[Sussex] NOW: So, who are the all-time greats? WAS Hello all

[Geoff Teale]

On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 11:28, Steve Dobson wrote:

> Ooooo, a challenge.  Can I rise to the occasion?

I know what you're thinking - did he explore 5 logic paths, or 6?  To
tell you the truth, in the heat of the debate I clean forgot.  So what
you've go to ask yourself is, "do I feel lucky?",.... ...well do yah
punk?  Go ahead, make my day...

*Brave words - to my knowledge I've never come out the better in an
arguement with Steve*

> First I have to say that I do agree with much, if not quite all, of what
> you say about Bill.  But that is only the case now.  Many years ago Microsoft
> was just a little startup commpany being run out of Ma & Pa Gates' garage.
> 
> In thoses days Bill was very much one of the programmers.  Back in those
> days Apples, PETs and Sharps were all refered to as PCs - Personal
> Computers.  CP/M ruled the PC OS market.  And dear old Bill [helpped]
> write the BASIC, Cobol & other compilers / interprittors used on these
> machines. Ever used a PET (or a VIC for that matter); the BASIC was his
> [I believe].  [Point of Order: For this posting when I say PC I mean
> any personal computer.  When I mean the IBM PC (which hasn't come out
> yet in my story line) I'll say "IBM PC"],

Yes, he implimented BASIC compilers, etc.  ..but:

1. He did not create BASIC or any other language.
2. Many people have written very good compilers - this alone does not
get them on the list.

> If I remember my history correctly [I'm sure I'll be correctted if
> I'm wrong :-)] one of the first killer apps was a spreadsheet for the
> Apple ][.  It gave accountants a freedom they had never had before.  No
> more grinding with a pencil and paper through column after column of
> figures.  It freed them from the drudgery of the job.


VisiCalc is the software mentioned - I have already said that the
authors of VisiCalc where far more important than the founder of Lotus -
he may (ultimately) have had more business success - but by that logic
the only people on the list should be Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and
Scott McNealy - to my mind not one of those three deserves to be on a
list about the computer industry, all of them deserve to be on a list of
great businessmen.

<snip>
> When IBM were putting the package together Bill & Mircosoft were one of
> the people/companies IBM went to see.  Microsoft was the biggest provider
> of languages for the PC market.  While there IBM asked him which OS he
> recommend; Bill pointed them at CP/M.  IBM visitted the creator/owner
> [sorry; his name excapes me] in San Fran.  I don't think he even saw them
> because IBM required an NDA to be signed first, and he wouldn't sign.

The other stories about the events that led to IBM going with DOS rather
than Gary Kildall's CP/M (no agreed "truth" exists) circle around what
Bill said to Gary on the phone/ Bill was asked to ring his "friend" Gary
and tell him the men from IBM where coming to see him and his company
(Digital Research Inc. of Monterey). The controversy is as to whether
Bill told him, as Bill claims, that they were "very important customers"
or as Gary claims, "a bunch of arrogant suits  who want to drill you for
information". When the IBM people turned up Gary was out flying.  The
Account manager for hardware manufacturers (Dorothy McEwen) was rolled
out to meet the IBM people - whilst they found this insulting they
perservered, however, Dorothy did not have the authority to sign the NDA
and the company lawyer said it would be better to wait for Kildall's
return.  The people from IBM would not wait (thinking that Kildall was
not a reliable enough man to be in partnership with) and flew back to
Redmond.

Kildall claimed (right until his death in 1994) that he was flying to
what he thought was a more important business meeting - Gates claims he
was out "joyriding" in his plane.  

It should be noted that both Paul Allen (then a director of Microsoft)
and Gordon Eubanks have stated in seperate accounts that Gates and
Kildall has a "gentlemans agreement" not to step on eachothers toes -
DRI did OS's and Micro Soft (as it was then known - the space was lost
in the 1980's) did programming languages.  It is also worth noting that
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer had already brokered the deal to buy
SCP-DOS from Seattle Computer Products during the time the men from IBM
had been visiting DRI and were ready to present that option as soon as
they returned.

No matter how you look at it, one way or another Bill and Steve were
shrewd business men.

<snip>
> So I think I've meet your challenge!  Bill strick the deal with IBM,
> and that did change the way the PC market developed.  It lowered costs,
> but put the technology back years!  Your challenge was to "name one
> thing Bill Gates has done that has actually changed the world of
> computing"; you didn't say that it had to be either a) technological,
> or b) an advancement.

Hmm.. I don't think you've presented anything I hadn't already argued
against.  You've detailed the major flaw in your own arguement.   The
machine would have been a success no matter who did the deal - Kildall's
CP/M or SCP/Micro Soft DOS.  THe point you made about the hardware is
the important thing.  IBM put a lot of money (and the value of thier
name - much respected in business worldwide) into promoting a Personal
Computer platform.  Businesses and IT departments everywhere thought of
PC's as toys up until then - sure you could have all the Apple ][ 's,
Ataris and Commodore PET's in the world - big business happily ignored
things like VisiCalc on the Apple ][ - that was a toy package on a toy
machine as far as they were concerned.  But when IBM waded in it gave
the platform validity - and when that was followed up by cheap vendors
selling a compatitble platform with the same software that sealed the
thing up.

Bill Gates rode IBM's back to success and IBM's pressing deadlines meant
that suddenly anyone could make the kit - for that reason the OS became
more important than the Hardware manufacturer (UNIX achieved the same
thing by being highly portable).  The outcome would have been no
different had the OS been CP/M, DOS or QNX. 

QNX was actually a contendor (little known fact there chaps) as the
_first_ UNIX-like OS to run on the intel 8086 CPU, it also provided hard
realtime functionality - the deal breaker was simply that they were a
Canadian company and IBM would have lost out financially because of the
Tax implications - it was only this deal breaking down that led the men
from IBM to ask Bill operating systems in the first place.


> While writing this two people come to mind that I haven't seen on
> the list.  The first is Babbage for comming up with the Analytical
> Engine, the first valid concept of a programmable machine.
> 
> But above Babbage, at the top of list, should be Lord Byron's daughter,
> Ada, Countess of Lovelace.  As Babbage said of her "[she] seems to
> understand it better than I do, and is far, far better at explaining it".
> To take from her own writings:
>     The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate
>     anything.  It can do whatever we know how to order it to 
>     perform.  It can follow analysis; but it has no power of
>     anticipating any analytical relations or truths.  Its province
>     is to assit us in making available what we are already acquainted
>     with.
> That as good a definition of software engineering as I know.  She got
> programming before there was a computer to program on.  Therefore the
> work of Knuth and Dijkstra, powerfull as they are, are just refinements
> of Lady Lovelace's ideas on controlling a programmable machine.
> 
> Ta for reading


This I'll agree with strongly. Ada was a very important person in the
history of computing - she's marks a boundry between mathematicians and
computer scientists.

> Steve

-- 
Geoff Teale <tealeg at member.fsf.org>
Free Software Foundation