- Computer os market share 2018 software#
- Computer os market share 2018 code#
- Computer os market share 2018 Pc#
Computer os market share 2018 code#
On February 1, 1975, Allen and Gates sold their code to MITS for $3,000 (around $14,000 in 2018 dollars), plus a percentage of royalty payments up to $180,000 (roughly $843,000 in 2018 dollars). Roberts was impressed and agreed to distribute Altair BASIC. Roberts agreed, and Gates flew to MITS’ headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to present their interpreter. In March 1975, Allen and Gates contacted Ed Roberts, founder of Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), to offer him an in-person demonstration of their BASIC interpreter for the 8800. This was the real brilliance of Allen’s idea.
Computer os market share 2018 software#
As Allen correctly predicted, it would also drive down the costs of microcomputers to the point at which developing commercial software for these machines would be a viable, profitable business. A dedicated interpreter for the 8800 would make the microcomputer more appealing to hobbyist programmers like Allen and Gates. Allen’s idea to develop an interpreter built using BASIC was clever. However, like many microcomputers of the age, the Altair 8800 lacked an interpreter, computer programs that executed the source code provided to them by the machine’s compiler. The Altair 8800 was a revolutionary machine. Allen successfully persuaded Gates to leave Harvard to pursue his business idea. At the time, Allen was working at Honeywell, Inc., in Boston, while Gates was pre-law at Harvard after spending the previous summer alongside Allen at Honeywell. As he learned-then mastered-a number of languages including FORTRAN and LISP, Gates flexed his programming muscles by modifying the code of a class scheduling program at Lakeside that placed Gates in classes with “a disproportionate number of interesting girls.” Gates and Allen became such accomplished programmers, they were hired by Information Sciences, Inc., to write a payroll program for the company in COBOL in 1971 when Gates was just 16 years old.Īllen’s idea was to adapt the Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code-better known as BASIC-programming language for the Altair 8800. Gates had been fascinated with computers since before grade school.
Allen and Gates had been friends since their days at Lakeside School, a private preparatory school in Seattle, Washington, where the two boys had spent hours learning the intricacies of the school’s Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a huge, bulky General Electric mainframe. With his copy of Popular Electronics in hand, Allen visited his childhood friend and fellow programming enthusiast, Bill Gates, at nearby Harvard University in Cambridge. The magazine’s cover feature had given Allen an idea. The cover featured an image of the “World’s First Minicomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models,” the Altair 8800 microcomputer. In 1975, 22-year-old computer programmer Paul Allen got his hands on the January issue of Popular Electronics magazine. Like another Silicon Valley success story, that tale began in a Harvard dorm. To understand Microsoft’s approach to product, we need to first understand the ideologies that shaped the company during its earliest days and how this drove Microsoft’s approach to growth.