12 ms·

Gary Kildall

87 points by shawndumas 11y ago

talloaktrees 11y ago
I love this video Computer Chronicles: Unix (1985) feat. Gary Kildall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7P16mYDIJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7P16mYDIJw
- michaelcampbell 11y ago
  Even today, years after that show has long since ended, talking about tech that isn't necessarily relevant any more, it is still entertaining and worth watching for anyone interested in the field or its history.
- coldcode 11y ago
  I was on Computer Chronicles back in 1987. He was a cool guy despite missing out on the whole DOS explosion.
davelnewton 11y ago
He was one of my childhood programming idols lo those many years ago; cemented after reading the original Programmers At Work.
simplicio 11y ago
If nothing else, he was certainly one of the best looking of the early micro-computer pioneers.
smacktoward 11y ago
The failure of Digital Research and IBM to reach a deal to bundle CP/M with the original PC provides one of the great "what-ifs" in computing history. If that deal had been made, Microsoft wouldn't have gotten the big infusion of capital that turned it from a niche vendor into the behemoth it eventually became. Which means Windows, Office, and IE (if they were ever developed at all!) would have had to compete in the marketplace without MS being able to use their monopoly over PC operating systems as a lever to boost them up over the competition. Which in turn means a whole host of products whose names are just footnotes today -- Netscape, OS/2, GEM, TopView, DESQView, DeskMate, GEOS, Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, Ami Pro, and on and on and on -- would have had access to the oxygen that could have turned them into the Next Big Thing. Oxygen that Microsoft was only able to deny them because of the muscle the failure of that original deal had given them. Who knows what the computing world would look like today if that deal had been reached?
- delibes 11y ago
  I imagine an alternate universe where you wrote : "The failure of Microsoft and IBM to reach a deal to bundle DOS with the original PC provides one of the great "what-ifs" in computing history."
- wvenable 11y ago
  I think the single behemoth is a bit of stable state for computing, especially in those days. So you would end up with just a different behemoth and it could have been worse.
- brandonmenc 11y ago
  > a whole host of products whose names are just footnotes today Don't forget BeOS!
  - njloof 11y ago
    Apple's been doing a credible job of duplicating the features of BeOS in MacOS X, with the help of some key BeOS refugees (notably Dominic Giampaolo).
    - Stratoscope 11y ago
      This is very interesting. Could you give any specifics? Thanks!
      - codezero 11y ago
        HFS/HFS+ are very very similar to the BeOS filesystem. Dominic Giampaolo developed that, so I assume that's what's being referred to. There's a great writeup of the file system here: http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf In particular, the labels and how they worked in BeOS are a big part of HFS, when Finder says it's "indexing" it's indexing all those extended attributes (among other things).
    - brandonmenc 11y ago
prestonbriggs 11y ago
Before CP/M and such, he was a serious compiler guy who made contributions to data-flow analysis, etc. E.g., http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=512945 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=512945
- prestonbriggs 11y ago
  More accessible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-flow_analysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-flow_analysis
marktangotango 11y ago
Gordon Eubanks worked with Kildall during this time period, he talks about the events surrounding the deal with IBM in this oral history. Fascinating stuff: http://www.cwhonors.org/archives/histories/Eubanks.pdf http://www.cwhonors.org/archives/histories/Eubanks.pdf
seltzered 11y ago
Oddly, I learned about Gary Kildall a few days ago after reading a wired article about the "Halt and Catch Fire" tv series ( http://www.wired.com/2014/05/halt-and-catch-fire/ http://www.wired.com/2014/05/halt-and-catch-fire/ ) "Easter eggs: Gordon and Donna Clarks’ first initials and back story echo those of Gary and Dorothy Kildall"
fizixer 11y ago
Highly recommended (though the Gary Kildall bit is very short): - A movie: Pirates of Silicon Valley (https://youtu.be/BI-nzUIYIX4 https://youtu.be/BI-nzUIYIX4) - A documentary: Triumph of the Nerds (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudrw8Z7-gFa7Is4YZitOF7-AfLl2u8IA https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudrw8Z7-gFa7Is4YZitO...) - Not involving Gary Kildall, but about open source, gnu, and linux: Revolution OS: (https://youtu.be/fxjElWL8igo https://youtu.be/fxjElWL8igo)
- acomjean 11y ago
  I too would highly recommend Trimuph of the Nerds Documentary (That Cringley Guy is involved in it). Lots of first hand accounts. Plus IBM Carols being sung! Triumph of the Nerds has some first person accounts from Jack Sams of IBM and Bill Gates and Balmer (of the whole IBM/ Digital Research negotiation (or lack thereoff). Its in part 2 (11 minutes in). Basically IBM wanting programming languages and an OS from Microsoft. MS didn't have an OS, so they sent IBM to Digital Research (Gary's Company). The deal to get CP/M fell through Microsoft said, we'll sell you (IBM) and OS too. Microsoft then bought the OS from a company across town. That os was basically adapted from CP/M (the author used the cp manual as a starting point)
  - rmason 11y ago
    That's not exactly how it happened. IBM already knew about CP/M because it was already powering the non-Apple PC market. Knowing IBM's desire for an OS as well as Basic he sent Steve Balmer across town to license 86-DOS, aka Seatle DOS which became his offering MSDOS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS IBM eventually offered three different OS on the original IBM PC but Gates shrewdly made sure his was the lowest priced one and the rest is history.
    - flomo 11y ago
      If I recall the story correctly, there was some confusion because IBM saw "Microsoft CP/M" running on an Apple II. (MS licensed it from DR and sold it with their "Z80 SoftCard". The Apple II+SoftCard was supposedly the most popular CP/M machine.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulQ4CWBfR_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulQ4CWBfR_g
bane 11y ago
You can watch many of the Computer Chronicles episodes Kildall was in at the Internet Archive. They're simply awesome snapshots of the state of the market at the time. https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles And the episode celebrating his life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVqBokd3l2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVqBokd3l2E
webreac 11y ago
It seems that IBM is in bad shape because of a non-disclosure agreement. Maybe the lesson should be that NDA are bad.
dribnet 11y ago
If you've ever wondered why newlines are sometimes CR and other times CR+LF, I think Gary is part of that answer.
- CodeWriter23 11y ago
  It's because on a terminal, CR moved the cursor to the left column and LF moved the cursor down one line. That was also true for dot matrix printers, and paper-based terminals like a modded IBM Selectric or the DecWriter. So if you wanted your file to display properly when type'd to the console or pip'd to a printer, you needed CR,LF make it work. LF alone would give you text in a barber pole pattern, and CR alone would give you the last line of a file on a terminal, or a horrible mess of over strike text on a printer.
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    Ah, I remember those days. If someone made the mistake of just using CR alone in a big file they spooled to the lineprinter, it sometimes quite literally would halt and catch fire. There was a fire-extinguisher placed next to it for a reason.
mappu 11y ago
The article didn't ever mention the second listed spouse, Karen. Apparently he underwent a second divorce after beating her with a pool cue < http://issorp.com/site/umour/garykildall.htm http://issorp.com/site/umour/garykildall.htm >.
rasz_pl 11y ago
If you want to know how was he IRL I recommend watching Computer chronicles. Gary Kildall Special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdj8gh9GPc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdj8gh9GPc4 Whole playlist of episodes, its like watching non-fiction 'Halt and Catch Fire': https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT/playlists?view=1&sort=dd https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT/playlists?...

87 points by shawndumas 11y ago

I love this video Computer Chronicles: Unix (1985) feat. Gary Kildall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7P16mYDIJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7P16mYDIJw

michaelcampbell 11y ago
Even today, years after that show has long since ended, talking about tech that isn't necessarily relevant any more, it is still entertaining and worth watching for anyone interested in the field or its history.
coldcode 11y ago
I was on Computer Chronicles back in 1987. He was a cool guy despite missing out on the whole DOS explosion.

davelnewton 11y ago

He was one of my childhood programming idols lo those many years ago; cemented after reading the original Programmers At Work.

simplicio 11y ago

If nothing else, he was certainly one of the best looking of the early micro-computer pioneers.

smacktoward 11y ago

The failure of Digital Research and IBM to reach a deal to bundle CP/M with the original PC provides one of the great "what-ifs" in computing history. If that deal had been made, Microsoft wouldn't have gotten the big infusion of capital that turned it from a niche vendor into the behemoth it eventually became. Which means Windows, Office, and IE (if they were ever developed at all!) would have had to compete in the marketplace without MS being able to use their monopoly over PC operating systems as a lever to boost them up over the competition. Which in turn means a whole host of products whose names are just footnotes today -- Netscape, OS/2, GEM, TopView, DESQView, DeskMate, GEOS, Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, Ami Pro, and on and on and on -- would have had access to the oxygen that could have turned them into the Next Big Thing. Oxygen that Microsoft was only able to deny them because of the muscle the failure of that original deal had given them. Who knows what the computing world would look like today if that deal had been reached?

delibes 11y ago
I imagine an alternate universe where you wrote : "The failure of Microsoft and IBM to reach a deal to bundle DOS with the original PC provides one of the great "what-ifs" in computing history."
wvenable 11y ago
I think the single behemoth is a bit of stable state for computing, especially in those days. So you would end up with just a different behemoth and it could have been worse.
brandonmenc 11y ago
> a whole host of products whose names are just footnotes today Don't forget BeOS!
- njloof 11y ago
  Apple's been doing a credible job of duplicating the features of BeOS in MacOS X, with the help of some key BeOS refugees (notably Dominic Giampaolo).
  - Stratoscope 11y ago
    This is very interesting. Could you give any specifics? Thanks!
    - codezero 11y ago
      HFS/HFS+ are very very similar to the BeOS filesystem. Dominic Giampaolo developed that, so I assume that's what's being referred to. There's a great writeup of the file system here: http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf http://www.nobius.org/~dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf In particular, the labels and how they worked in BeOS are a big part of HFS, when Finder says it's "indexing" it's indexing all those extended attributes (among other things).
  - brandonmenc 11y ago

prestonbriggs 11y ago

Before CP/M and such, he was a serious compiler guy who made contributions to data-flow analysis, etc. E.g., http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=512945 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=512945

prestonbriggs 11y ago
More accessible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-flow_analysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-flow_analysis

marktangotango 11y ago

Gordon Eubanks worked with Kildall during this time period, he talks about the events surrounding the deal with IBM in this oral history. Fascinating stuff: http://www.cwhonors.org/archives/histories/Eubanks.pdf http://www.cwhonors.org/archives/histories/Eubanks.pdf

seltzered 11y ago

Oddly, I learned about Gary Kildall a few days ago after reading a wired article about the "Halt and Catch Fire" tv series ( http://www.wired.com/2014/05/halt-and-catch-fire/ http://www.wired.com/2014/05/halt-and-catch-fire/ ) "Easter eggs: Gordon and Donna Clarks’ first initials and back story echo those of Gary and Dorothy Kildall"

fizixer 11y ago

Highly recommended (though the Gary Kildall bit is very short): - A movie: Pirates of Silicon Valley (https://youtu.be/BI-nzUIYIX4 https://youtu.be/BI-nzUIYIX4) - A documentary: Triumph of the Nerds (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudrw8Z7-gFa7Is4YZitOF7-AfLl2u8IA https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudrw8Z7-gFa7Is4YZitO...) - Not involving Gary Kildall, but about open source, gnu, and linux: Revolution OS: (https://youtu.be/fxjElWL8igo https://youtu.be/fxjElWL8igo)

acomjean 11y ago
I too would highly recommend Trimuph of the Nerds Documentary (That Cringley Guy is involved in it). Lots of first hand accounts. Plus IBM Carols being sung! Triumph of the Nerds has some first person accounts from Jack Sams of IBM and Bill Gates and Balmer (of the whole IBM/ Digital Research negotiation (or lack thereoff). Its in part 2 (11 minutes in). Basically IBM wanting programming languages and an OS from Microsoft. MS didn't have an OS, so they sent IBM to Digital Research (Gary's Company). The deal to get CP/M fell through Microsoft said, we'll sell you (IBM) and OS too. Microsoft then bought the OS from a company across town. That os was basically adapted from CP/M (the author used the cp manual as a starting point)
- rmason 11y ago
  That's not exactly how it happened. IBM already knew about CP/M because it was already powering the non-Apple PC market. Knowing IBM's desire for an OS as well as Basic he sent Steve Balmer across town to license 86-DOS, aka Seatle DOS which became his offering MSDOS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/86-DOS IBM eventually offered three different OS on the original IBM PC but Gates shrewdly made sure his was the lowest priced one and the rest is history.
  - flomo 11y ago
    If I recall the story correctly, there was some confusion because IBM saw "Microsoft CP/M" running on an Apple II. (MS licensed it from DR and sold it with their "Z80 SoftCard". The Apple II+SoftCard was supposedly the most popular CP/M machine.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulQ4CWBfR_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulQ4CWBfR_g

bane 11y ago

You can watch many of the Computer Chronicles episodes Kildall was in at the Internet Archive. They're simply awesome snapshots of the state of the market at the time. https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles And the episode celebrating his life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVqBokd3l2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVqBokd3l2E

webreac 11y ago

It seems that IBM is in bad shape because of a non-disclosure agreement. Maybe the lesson should be that NDA are bad.

dribnet 11y ago

If you've ever wondered why newlines are sometimes CR and other times CR+LF, I think Gary is part of that answer.

CodeWriter23 11y ago
It's because on a terminal, CR moved the cursor to the left column and LF moved the cursor down one line. That was also true for dot matrix printers, and paper-based terminals like a modded IBM Selectric or the DecWriter. So if you wanted your file to display properly when type'd to the console or pip'd to a printer, you needed CR,LF make it work. LF alone would give you text in a barber pole pattern, and CR alone would give you the last line of a file on a terminal, or a horrible mess of over strike text on a printer.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  Ah, I remember those days. If someone made the mistake of just using CR alone in a big file they spooled to the lineprinter, it sometimes quite literally would halt and catch fire. There was a fire-extinguisher placed next to it for a reason.

mappu 11y ago

The article didn't ever mention the second listed spouse, Karen. Apparently he underwent a second divorce after beating her with a pool cue < http://issorp.com/site/umour/garykildall.htm http://issorp.com/site/umour/garykildall.htm >.

rasz_pl 11y ago

If you want to know how was he IRL I recommend watching Computer chronicles. Gary Kildall Special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdj8gh9GPc4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdj8gh9GPc4 Whole playlist of episodes, its like watching non-fiction 'Halt and Catch Fire': https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT/playlists?view=1&sort=dd https://www.youtube.com/user/ComputerChroniclesYT/playlists?...