this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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Bill Gates releases source code to Altair Basic, written 50 years ago to launch Microsoft (www.gatesnotes.com)
submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

We didn't have the Intel 8080 chip that the Altair computer ran on, So Paul got to work writing a program that would simulate one on Harvard's PDP-10 mainframe. This allowed us to test our software without needing an actual Altair.

So, basically:

We are going to write a compiler, but first we are going to write a Virtual Machine from scratch because the hardware is too expensive.

Good times.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Jesus. Like him or not, those guys started writing raw assembly. I have a lot of respect that they could go from nothing to writing a compiler raw out of assembly

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Yeah, it's easy to forget sometimes that they were actually pretty good coders to get started. Obviously that doesn't always translate to corporate leadership. But hey, assembly is far better than Zuckerberg's start (PHP?)