“Still the coolest”: on Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, Bill Gates shares his first code
4 April 15:14
On the occasion of Microsoft’s 50th anniversary, which the company celebrates today, April 4, its founder Bill Gates shared his memories and released the source code of the operating system written half a century ago. Gates still considers it the “coolest” thing he’s ever done, Komersant ukrainskyi writes, citing Fortune.
As he approaches his 70th birthday, Microsoft founder Bill Gates fondly recalls the computer code he wrote 50 years ago that opened a new era in the history of technology. This code became the catalyst for the creation of one of the most influential technology companies of our time, which today celebrates its golden anniversary.
Although compared to today’s artificial intelligence systems, the code Gates typed on a teletype machine may seem primitive, it played a crucial role in the founding of Microsoft in April 1975.
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How it happened
Bill Gates published a blog post about how he and his old school friend, the late Paul Allen, were rushing to create the world’s first “software factory”. The impetus for this was an article in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics magazine about the Altair 8800, a minicomputer that was supposed to run on a tiny chip produced by the then little-known technology company Intel.
The article inspired Gates, who was only a freshman at Harvard University at the time, and Allen to call the Altair’s manufacturer, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, and promise its CEO, Ed Roberts, that they had developed software that would allow consumers to control the hardware. There was only one obstacle: Gates and Allen hadn’t yet produced the code they had promised Roberts.
Gates and Allen solved this problem by turning to the BASIC programming language developed in 1964 at Dartmouth College. However, they still needed to find a way to make the technology compatible with the future Altair computer, without even having a prototype of the machine.
After two months of working on the program on little to no sleep, Gates completed the code that became the basis for the first Altair operating system.
“This code remains the coolest code I’ve ever written,”
– Gates said.
He even published a link where you can download the original program.
This code later became the foundation for a business that turned personal computers into an integral part of the home, creating a software suite that includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs, as well as the Windows operating system that still runs on most PCs today.
“It was a revolution. It was the thing that started the personal computer era,”
– Gates said of his code in the video accompanying the post.
Bill Gates’ nostalgia
Gates’ reminiscing about the code is part of a nostalgia wave he’s been riding this year as he prepares to celebrate his 70th birthday in October.
The trip down memory lane included the February release of his memoirs, in which he recalls himself as a child, misunderstood and with few friends.
Another memorable date for Gates this year is the 25th anniversary of the charitable foundation he created after he stepped down as CEO of Microsoft in 2000. The tech giant initially struggled after Gates’ departure, but has flourished under CEO Satya Nadella, reaching a market value of about $2.8 trillion.
“Fifty years is a long way to go. It’s incredible that the dream has come true,”
– writes Gates, whose personal fortune is estimated at $108 billion.
