Re: PDP-11 OS Release Dates

jmfbahciv_at_aol.com
Date: 08/10/03 

Date: Sun, 10 Aug 03 09:52:55 GMT

In article <868yq5zomw.fsf@fuckup.hack.org>,
   Mikael Cardell <mc@hack.org> wrote:
>jmfbahciv@aol.com writes:
>
>> Everybody has to learn about I/O and memory management. What might
>> work stand-alone with one flavor of program, will not work for
>> others. If they had learned the do's and don'ts of I/O which was
>> in every program on the -10, the lore would have carried over to
>> DOS and Windows.
>
>I understand now. I agree completely that every programmer has to
>learn these things.
>
>However, I don't think Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the original authors
>of MS/Altair BASIC, had much to do with the programming of MS DOS or
>MS Windows. I would be very surprised if Gates had even looked at the
>code of any part of, say, MS Windows.

Perhaps not, but they set the policy (which would have slued into
coporate folklore) of how to do their biz. IF their business
plan had been geared to software development rather than just
software distribution, the funding allotments would have been
very different.

>
>My guess is that Bill was mainly a manager type and Paul was out
>playing venture capitalist, sponsoring basketball teams and playing
>with his home hacking stuff. I really doubt anyone of them had
>anything to do with programming Microsoft products after the BASIC for
>Altair.

So what? How a product gets produced is directly related to
how it gets funded. This is how companies are run.

/BAH

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