5 ms·

Absolutely loved when I randomly caught an episode of Computer Chronicles back in the old time days.

by POSSIBLE_FACT 1y ago

rbanffy 1y ago
I think that, by now, I have watched every episode. He was the Bill Gates we needed.
- BruceEel 1y ago
  truth. Too bad we got the other one!!!
- whobre 1y ago
  He was nothing like BG. Gary was an inventor, educator and most of all a visionary. He hated running a business, even though he started DRI after failing to convince Intel to buy CP/M. Yes, there are quite a few videos on YouTube about him, named “The man who should have been Bill Gates” but that’s just click baiting. Watch the special episode of “The Computer Chronicles” about Gary Kildall and see what his friends and business associates say about him.
  - BruceEel 1y ago
    While we are here, another important article by Kildall has been made available online, "Global Expression Optimization During Compilation"-1972 [1] - while the field has obviously moved on, this is still interesting and relevant IMO, if anything it shows what a talented technical writer he was. [1]: https://www.proquest.com/docview/302615627/?fromunauthdoc=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses https://www.proquest.com/docview/302615627/?fromunauthdoc=tr...
  - agumonkey 1y ago
    Kinda saddens me that society usually aligns with marketing and business mindset (impressing, selling, profiting) instead of people like Kildall. There are many passionated, driven, creative, prolific people with intrisic motivations that are wasted due to commercial forces.
    - rbanffy 1y ago
      We ended up with the one this society, which usually aligns with business and marketing mindsets, deserves. In time, we might remake society in a kinder, wiser version of itself. At that time, we might even deserve more Kildalls.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      I remember the early IBM PC days. PC-DOS was $40. CPM/86 was $240. Both were available, people simply picked the cheaper one. I used both, and there was nothing better about CPM/86. Due to inflation, this is like $113 vs $679 today. It was a no-brainer to buy MS-DOS instead. Kildall clearly was a businessman wanting to make money off of it.
      - whobre 1y ago
        It was IBM who set the price. According to Kildall’s right-hand Tom Rolander, they were shocked when they saw the price difference.
        WalterBright 1y ago
        > It was IBM who set the price Not what I heard at the time - IBM accommodated what Kildall wanted. Kildall could have sold it separately at a competitive price.
        whobre 1y ago
        https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102717254/ https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10271725...
        WalterBright 1y ago
        The date on it is 2016. 33 years later. I don't find that particularly convincing. BTW, I've read a lot of computer histories, and I often find errors in them. This is why professional historians try to use contemporary sources as much as possible.
  - terabyterex 1y ago
    This paints Bill Gates as not a tech person and a business first person, which is not true. He got a BASIC compiler on the altair which MITS thought couldn't be done. He helped Wozniak implement a version of BASIC supporting floating point numbers. Gates didn't even want to take Microsoft public. They had to convince him. Ballmer was the biggest businessman in the bunch. Hell, he was the one that suggested kidall since Microsoft wasn't in the OS business.
    - Upvoter33 1y ago
      This is mostly true. Gates was a tech wizard - a great programmer before there were even books about programming. But to make it sound like Gates wasn't a business-first guy is wrong - he wanted to sell software from day 1. Read any early bio about him and his speech about selling software to the homebrew club (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists).
    - rbanffy 1y ago
      > BASIC compiler Interpreter - an entirely different kind of animal. Microsoft didn't get a BASIC compiler until much later. > He helped Wozniak implement a version of BASIC supporting floating point numbers. No. He sold Apple a BASIC, then used it as leverage to prevent Apple from making a BASIC for the Macintosh. > Ballmer was the biggest businessman in the bunch. He suggested cutting Paul Allen's family off when Allen was battling cancer.
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        Um, it is necessary to compile a program before being able to interpret it. I don't know how early BASICs were implemented, but the usual method is to compile it to some sort of intermediate representation, and then interpret that representation. D's compile time function execution engine works that way. So does the Javascript compiler/interpreter engine I wrote years ago, and the Java compiler I wrote eons ago. The purpose to going all the way to generating machine code is the result often runs 10x faster.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
    Just like Jobs. He was the marketing and sales guy. Woz, et al. were the visionaries and engineers cranking out the product.
    - rbanffy 1y ago
      Jobs had a key difference from Gates - he had taste. He insisted on the injection molded case for the Apple II instead of sheet metal because he wanted it to look like a finished product. He insisted on not having lines dividing the color bands in their logo, which made it more expensive to print (but much nicer to look at). Jobs would never let something like Windows 1 escape the lab.
      - FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
        He also refused to have fans in the first several models causing a high failure rate... Form follows function. Just ask Ive.
      - esafak 1y ago
        Good thing Microsoft fixed it with 2.0!?
        ido 1y ago
        They arguably fixed it at 3.0, the first truly popular version of windows.
        FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
        3.11 was the first really decent one.
        rbanffy 1y ago
        3.1 was a massive upgrade over 3.0 - it introduced TrueType. 3.11 had peer to peer networking and, at least in Brazil, doomed Netware in the small business segment.
  - wslh 1y ago
    I recommend reading "Idea Man" [1] by Paul Allen, Microsoft's cofounder, to understand the deep and early involvement he and Bill Gates had with computers. I also recommend Hard Drive (1992) [2] for a deeper look into the business side of Bill Gates. Regardless of any negative opinions about him, I believe Bill Gates was/is in a league of his own. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea_Man [2] https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0471568864/ https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp...
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    > He was nothing like BG. This is exactly my point. > He hated running a business, even though he started DRI after failing to convince Intel to buy CP/M This is what uniquely qualified him to bring about a nicer timeline. Sadly, we got the second rate one...
  - wonger_ 1y ago
    S12E45, Gary Kildall special: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=doOQnc0A3Ek&list=PLmM8tWTshxQBws_fIdi5qH63rZxrlB0qL&index=378 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=doOQnc0A3Ek&list=PLmM8tWTshxQB...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
LeoPanthera 1y ago
In case anyone doesn't realise, (nearly) every episode is available on the Internet Archive. I was recently involved in restoring an additional "lost" episode from a tape found in a libarary. https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles Why not start with the "Gary Kildall Special": https://archive.org/details/GaryKild https://archive.org/details/GaryKild

Absolutely loved when I randomly caught an episode of Computer Chronicles back in the old time days.

rbanffy 1y ago

I think that, by now, I have watched every episode. He was the Bill Gates we needed.

BruceEel 1y ago
truth. Too bad we got the other one!!!
whobre 1y ago
He was nothing like BG. Gary was an inventor, educator and most of all a visionary. He hated running a business, even though he started DRI after failing to convince Intel to buy CP/M. Yes, there are quite a few videos on YouTube about him, named “The man who should have been Bill Gates” but that’s just click baiting. Watch the special episode of “The Computer Chronicles” about Gary Kildall and see what his friends and business associates say about him.
- BruceEel 1y ago
  While we are here, another important article by Kildall has been made available online, "Global Expression Optimization During Compilation"-1972 [1] - while the field has obviously moved on, this is still interesting and relevant IMO, if anything it shows what a talented technical writer he was. [1]: https://www.proquest.com/docview/302615627/?fromunauthdoc=true&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses https://www.proquest.com/docview/302615627/?fromunauthdoc=tr...
- agumonkey 1y ago
  Kinda saddens me that society usually aligns with marketing and business mindset (impressing, selling, profiting) instead of people like Kildall. There are many passionated, driven, creative, prolific people with intrisic motivations that are wasted due to commercial forces.
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    We ended up with the one this society, which usually aligns with business and marketing mindsets, deserves. In time, we might remake society in a kinder, wiser version of itself. At that time, we might even deserve more Kildalls.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    I remember the early IBM PC days. PC-DOS was $40. CPM/86 was $240. Both were available, people simply picked the cheaper one. I used both, and there was nothing better about CPM/86. Due to inflation, this is like $113 vs $679 today. It was a no-brainer to buy MS-DOS instead. Kildall clearly was a businessman wanting to make money off of it.
    - whobre 1y ago
      It was IBM who set the price. According to Kildall’s right-hand Tom Rolander, they were shocked when they saw the price difference.
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        > It was IBM who set the price Not what I heard at the time - IBM accommodated what Kildall wanted. Kildall could have sold it separately at a competitive price.
        whobre 1y ago
        https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102717254/ https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10271725...
        WalterBright 1y ago
        The date on it is 2016. 33 years later. I don't find that particularly convincing. BTW, I've read a lot of computer histories, and I often find errors in them. This is why professional historians try to use contemporary sources as much as possible.
- terabyterex 1y ago
  This paints Bill Gates as not a tech person and a business first person, which is not true. He got a BASIC compiler on the altair which MITS thought couldn't be done. He helped Wozniak implement a version of BASIC supporting floating point numbers. Gates didn't even want to take Microsoft public. They had to convince him. Ballmer was the biggest businessman in the bunch. Hell, he was the one that suggested kidall since Microsoft wasn't in the OS business.
  - Upvoter33 1y ago
    This is mostly true. Gates was a tech wizard - a great programmer before there were even books about programming. But to make it sound like Gates wasn't a business-first guy is wrong - he wanted to sell software from day 1. Read any early bio about him and his speech about selling software to the homebrew club (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists).
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    > BASIC compiler Interpreter - an entirely different kind of animal. Microsoft didn't get a BASIC compiler until much later. > He helped Wozniak implement a version of BASIC supporting floating point numbers. No. He sold Apple a BASIC, then used it as leverage to prevent Apple from making a BASIC for the Macintosh. > Ballmer was the biggest businessman in the bunch. He suggested cutting Paul Allen's family off when Allen was battling cancer.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      Um, it is necessary to compile a program before being able to interpret it. I don't know how early BASICs were implemented, but the usual method is to compile it to some sort of intermediate representation, and then interpret that representation. D's compile time function execution engine works that way. So does the Javascript compiler/interpreter engine I wrote years ago, and the Java compiler I wrote eons ago. The purpose to going all the way to generating machine code is the result often runs 10x faster.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
  Just like Jobs. He was the marketing and sales guy. Woz, et al. were the visionaries and engineers cranking out the product.
  - rbanffy 1y ago
    Jobs had a key difference from Gates - he had taste. He insisted on the injection molded case for the Apple II instead of sheet metal because he wanted it to look like a finished product. He insisted on not having lines dividing the color bands in their logo, which made it more expensive to print (but much nicer to look at). Jobs would never let something like Windows 1 escape the lab.
    - FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
      He also refused to have fans in the first several models causing a high failure rate... Form follows function. Just ask Ive.
    - esafak 1y ago
      Good thing Microsoft fixed it with 2.0!?
      - ido 1y ago
        They arguably fixed it at 3.0, the first truly popular version of windows.
        FuriouslyAdrift 1y ago
        3.11 was the first really decent one.
        rbanffy 1y ago
        3.1 was a massive upgrade over 3.0 - it introduced TrueType. 3.11 had peer to peer networking and, at least in Brazil, doomed Netware in the small business segment.
- wslh 1y ago
  I recommend reading "Idea Man" [1] by Paul Allen, Microsoft's cofounder, to understand the deep and early involvement he and Bill Gates had with computers. I also recommend Hard Drive (1992) [2] for a deeper look into the business side of Bill Gates. Regardless of any negative opinions about him, I believe Bill Gates was/is in a league of his own. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea_Man [2] https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp/0471568864/ https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Drive-Making-Microsoft-Empire/dp...
- rbanffy 1y ago
  > He was nothing like BG. This is exactly my point. > He hated running a business, even though he started DRI after failing to convince Intel to buy CP/M This is what uniquely qualified him to bring about a nicer timeline. Sadly, we got the second rate one...
- wonger_ 1y ago
  S12E45, Gary Kildall special: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=doOQnc0A3Ek&list=PLmM8tWTshxQBws_fIdi5qH63rZxrlB0qL&index=378 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=doOQnc0A3Ek&list=PLmM8tWTshxQB...
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

LeoPanthera 1y ago

In case anyone doesn't realise, (nearly) every episode is available on the Internet Archive. I was recently involved in restoring an additional "lost" episode from a tape found in a libarary. https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles Why not start with the "Gary Kildall Special": https://archive.org/details/GaryKild https://archive.org/details/GaryKild