Technologizer: The Secret Origin of Windows

April 19, 2010 by in technologizer

johnd

By Tandy Trower

In the late fall of 1984, I was just past three years in my employment with Microsoft. Considering the revolving doors in Silicon Valley at that time, I already had met or exceeded the typical time of employment with a high-tech company. Over that time I already had established a good track record, having started with product management of Microsoft’s flagship product, BASIC, and successfully introduced many versions including the so-called GW-BASIC which was licensed to PC clone vendors, various BASIC compilers, and a BASIC interpreter and compiler for the Apple Macintosh. As a result I had been given the overall responsibility for managingMicrosoft’s programming languages, which included FORTRAN, Pascal, COBOL, 8086 Macro Assembler, and its first C compiler for MS-DOS. It was at this point that things took a significant turn.

I had just gone through one of those infamous grueling project reviews with Bill Gates, who was known for his ability to cover all details related to product strategy, not only those on the technical side. Borland’s Turbo Pascal had just come out, seemed to be taking the market by storm, and looked like a possible competitor to Microsoft BASIC as the language that was shipped with every PC. While Microsoft had its own version of Pascal, it had been groomed as a professional developer’s tool, and in fact was the core language Microsoft wrote many of its own software products in before it was displaced by C.

Bill Gates made it quite clear that he was not happy.At $50 for the Borland product vs. the Microsoft $400 compiler, it was a bit like comparing a VW to a Porsche. But while Turbo Pascal was lighter weight for serious development, it was almost as quick for programming and debugging as Microsoft’s BASIC interpreters. And Pascal was the programming language that most computer science students most typically studied. The new Borland product would require serious strategy revisions to the existing plans to port Microsoft Pascal to a new compiler architecture. But it also required thinking about how to address this with our BASIC products. Could a Turbo BASIC be on the horizon? In any case, Gates made it quite clear that he was not happy .

Secret Origin of Windows Continued

[This post is excerpted with Harry McCracken's permission from his Technologizer blog.]

4 Responses to Technologizer: The Secret Origin of Windows

  1. Geordie945 says:

    What people today don’t realise is that windows was developed by Comodore of Germany and web communications has nothing to do with yanks it was developed in Coventry England by university students for communication of data and information

    Much of the then net was operated through what is known as Packet Radio

    In it’s conception it was just taking SW Radio communications a bit further

    Most software developers especially Microsoft pad their offerings with junk which needs more memory and CPU power for it to be accessable

    There is one company I know of who keep their programmes and utilities small neat and effectivethat is Gibson Labs


  2. Joe Smith says:

    Bill Gates come out with Windows because Apple had a window operating system And Radio Shake had OS2 a multy tasking system. Bill Gates saw the writing on the wall. Get a Windows Operating System going or go out of business


  3. Oh I apologise , one Software maker gets honorable mention in the list of thieves and liars as well they are (drum roll) CRYTEK , they made Crysis and came up with 2 bad patches that did not address the real problem of memory leaks and game crashes as well as poor performance But instead came out of the gate with We will no longer support Crysis ,,, so here is what we will do for you BUY Warhead … here you get a free online Hook er game Crysis wars and here is the real good part you get all the crysis fixes in WarHead so when You Buy Warhead it fixes Crysis … fact no it dont .. what it does is disable Crysis in 64 bit play and Warhead ha just as many issues. If you try to run the game at maximum quality no matter pretty much your grade of high end machine it still has problems .. if you try to go to the new hide and seek web site myCrysis you get a forum .. the first bastion of ignorance and hiding. You cannot find your question , there is no answer except for some fool flaming you for asking .. the staff are better as politicians and lawyers than techs.. to fix the game you have to start at the lowest settings and begin to play with each individual one .. LOL gee wouldnt it be better to fix the game by appearances that was built on the Sims 2 engine? But nope , first crysis is from Turkey ( a self explanatory name ) then germany and sold game rights to Korea . Now with the new and improved ( see prior post) crysis game .. Not getting suckered there bet on that … However it is best for them to take the corporate route Lie Lie Lie deny and always your system is at fault… remember the original FarCry?? 6 fixes later the game was good .. but that takes time and money … Your Money they refuse to reinvest in repairing what they took Your Money for in the first place.. figgure it out slow growth makes better product .. but the greed factor is whats the problem .. no Quality control you get garbage and denyability or just more Lies Lies Lies


  4. the origin of windows to me has only One major issue or better spoken would be in fact Two major issues , first is Windows Me that piece of tripe was by far of no use and was nothing more than an overadvertised cash cow to keepthe flow of money into microsoft , all the promises of the great OS went south in less than a length of 2 days of use. Finally they came out with XP the REAL OS . Then they came out with Vista AKA Longhorn.. Give me a break that garbage was even worse than Win Me except the promises as always while gates lines his pockets .. the first hint was when you went to a vendor for drivers while Vista was in beta . the auto scan looked for Windows Milenium drivers… gee why would that happen .. Answer start tearing down some code and programming and guess what Vista IS Milenium … I have known that from the Git Go . Others figgured it out .. now windows 7 pops out .. The TRUE LONGHORN OS . I found & ultimate both 32 bit and 64 bit much better than XP or even 95/98SE. However 7 is built for newer systems that have the resources to run it . that isnt hard to see. next the manufacturers of High end Vid cards and motherboards being spurred by Intel and AMD are the second tier culprits with hardware scamming . Come out with a new board and a great Vid crad like the 780i and the GTX295 .. great stuff absolutely great card .. BUT now try to find one … nVidia stopped production as soon as they came out with the next best .. funny how the NEW??? 470 and 480 cards are built on the 260 card same as the GTX205 .. try to buy a new 295 a 260 hybrid but is SLi .. you end up at e-bay looking to bid on a used one. We are being had by the 2 biggies Intel and AMD all low end cards you can get a dime a dozen . But if you want to run SLi with a GTX295 Co-OP or a GTX 295 standard good luck .. I despise being treated like sheep being led to slaughter. what ATI nVidia Intel and AMD are doing is not good business or even ethical it is however immoral and despicable . Instead of letting the industry grow at a reasonable rate and taking the best way to development they are scamming us with Old parts in new archtecture , memory controllers board electronics and a new name …NEW and Improved .. Ya right the only new and improved is the pocket depth of CEO’s and liars.. They need to get a grip.


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