7 ms·

Competing with Steve Jobs (the first time)

91 points by ent101 5y ago

phendrenad2 5y ago
Very interesting blog.
WalterBright 5y ago
We sold a lot of Zortech C++ compilers to Microsoft before they developed their own.
- the-dude 5y ago
  What was up with the name Zorland C++ ? ( I ended up at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Mars ) Also, I was a junior at a startup avant-la-lettre in the early 90ies and we used Watcom C/C++ for OS/2 and Windows development. IIRC, because it supported 32-bits. Did the Zortech compiler support this?
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    There was Zorland C, but when the C++ compiler was ready it was changed to Zortech. Zortech came with its own 32 bit DOS extender.
ToFab123 5y ago
I follow this interesting blog series also. For those that are new to this series. It is written by Steven Sinofsky that for several years in Microsoft's early days was Bill Gates personal Technical Assistance (and the guy that removed the start button in Windows). He is now writing a book about his life at Microsoft in the early days. This blog series is the chapters in that book. You can subscribe so each chapters is send to your email free of charge. I am waiting with a bit of excitement to the next chapter. In that chapter he is introducing Bill Gates to the Internet(!) That got to count as a special day at work. So far the chapters has been released like maybe twice a week. Now there is longer-ish pause since the previous chapter was released. The conspiracy theorist in me think the pause could be BillG that wants to review that chapter before it is being released. Just a guess to why there seems to be a small pause in the release flow or maybe it is just me being impatient:)
- brailsafe 5y ago
  My first guess on the release cadence would be that he had a few in the bag already and now he's actually writing, but I suppose it's plausible that BillG could have noticed.
  - stevesi 5y ago
    Thank you and Hello ... the posts are all written, except for the artifacts/captions. I usually post on sundays and then one other day during the week based on the testing I've been doing for the first 20 or so posts. It depends on holidays and other events--I recognize this isn't a time sensitive topics and don't want to interfere with big events. There's no prior restraint--no one is reviewing this and there are no constraints on what I am writing (all of this as per the Author note and introduction)
- simonh 5y ago
  I remember hearing about the "Cornell is WIRED" memo at the time, back in the 90s. That memo was in 1994 and it woke Microsoft up to the potential of open interconnected networks based on standard technologies, as against the proprietary siloed dial-up services like AOL and Compuserve that dominated at the time. I remember reading contemporary articles by Jerry Pournelle about the information utilities that we would all subscribe to. Silos were considered to be the future. Meanwhile academic networks were building the real future, but it wasn't quite there yet. Early services were built on either completely unstructured single-purpose tools like FTP and Telnet, or hierarchical systems like Usenet and Gopher. Web Browsers did exist, but the interconnected webs of documents was only just getting going, and web applications were still in the future. A year later Bill's first edition of his book, The Road Ahead, only mentioned the World Wide Web in passing and didn't see it as particularly significant, but even in the few months it took for it to be edited, laid out and printed the situation had changed. Internet services of all kinds had been on an exponential growth curve for a few years, but the exponent for the web was so high that in those months the book became obsolete and even early reviewers knew it. It was an incredible time to be on the internet. I was lucky enough to have used Janet, the UK Joint Academic Network and our equivalent of ARPANET, in the late 80s. I had a telnet account into a University from work in the 90s, and first accessed web sites using a terminal based browser called Lynx. The Cornell memo is important because it shows how disconnected communities of technologists were back then. If you were on the Internet and using Gopher and the Web, the growth rate and explosion of new resources and services was obvious. It was every day. You couldn't understand how people in Microsoft or IBM didn't realise what was going on. I was on both - 'state of the art' proprietary business networks at work and the nascent Internet. If you weren't on the internet at the time, what was actually happening was inconceivable. Even years later I watched gobsmacked in 2000 when AOL bought Time Warner. It was just staggering to me, and many other like me, that anyone credibly though AOL was at all still relevant. But the seeds of that irrelevance were being planted and growing green shoots even back in 1994 in places like Cornell. It really was a pivotal moment.
shimonabi 5y ago
I recently got a job at a company that uses Embarcadero C++ Builder, because a developer chose Borland over Microsoft in the 90's.
kwanbix 5y ago
Very cool blog. It is so sad what happened to Borland. Delphi was so cool till they did the Delphi.NET abomination. It somehow lives on on C# (by the same main developer). Borland C++ was also so much better than Microsoft C++. I wonder why MS didn't try to buy them, maybe it had something to do with the antitrust case.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  The same developer, Anders Hejlsberg, is also behind typescript.
webwielder2 5y ago
Microsoft has been unbelievably successful, and yet intrinsic to their history is being behind the curve in both vision and execution. There’s probably a lesson in that.
- libertine 5y ago
  Microsoft engaged in a lot of anticompetitive practices, though it doesn't explain all of their success it certainly helped.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mastrsushi 5y ago
This should really be titled competing with Borland. At this time the Next Software only ran on their own Unix Workstations. I think when they formed OpenStep, it was NT workstations, rather than consumer Windows PCs. They were closer in competition to Sun with their SDKs. Microsoft and Borland were for the common man that just wanted to write C++ apps. No one was running NextStep in their parents garage.

91 points by ent101 5y ago

phendrenad2 5y ago

Very interesting blog.

WalterBright 5y ago

We sold a lot of Zortech C++ compilers to Microsoft before they developed their own.

the-dude 5y ago
What was up with the name Zorland C++ ? ( I ended up at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Mars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Mars ) Also, I was a junior at a startup avant-la-lettre in the early 90ies and we used Watcom C/C++ for OS/2 and Windows development. IIRC, because it supported 32-bits. Did the Zortech compiler support this?
- WalterBright 5y ago
  There was Zorland C, but when the C++ compiler was ready it was changed to Zortech. Zortech came with its own 32 bit DOS extender.

ToFab123 5y ago

I follow this interesting blog series also. For those that are new to this series. It is written by Steven Sinofsky that for several years in Microsoft's early days was Bill Gates personal Technical Assistance (and the guy that removed the start button in Windows). He is now writing a book about his life at Microsoft in the early days. This blog series is the chapters in that book. You can subscribe so each chapters is send to your email free of charge. I am waiting with a bit of excitement to the next chapter. In that chapter he is introducing Bill Gates to the Internet(!) That got to count as a special day at work. So far the chapters has been released like maybe twice a week. Now there is longer-ish pause since the previous chapter was released. The conspiracy theorist in me think the pause could be BillG that wants to review that chapter before it is being released. Just a guess to why there seems to be a small pause in the release flow or maybe it is just me being impatient:)

brailsafe 5y ago
My first guess on the release cadence would be that he had a few in the bag already and now he's actually writing, but I suppose it's plausible that BillG could have noticed.
- stevesi 5y ago
  Thank you and Hello ... the posts are all written, except for the artifacts/captions. I usually post on sundays and then one other day during the week based on the testing I've been doing for the first 20 or so posts. It depends on holidays and other events--I recognize this isn't a time sensitive topics and don't want to interfere with big events. There's no prior restraint--no one is reviewing this and there are no constraints on what I am writing (all of this as per the Author note and introduction)
simonh 5y ago
I remember hearing about the "Cornell is WIRED" memo at the time, back in the 90s. That memo was in 1994 and it woke Microsoft up to the potential of open interconnected networks based on standard technologies, as against the proprietary siloed dial-up services like AOL and Compuserve that dominated at the time. I remember reading contemporary articles by Jerry Pournelle about the information utilities that we would all subscribe to. Silos were considered to be the future. Meanwhile academic networks were building the real future, but it wasn't quite there yet. Early services were built on either completely unstructured single-purpose tools like FTP and Telnet, or hierarchical systems like Usenet and Gopher. Web Browsers did exist, but the interconnected webs of documents was only just getting going, and web applications were still in the future. A year later Bill's first edition of his book, The Road Ahead, only mentioned the World Wide Web in passing and didn't see it as particularly significant, but even in the few months it took for it to be edited, laid out and printed the situation had changed. Internet services of all kinds had been on an exponential growth curve for a few years, but the exponent for the web was so high that in those months the book became obsolete and even early reviewers knew it. It was an incredible time to be on the internet. I was lucky enough to have used Janet, the UK Joint Academic Network and our equivalent of ARPANET, in the late 80s. I had a telnet account into a University from work in the 90s, and first accessed web sites using a terminal based browser called Lynx. The Cornell memo is important because it shows how disconnected communities of technologists were back then. If you were on the Internet and using Gopher and the Web, the growth rate and explosion of new resources and services was obvious. It was every day. You couldn't understand how people in Microsoft or IBM didn't realise what was going on. I was on both - 'state of the art' proprietary business networks at work and the nascent Internet. If you weren't on the internet at the time, what was actually happening was inconceivable. Even years later I watched gobsmacked in 2000 when AOL bought Time Warner. It was just staggering to me, and many other like me, that anyone credibly though AOL was at all still relevant. But the seeds of that irrelevance were being planted and growing green shoots even back in 1994 in places like Cornell. It really was a pivotal moment.

shimonabi 5y ago

I recently got a job at a company that uses Embarcadero C++ Builder, because a developer chose Borland over Microsoft in the 90's.

kwanbix 5y ago

Very cool blog. It is so sad what happened to Borland. Delphi was so cool till they did the Delphi.NET abomination. It somehow lives on on C# (by the same main developer). Borland C++ was also so much better than Microsoft C++. I wonder why MS didn't try to buy them, maybe it had something to do with the antitrust case.

tomjen3 5y ago
The same developer, Anders Hejlsberg, is also behind typescript.

webwielder2 5y ago

Microsoft has been unbelievably successful, and yet intrinsic to their history is being behind the curve in both vision and execution. There’s probably a lesson in that.

libertine 5y ago
Microsoft engaged in a lot of anticompetitive practices, though it doesn't explain all of their success it certainly helped.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mastrsushi 5y ago

This should really be titled competing with Borland. At this time the Next Software only ran on their own Unix Workstations. I think when they formed OpenStep, it was NT workstations, rather than consumer Windows PCs. They were closer in competition to Sun with their SDKs. Microsoft and Borland were for the common man that just wanted to write C++ apps. No one was running NextStep in their parents garage.