Thats how Gates and Allen wrote their BASIC interpreter for the Altair microcomputer and started MicroSoft. They did not have access to a working 8080 microcomp

Thats how Gates and Allen wrote their BASIC interpreter for the Altair microcomputer and started MicroSoft. They did not have access to a working 8080 microcomputer so they simulated one on a Harvard mainframe from a machine language specification. Bill took the interpreter by punch tape to MITS in Albuquerque. And legend has it their BASIC worked only after an hour of fiddling.