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From Fire in the ValleyThen the Popular Electronics article came out. Gates' friend Paul Allen ran through Harvard Square with the article to wave it in front of Gates' face and say, "Look, it's going to happen! I told you this was going to happen! And we're going to miss it!" Gates had to admit that his friend was right; it sure looked as though the "something" they had been looking for had found them. He immediately phoned MITS, claiming that he and his partner had a BASIC language usable on the Altair. When Ed Roberts, who had heard a lot of such promises, asked Gates when he could come to Albuquerque to demonstrate it, Gates looked at his childhood friend, took a deep breath, and said, "Oh, in two or three weeks." Gates put down the receiver, turned to Allen and said: "I guess we should go buy a manual." They went straight to an electronics shop and purchased Adam Osborne's manual on the 8080. |
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From HackersNot long before MITS began shipping Altairs to computer-starved Popular Electronics readers, Ed Roberts had gotten a phone call from two college students named Paul Allen and Bill Gates. The two teenagers hailed from Seattle. Since high school the two of them had been hacking computers... The Altair article, while not impressing them technically, was exciting to them: it was clear microcomputers were the next big thing, and they could get involved in all the action by writing BASIC for this thing. They had a manual explaining the instruction set for the 8080 chip, and they had the Popular Electronics article with the Altair schematics, so they got to work writing something that would fit in 4K of memory. Actually, they had to write the interpreter in less than that amount of code, since the memory would not only be holding their program to interpret BASIC into machine language, but would need space for that program that the user would be writing. It was not easy, but Gates in particular was a master at bumming code, and with a lot of squeezing and some innovative use of the 8080 instruction set, they thought they'd done it. When they called Roberts, they did not mention they were placing the call from Bill Gates' college dorm room. Roberts was cordial, but warned them that others were thinking of an Altair BASIC; they were welcome to try, though. "We'll buy from the first guy who shows up with one," Roberts told them. |
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From Accidental EmpiresLike the Buddha, Gates' enlightenment came in a flash. Walking across Harvard Yard while Paul Allen waved in his face the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics announcing the Altair 8800 microcomputer from MITS, they both saw instantly that there would really be a personal computer industry and that the industry would need programming languages. Although there were no microcomputer software companies yet, 19-year-old Bill's first concern was that they were already too late. "We realized that the revolution might happen without us," Gates said. "After we saw that article, there was no question of where our life would focus.""Our life?" What the heck does Gates mean here -- that he and Paul Allen
were joined at the frontal lobe, sharing a single life, a single set of
experiences? In those days, the answer was "yes." Drawn together by the
idea of starting a pioneering software company and each convinced that
he couldn't succeed alone, they committed to sharing a single life -- a
life unlike that of most other PC pioneers because it was devoted as much
to doing business as to doing technology. Gates was a businessman from
the start; otherwise, why would he have been worried about being passed
by? There was plenty of room for high-level computer languages to be developed
for the fledgling platforms, but there was only room for one first high-level
language. Anyone could participate in a movement, but only those with the
right timing could control it.
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From Portraits in SiliconAfter Gates entered Harvard in the fall of 1973, Allen challenged him to developed a BASIC interpreter for the Intel 8008, but Gates soon decided that the 8080 instruction set was not powerful enough for BASIC. Allen next urged that they start a microcomputer firm. The two had already spent $360 to purchase one of the very first microcomputer chips. The turning point in their young careers came when they read the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. The Altair microcomputer, based on the 8080 chip, made by an Albuquerque, New Mexico firm called MITS, and selling for $350, appeared on the cover. Allen was the first to see the article. He noticed a copy of the magazine at the newsstand and hastily tracked down Gates. Here was the first truly cheap computer! Allen ran through Harvard Square waving the article in front of Gates, issuing a friendly warning that the train was leaving, and if the two of them didn't get to work, they would not be aboard. Gates' problem was whether to stick to his present studies in pursuit of the legal career his parents wished for him, or give full attention to computers. The latter won out; the two young men wanted to make sure they wouldn't miss what was happening. "We realized," Gates recalls, "that the revolution might happen without us. After we saw that article, there was no question of where our life would focus." Allen proposed to Gates that the two try to write a BASIC -- the simple, high-level computer programming language -- for the Altair. At least one minicomputer firm had insisted that it was impossible to write a high-level language that would run on a personal computer. But the two young men wanted to give it a try. They informed MITS of their plan. |
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From Programmers at Work(Bill Gates speaking to Susan Lammers)The really great programs I've written have all been ones that I have
thought about for a huge amount of time before I ever wrote them. I wrote
a BASIC interpreter for a minicomputer in high school. I made massive mistakes
in that program, and then I got to look at some other BASIC interpreters.
So by the time I sat down to do Microsoft BASIC in 1975, it wasn't a question
of whether I could write the program, but rather a question of whether
I could squeeze it into 4K and make it super fast... Paul Allen had brought
me the magazine with the Altair, and we thought, "Geez, we'd better get
going, because we know these machines are going to be popular." And that's
when I stopped going to classes and we just worked around the clock. The
initial program was written in about three and a half weeks. We ended up
spending about eight weeks before I had it fully polished the way that
I really liked it. And then I later went back and rewrote it. No great
programmer is sitting there saying, "I'm going to make a bunch of money,"
or "I'm going to sell a hundred thousand copies." Because that kind of
thought gives you no guidance about the problems. A great programmer is
thinking, Should I rewrite this whole subroutine so that four people, instead
of three, could call it? Should I make this program ten percent faster?
Should I really think through what the common case in here is so I know
how to order this check?
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