Comment by russellbeattie

Comment by russellbeattie 9 days ago

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Allen wrote an 8080 emulator on a time shared PDP-10 in order for Gates to write the assembly code that implemented a BASIC interpreter - complete with I/O and editor - for a sight-unseen system, all in 4 kilobytes. And it worked the first time it was run.

I've been in the industry for 30 years and I couldn't do all that without serious Googling (or AI help nowadays).

Doing it as 20-somethings in the mid 70s definitely qualifies them as pure breed hackers to me.

Seanambers 9 days ago

As a kid of the late 90s i feel like it was kinda unfair.

Back in the day (70s(?)80s) computers shipped with the programming language manual. All I got was a CDROM of ENCARTA and a slip to mail in for a restore set of MS DOS / WIN 3.1 diskettes(which was sorely needed I might add).

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  • russellbeattie 9 days ago

    In the mid 70s you got a badly mimeographed copy of the schematics and a bag of parts.

    In the late 70s to early 80s you got a programming manual, but you had to save your programs on cassette tapes.

    In the late 80s, you got glossy manuals which showed you how to turn on the computer, hook up a printer and load a program from DOS.

    In the early 90s, the manuals were plain paper, smaller, and had instructions on how to use a mouse, and explained what a window is. Plus the mail-ins.

    Mid-90s (CD-ROM "multimedia machines") you got a sheet of paper which told you to load the interactive tutorial from the included CD.

    Late 90s you got 5000 hours of AOL. Plus another CD filled with co-branded crapware like CorelDraw Lite for Dell.

    2000s+ crapware pre-installed, driver CD and a warranty card.

    So really, the time period with the included programming manual was just a few years. And mostly all you did is print Hello World over and over again on the screen. So don't be too jealous.

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    • adrian_b 8 days ago

      Good programming manuals that were delivered with the computers and with the compilers/interpreters have existed about for the entire time when MS-DOS was dominant, i.e. from the launch of IBM PC in 1981, which always had things like a commented BIOS listing, which was very instructive, and detailed documentation of all its hardware peripherals, until the mid nineties, i.e. until Windows 95.

      Until the early nineties, the compilers and interpreters from companies like Borland and Microsoft came with big excellent programming manuals demonstrating how to use them.

      Also any complex commercial application for MS-DOS, e.g. AutoCAD, Lotus 1-2-3, the BRIEF editor for programmers etc., would have voluminous manuals, including sections on how to write scripts in whatever embedded scripting language they were using.

      Only for the users of pirated copies of MS-DOS, compilers etc., the access to manuals was more difficult and some of them may have even not been aware of what manuals were normally available for the legitimate owners. Most IBM PC clones also did not have much documentation delivered with them. Since they were made to be compatible with IBM, it was supposed that anyone who needs them will buy the original IBM manuals.

      Since Windows 95, the vendors of hardware PC peripherals have stopped providing documentation for them, providing closed-source Windows device drivers instead, but before that, whenever I was buying some PC add-on card, it typically came with a manual providing enough information about control registers etc., that I was able to write an MS-DOS device driver myself, if necessary.

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