4 ms·
Ask HN: Why did the old school MS guys release source?
It was the early to mid 90s, 11 year old me sporting a 486, and boredom with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups led me to explore my DOS diskettes.
My handful of DOS 6.22 stiffy disks were light brown, with a white label - crisp black print - and I kept them in this deep purple Dysan disk box.
Fuck I loved that box.
And one day I watched Hackers (1995).
I instantly went exploring those disks, and soon discovered GORILLA.BAS
And thanks to some older kid at school, I discovered QBasic.
Completely changed my life!
So I sometimes wonder, why did the MS guys include the source code for GORILLA.BAS on DOS disks?
I would have loved to have been in that meeting.
- mattl 5y agoThose were examples on how to use QuickBASIC vs GW BASIC, I'd imagine.
- herodoturtle 5y agoWas this of strategic importance? I’m not familiar with the history.
- mattl 5y agoQBASIC and QuickBASIC are more of an IDE with features like no longer requiring line numbers. There were apparently four example programs.
- runjake 5y agoIt was of strategic importance, yes. Get more people using their version of BASIC. BASIC was a fairly competitive bullet point for platforms, at the time.