5 ms·

> My impression is that Microsoft was founded to bring programming to the people Why do you think that? I was not around in that period, but the impression I g

> My impression is that Microsoft was founded to bring programming to the people Why do you think that? I was not around in that period, but the impression I get is that the foundation of Microsoft[0] was antithetical to "bringing programming to the people". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

freefaler 3y ago
They sold software tools at the beginning and further down the line used the tools to become the platform of choice for corporations. They controlled the OS and the tooling and this gave them great advantage in business software market share. You could get Windows source (or parts of it) if you needed to work on low-level stuff from MS and their MSDN was and is miles better than Apple developer documentation and tooling.
bazoom42 3y ago
Their first product was a programming language for a hobbyist computer.
fulladder 3y ago
That famous Gates letter is not inconsistent with the idea of large numbers of hobbyist programmers. He cared a lot about the piracy issue, but he was never trying to gate who was "allowed" to be a programmer. Microsoft's first product was a BASIC interpreter. It was all about bringing programming to the masses. Saying "to the people" implies some kind of empowerment, and I don't think that was ever quite as much a part of Microsoft's identity (although it was there in some form). "To the masses" is a better way to describe it in my opinion.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  If you booted up an IBM PC without putting a boot disk in, it booted to a Microsoft BASIC prompt that was burned into the rom.
  - fulladder 3y ago
    We had an original IBM PC (not a clone, genuine IBM), and I actually don't recall it doing that. Maybe that was on some models and not others? The way I accessed BASIC was to boot up PC-DOS (IBM-branded version of MS-DOS) and then run some program that was like QBASIC although it might not have been called that yet. Later I switched to MS-DOS 3.21, and that came with real QBASIC. I also switched from BASIC to Turbo Pascal and Turbo C. Great times!
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Yes, it was a genuine PC.
    - ptman 3y ago
      GW-BASIC? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-BASIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-BASIC
adrian_b 3y ago
Long before entering the operating system business, Microsoft was a company dedicated to making tools for programmers, like compilers and interpreters for many languages, for the CP/M operating system and for most kinds of early personal computers. The tools for programmers have remained a major part of their products during the MS-DOS era, until the early nineties. The documentation for their compilers and libraries was excellent and many people have learned much about programming from the Microsoft manuals (or from reverse engineering their programs). Only after the transition to Windows and their success in suppressing the competition for MS Office by their control over the development of the operating system, the programming tools business has progressively become only a small part of the Microsoft products and the programmers only a small part of their customers.
- MegaDeKay 3y ago
  All you need to do is head over to archive.org and look at a Byte magazine from "back in the day". It was filled with ads and reviews for programming tools like Turbo C and Turbo Pascal. It was a golden age, and I was there for it.
ThrowawayR2 3y ago
Bringing programming to the people does not mean giving away your work for gratis. The fuss over the increasing use of non-free but source available licenses instead of OSI approved FOSS licenses shows that people are coming around to Gates' viewpoint.
- Zambyte 3y ago
  Maybe we should encourage people to charge more for Free Software instead of licensing software in a way that arbitrarily restricts users.
rbanffy 3y ago
They wanted to bring programming to the people, as long as they got rich from it. Nobody ever thought they'd do that for free (except when they used piracy as a form of dumping, by turning a blind eye to it when convenient).

freefaler 3y ago

They sold software tools at the beginning and further down the line used the tools to become the platform of choice for corporations. They controlled the OS and the tooling and this gave them great advantage in business software market share. You could get Windows source (or parts of it) if you needed to work on low-level stuff from MS and their MSDN was and is miles better than Apple developer documentation and tooling.

bazoom42 3y ago

Their first product was a programming language for a hobbyist computer.

fulladder 3y ago

That famous Gates letter is not inconsistent with the idea of large numbers of hobbyist programmers. He cared a lot about the piracy issue, but he was never trying to gate who was "allowed" to be a programmer. Microsoft's first product was a BASIC interpreter. It was all about bringing programming to the masses. Saying "to the people" implies some kind of empowerment, and I don't think that was ever quite as much a part of Microsoft's identity (although it was there in some form). "To the masses" is a better way to describe it in my opinion.

WalterBright 3y ago
If you booted up an IBM PC without putting a boot disk in, it booted to a Microsoft BASIC prompt that was burned into the rom.
- fulladder 3y ago
  We had an original IBM PC (not a clone, genuine IBM), and I actually don't recall it doing that. Maybe that was on some models and not others? The way I accessed BASIC was to boot up PC-DOS (IBM-branded version of MS-DOS) and then run some program that was like QBASIC although it might not have been called that yet. Later I switched to MS-DOS 3.21, and that came with real QBASIC. I also switched from BASIC to Turbo Pascal and Turbo C. Great times!
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Yes, it was a genuine PC.
  - ptman 3y ago
    GW-BASIC? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-BASIC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GW-BASIC

adrian_b 3y ago

Long before entering the operating system business, Microsoft was a company dedicated to making tools for programmers, like compilers and interpreters for many languages, for the CP/M operating system and for most kinds of early personal computers. The tools for programmers have remained a major part of their products during the MS-DOS era, until the early nineties. The documentation for their compilers and libraries was excellent and many people have learned much about programming from the Microsoft manuals (or from reverse engineering their programs). Only after the transition to Windows and their success in suppressing the competition for MS Office by their control over the development of the operating system, the programming tools business has progressively become only a small part of the Microsoft products and the programmers only a small part of their customers.

MegaDeKay 3y ago
All you need to do is head over to archive.org and look at a Byte magazine from "back in the day". It was filled with ads and reviews for programming tools like Turbo C and Turbo Pascal. It was a golden age, and I was there for it.

ThrowawayR2 3y ago

Bringing programming to the people does not mean giving away your work for gratis. The fuss over the increasing use of non-free but source available licenses instead of OSI approved FOSS licenses shows that people are coming around to Gates' viewpoint.

Zambyte 3y ago
Maybe we should encourage people to charge more for Free Software instead of licensing software in a way that arbitrarily restricts users.

rbanffy 3y ago

They wanted to bring programming to the people, as long as they got rich from it. Nobody ever thought they'd do that for free (except when they used piracy as a form of dumping, by turning a blind eye to it when convenient).