came out and I got one, I became so frustrated with BASIC's two-letter variable names, I started using assembler, because that language let you use a whole 6 letters! That was my introduction to a "real, adult" language. And sealed my career track as a software engineer. I even got to co-author a Windows book, too. (Who hasn't by now? :-)
This talk of Gates & Allen brings up a nagging question: Who's the genius who decided that we needed to use the silly backslash to separate directory names? I think that was a stupider decision than the infamous 640k memory limit.
OK, getting back (slightly) to the topic at hand: Wasn't there another company called SWTPC, in Texas IIRC, that came out with a 6800-based machine shortly after MITS came out with their Altair? I'm thinking that if the Altair had never seen the light of day, there was nevertheless a lot of ferment in the hobby/industry, and someone else would have been the first.
Yup. Started out for CP/M, then they came out with a DOS version. Later, they had a short-lived Windows version, which morphed into Delphi. Then, MS hired the guy in charge of Delphi and put him in charge of VB!
(TP wasn't made for Windows, was it?)
I wrote "something" for Delphi, even though I never used the language! LOL! It was published by Que. I hesitate to be any more specific at the risk of "outting" my RL ID. (I did buy Delphi ver. 1.0, but due to my distaste for Pascalish "wordiness", and, video driver issues that Borland never addressed, I never did more than mild farting around with it for a month or so, and this was a long time prior to my "something" engagement.)
Mine was on VBScript, with pieces lifted and dropped into "other" titles by my publisher. But, I am now a reconstructed programmer. :) Even though I am still on the masthead of "a leading software developers magazine" I haven't touched a compiler in well over a year, nor have I written a magazine article in that same timeframe. I am now working on a "hard SF" novel. ("Hard" as opposed to "fantasy" or "sword and sorcery", ugh! :)
I even got to co-author a Windows book, too. (Who hasn't by now? :-)
Tim Paterson.
Who's the genius who decided that we needed to use the silly backslash to separate directory names?
After writing "QDOS", and having it bought from his employer by Gates & Company, he was hired to massage it into DOS 1.0. I think he stayed onboard until 2.0, and then left, to start a hardware company. He designed and marketed a HDC for the XT bus, which was unique in that it had a 1:1 interleave. (Unique for the time and platform.) He also wrote his own BIOS -- XT and AT versions. I bought his controllers and licensed his BIOS for the machines I was building at the time.
The kicker was that part of his deal with MS was that he had an apparently perpetual license to DOS, with the only restriction being that he could only sell it if bundled with hardware. So, I could buy one copy with each controller or BIOS (with the latter, the labels counted as "hardware" -- I bought one master EPROM and then burned my own copies and stuck the labels on 'em).
This seems to have been a real "stick in the craw" thing in Redmond. Here was this huge corporation, with tight control over their IP, except for this one guy who had full rights to market it on his own!
So, they wooed him back into the fold. They must have made him a sweetheart deal -- the DOS copies I bought from him were full retail shrinkwrap MS edition. Then, he sold his company to Phoenix (and I ended up buying Phoenix labels intead of Paterson), and he went back to MS, to work on VB.
After my book came out (within days!) he had the temerity to insult it! Fortunately it was on a non-public forum. :) (He raced through it and jumped to some hasty conclusions, c'est la vie.)
Yup, Southwest Technical Products Corp. I bought one of their kits in the late '60s, it was a guitar sustain device. They got started selling parts kits (and built versions too, as I recall) for projects that were initially presented as articles in Popular Electronics.
OK, getting back (slightly) to the topic at hand: Wasn't there another company called SWTPC, in Texas IIRC, that came out with a 6800-based machine shortly after MITS came out with their Altair?
Oh, no doubt. From the moment the first 4004 rolled off the line, it was inevitable that there was going to be a "personal computer revolution", it was just a question of time. That said, I do not think it was inevitable that there would have been a Microsoft (or, that Gates would have been anything other than an excellent student with some other career track) had there not been the Altair 8800. It was that machine that tickled Gates' interest, and it was his Altair BASIC that laid the foundation for Microsoft.
I'm thinking that if the Altair had never seen the light of day, there was nevertheless a lot of ferment in the hobby/industry, and someone else would have been the first.
That's a twisted organization. I first saw their site a few years ago and thought it was satire.
"That probably goes too far, but a planet with only 1 billion people, like it was in 1900 would be a lot more comfortable."
How?
Recall the old joke:
Gorbachev tells Raisa, "I dreamt last night that we Communists ruled the world!"
Raisa smiles broadly. "Wonderful, Mikael! But why are you so sad?"
He shakes his head. "But where would we buy grain?"
Wrong... smarter people should be having more kids. I'd rather have the majority of the next generation be educated rather than un-educated.
These guys are so backwards.
I'm convinced that these idiots are either ignorant or just plain psychotic.
Hmmm, maybe “idiocy” is the reason these guys don't want to have kids... and that's just fine by me, lol.
So, these "do-do's" will go the way of the "do do" bird.
Sounds good to me!
I think so, too.
Speaking of idiotic, have you guys heard about the Gospel according to Judas?
The latest information that I am getting is that Jesus talked Judas into betraying him, so that he could fulfill the prophecies?
I don't even know where to begin on that one?
The Son of God, asking a disciple to commit sin?
I wonder what they'll say next time.
Our spring break begins during Holy Week.
This has been a long week.
I am so amazed at the way people can come to such lengths to discredit the works of God. To wish that most of mankind would be destroyed, for what?
To advance a theory that isn't even sound? Can you imagine what these children of these people must think?
"Dad you want us to be wiped out by a plague, because of what?"
There is no moral compass for these people. The spirit of life is dead within them.
I think so, and don't forget, greediness. Their desire to make easy money is their number one priority.
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