8 ms·

Bill Gates's Personal Easter Eggs in 8 Bit BASIC (2008)

129 points by michalpleban 1y ago

dang 1y ago
Related. Others? Bill Gates' Personal Easter Eggs in 8 Bit Basic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30110068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30110068 - Jan 2022 (1 comment)
csl 1y ago
An excellent article. Bill Gates himself posted a comment: https://www.pagetable.com/?p=43#comment-1033 https://www.pagetable.com/?p=43#comment-1033
- RetroTechie 1y ago
  Nice! From that comment: "There were a lot of interesting versions of BASIC done for Japanese machines this article misses (..)" Most likely referring to MSX-Basic. Which shows it's (c) Microsoft on the startup screen. Not the fastest, but a very full-featured Basic compared to most Basics around @ the time. Iirc it does non-integer math on BCD coded values. Single & double precision, so users can decide RAM use/speed/precision tradeoffs. Maybe there were other Japanese machines using MS-supplied Basics before that. But if so, likely few (any?) after MSX was introduced ('83), since that was big in Japan leaving little room for 8-bit competitors.
  - dhosek 1y ago
    My very first computer was a Spectravideo MSX computer which I got in exchange for writing some demo programs for the midwest distributor for the company. Fun little machine, although I still preferred Apple in general.
- qingcharles 1y ago
  What do you think his hn username is? :)
  - breadwinner 1y ago
    billg. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=billg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=billg
    - dang 1y ago
      Actual billg would probably not have posted, er, teenwag.com: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121. (It was killed as spam but I've unkilled it now so it's visible to users who don't have 'showdead' turned on.)
      - qingcharles 1y ago
        My curiosity got the best of me. I checked archive.org to see what it was. A digg clone for celeb porn links? Was rightfully tagged as spam :)
        dang 1y ago
        If actual billg ever wants the account we'll be happy to recycle the username!
ilrwbwrkhv 1y ago
Bill gates is the only remaining hacker one can look upto. Yes he was ruthless but also the amount of work he did for humanity was orders of magnitude more than others. The current crop of rich folks are really the wrong uns and come from a deep history of bad families. Rotten blood really shows.
- indigodaddy 1y ago
  One of my favorite past times is reading different Bill Gates biographies. They never get old. Right now actually just started reading the one he actually wrote recently. It's excellent so far.
  - predictsoft 1y ago
    Or Paul Allen in Accidental Zillionaire.
- chasil 1y ago
  What is interesting to consider is if Dave Cutler had not been available or otherwise did not choose Microsoft in 1988. Would Microsoft have adapted BSD NET/1 as Apple eventually did, instead of continuing OS/2?
  - Keyframe 1y ago
    What's interesting is that Cutler said in an interview that initially he talked to Gates but wasn't interested until Ballmer swayed him in. with a few minutes of pretext: https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?t=3224 https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?t=3224
- Teever 1y ago
  "The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place."
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
asadm 1y ago
I have a question, can something like this survive in today's world? or have the disassembling tools now too advanced to easily wipe something like this when cloning.
- omoikane 1y ago
  It sounds like you are asking whether anti-cloning or anti-piracy measures would survive in today's world, and that's something of an ugly arms race. The publishers know whatever scheme they put in will eventually be defeated, but most of them just want to deter piracy for a limited period after the release date. The Microsoft easter egg is from an earlier era where things aren't so ugly. The Cutting Room Floor has more easter eggs of that nature, for example: https://tcrf.net/Super_Tetris_3 https://tcrf.net/Super_Tetris_3 Also try searching for "hidden copyright".
amelius 1y ago
If you copy someone's code, always add a bunch of easter eggs saying the code belongs to company X, Y and Z. Then nobody else can claim it as their own.
- drewcoo 1y ago
  I think you're thinking of the legend of DOS and mixing it with this story. https://www.geekwire.com/2012/csi-redmond-forensic-analysis-finds-msdos-stolen/ https://www.geekwire.com/2012/csi-redmond-forensic-analysis-...
OpenLoong 1y ago
interesting!
gitroom 1y ago
nice, always blows my mind how much history is packed into old computers and all the random stories. i geek out over this stuff tbh.
jojo14 1y ago
I wouldn't call that an easter egg. IMHO it's rather a backdoor. A covert method to gain access to information about the system. Indeed what is the benefit to the user? No need to feed the mythology about BG. He was not a developer. Period.
- jodrellblank 1y ago
  No need to try and rewrite history just because you hate M$ or whatever.
  - jojo14 1y ago
    I don't hate Micro-soft however I like the truth. Do you know the BASIC was open source ? Wikipedia is your friend.
    - jodrellblank 1y ago
      Do you know Bill Gates claimed to program Fortran? [1] Did you know Joel Spolsky who co-founded StackOverflow and used to project manage Excel at Microsoft described Bill Gates[2] as "amazingly technical. He understood Variants, and COM objects, and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables and why this might lead to dual interfaces. He worried about date functions. He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual, programmer." ? Did you know Raymond Chen of The Old New Thing blog recounted the story[3] "During the development of Windows 3.0, it was customary to have regular meetings with Bill Gates to brief him on the status of the project. At one of the reviews, the topic was performance, and Bill complained, “You guys are spending all this time with your segment tuning tinkering. I could teach a twelve-year-old to segment-tune. I want to see some real optimization, not this segment tuning nonsense. I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven’s sake.” (I can’t believe I had to write this: This is a dramatization, not a courtroom transcript.) This “I wrote FAT on an airplane” line was apparently one Bill used when he wanted to complain that what other people was doing wasn’t Real Programming. But this time, the development manager decided she’d had enough. “Fine, Bill. We’ll set you up with a machine fully enlisted in the Windows source code, and you can help us out with some of your programming magic, why don’t you.”" which, while dramatization, puts Bill Gates in a light where he could code and multiple people knew it and believed it. Compare with another Joel Spolsky comment "the same time that Bill Gates was hauling programmers into meetings begging them to create a single rich text edit control that could be reused in all their products. Put Jim Manzi (the suit who let the MBAs take over Lotus) in that meeting and he would be staring blankly. “What’s a rich text edit control?” It never would have occurred to him to take technological leadership because he didn’t grok the technology" Age 13 he wrote code / debugged for 'Computer Center Corp.' sneaking out to do it[4] This is multiple people making multiple different but connected claims about someone who founded one of the world's biggest software companies - he claims that he codes, other people claim that he codes, other people call him amazingly technical, other people find it plausible that he was criticising code performance in technical ways and gate(s)keeping 'real programming' as something he did and others weren't doing. You "like the truth" what evidence do you have other than you saying "period"? [1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Early-Days-as-a-Computer-Programmer https://www.gatesnotes.com/Early-Days-as-a-Computer-Programm... [2] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev... [3] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20131008-00/?p=3003 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20131008-00/?p=30... [4] https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/business/money-report/at-age-13-bill-gates-snuck-out-to-write-code-until-2-a-m-that-lucky-break-helped-him-create-microsoft/3677943/ https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/business/money-report/at-age...
neuroelectron 1y ago
"I stole this and put my name on it first"
anthk 1y ago
On the Altair Basic, good achievement; but giving how fast Forth was, I'd guess that using a fixed point and a optional floating point for a 8800 machine it would send Basic to NUL.
cookie_monsta 1y ago
Oh how dreary. I was hoping for something fun and whimsical but it's just IP protection...

129 points by michalpleban 1y ago

dang 1y ago

Related. Others? Bill Gates' Personal Easter Eggs in 8 Bit Basic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30110068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30110068 - Jan 2022 (1 comment)

csl 1y ago

An excellent article. Bill Gates himself posted a comment: https://www.pagetable.com/?p=43#comment-1033 https://www.pagetable.com/?p=43#comment-1033

RetroTechie 1y ago
Nice! From that comment: "There were a lot of interesting versions of BASIC done for Japanese machines this article misses (..)" Most likely referring to MSX-Basic. Which shows it's (c) Microsoft on the startup screen. Not the fastest, but a very full-featured Basic compared to most Basics around @ the time. Iirc it does non-integer math on BCD coded values. Single & double precision, so users can decide RAM use/speed/precision tradeoffs. Maybe there were other Japanese machines using MS-supplied Basics before that. But if so, likely few (any?) after MSX was introduced ('83), since that was big in Japan leaving little room for 8-bit competitors.
- dhosek 1y ago
  My very first computer was a Spectravideo MSX computer which I got in exchange for writing some demo programs for the midwest distributor for the company. Fun little machine, although I still preferred Apple in general.
qingcharles 1y ago
What do you think his hn username is? :)
- breadwinner 1y ago
  billg. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=billg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=billg
  - dang 1y ago
    Actual billg would probably not have posted, er, teenwag.com: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6121. (It was killed as spam but I've unkilled it now so it's visible to users who don't have 'showdead' turned on.)
    - qingcharles 1y ago
      My curiosity got the best of me. I checked archive.org to see what it was. A digg clone for celeb porn links? Was rightfully tagged as spam :)
      - dang 1y ago
        If actual billg ever wants the account we'll be happy to recycle the username!

ilrwbwrkhv 1y ago

Bill gates is the only remaining hacker one can look upto. Yes he was ruthless but also the amount of work he did for humanity was orders of magnitude more than others. The current crop of rich folks are really the wrong uns and come from a deep history of bad families. Rotten blood really shows.

indigodaddy 1y ago
One of my favorite past times is reading different Bill Gates biographies. They never get old. Right now actually just started reading the one he actually wrote recently. It's excellent so far.
- predictsoft 1y ago
  Or Paul Allen in Accidental Zillionaire.
chasil 1y ago
What is interesting to consider is if Dave Cutler had not been available or otherwise did not choose Microsoft in 1988. Would Microsoft have adapted BSD NET/1 as Apple eventually did, instead of continuing OS/2?
- Keyframe 1y ago
  What's interesting is that Cutler said in an interview that initially he talked to Gates but wasn't interested until Ballmer swayed him in. with a few minutes of pretext: https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?t=3224 https://youtu.be/xi1Lq79mLeE?t=3224
Teever 1y ago
"The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armor to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place."
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

asadm 1y ago

I have a question, can something like this survive in today's world? or have the disassembling tools now too advanced to easily wipe something like this when cloning.

omoikane 1y ago
It sounds like you are asking whether anti-cloning or anti-piracy measures would survive in today's world, and that's something of an ugly arms race. The publishers know whatever scheme they put in will eventually be defeated, but most of them just want to deter piracy for a limited period after the release date. The Microsoft easter egg is from an earlier era where things aren't so ugly. The Cutting Room Floor has more easter eggs of that nature, for example: https://tcrf.net/Super_Tetris_3 https://tcrf.net/Super_Tetris_3 Also try searching for "hidden copyright".

amelius 1y ago

If you copy someone's code, always add a bunch of easter eggs saying the code belongs to company X, Y and Z. Then nobody else can claim it as their own.

drewcoo 1y ago
I think you're thinking of the legend of DOS and mixing it with this story. https://www.geekwire.com/2012/csi-redmond-forensic-analysis-finds-msdos-stolen/ https://www.geekwire.com/2012/csi-redmond-forensic-analysis-...

OpenLoong 1y ago

interesting!

gitroom 1y ago

nice, always blows my mind how much history is packed into old computers and all the random stories. i geek out over this stuff tbh.

jojo14 1y ago

I wouldn't call that an easter egg. IMHO it's rather a backdoor. A covert method to gain access to information about the system. Indeed what is the benefit to the user? No need to feed the mythology about BG. He was not a developer. Period.

jodrellblank 1y ago
No need to try and rewrite history just because you hate M$ or whatever.
- jojo14 1y ago
  I don't hate Micro-soft however I like the truth. Do you know the BASIC was open source ? Wikipedia is your friend.
  - jodrellblank 1y ago
    Do you know Bill Gates claimed to program Fortran? [1] Did you know Joel Spolsky who co-founded StackOverflow and used to project manage Excel at Microsoft described Bill Gates[2] as "amazingly technical. He understood Variants, and COM objects, and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables and why this might lead to dual interfaces. He worried about date functions. He didn’t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn’t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual, programmer." ? Did you know Raymond Chen of The Old New Thing blog recounted the story[3] "During the development of Windows 3.0, it was customary to have regular meetings with Bill Gates to brief him on the status of the project. At one of the reviews, the topic was performance, and Bill complained, “You guys are spending all this time with your segment tuning tinkering. I could teach a twelve-year-old to segment-tune. I want to see some real optimization, not this segment tuning nonsense. I wrote FAT on an airplane, for heaven’s sake.” (I can’t believe I had to write this: This is a dramatization, not a courtroom transcript.) This “I wrote FAT on an airplane” line was apparently one Bill used when he wanted to complain that what other people was doing wasn’t Real Programming. But this time, the development manager decided she’d had enough. “Fine, Bill. We’ll set you up with a machine fully enlisted in the Windows source code, and you can help us out with some of your programming magic, why don’t you.”" which, while dramatization, puts Bill Gates in a light where he could code and multiple people knew it and believed it. Compare with another Joel Spolsky comment "the same time that Bill Gates was hauling programmers into meetings begging them to create a single rich text edit control that could be reused in all their products. Put Jim Manzi (the suit who let the MBAs take over Lotus) in that meeting and he would be staring blankly. “What’s a rich text edit control?” It never would have occurred to him to take technological leadership because he didn’t grok the technology" Age 13 he wrote code / debugged for 'Computer Center Corp.' sneaking out to do it[4] This is multiple people making multiple different but connected claims about someone who founded one of the world's biggest software companies - he claims that he codes, other people claim that he codes, other people call him amazingly technical, other people find it plausible that he was criticising code performance in technical ways and gate(s)keeping 'real programming' as something he did and others weren't doing. You "like the truth" what evidence do you have other than you saying "period"? [1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Early-Days-as-a-Computer-Programmer https://www.gatesnotes.com/Early-Days-as-a-Computer-Programm... [2] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev... [3] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20131008-00/?p=3003 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20131008-00/?p=30... [4] https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/business/money-report/at-age-13-bill-gates-snuck-out-to-write-code-until-2-a-m-that-lucky-break-helped-him-create-microsoft/3677943/ https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/business/money-report/at-age...

neuroelectron 1y ago

"I stole this and put my name on it first"

anthk 1y ago

On the Altair Basic, good achievement; but giving how fast Forth was, I'd guess that using a fixed point and a optional floating point for a 8800 machine it would send Basic to NUL.

cookie_monsta 1y ago

Oh how dreary. I was hoping for something fun and whimsical but it's just IP protection...