Gary Kildall was so depressed he committed suicide, because Bill Gates (Microsoft) stole his OS and used it and his mothers position in IBM to undercut him, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
PS:
I can write that Bill Gates and Microsoft stole it without fear of repercussions from either, because that’s already been decided in a court of law decades ago.Wat
Gary Kildall’s lawyer later stated Gary Kildall lacked the tenacity Bill Gates had, because he didn’t sue based on same lawyers legal advice, that software probably wasn’t legally protected by copyright.
If you don’t know, QDOS was copied from CP/M, and Microsoft bought QDOS and relabeled it MS-DOS, and sold it to IBM as PC-DOS. Main difference being that Microsoft removed the few safety features that were present in CP/M, causing decades of nightmares with bad security and viruses.
But the suicide part … that confirmed as well?
Honestly don’t know, just surprised to read that.
No it’s not, I may remember that part wrong, it was speculated to be homicide, but his wife told he was very depressed about Microsoft using his own OS to win the contract with IBM.
One Friday afternoon, Gary called the engineering staff together and announced that he would give them all a raise over the weekend. On Monday, when they returned to work, contractors began raising the building to make room in the basement for a new Digital Equipment Corporation VAX 11/750 computer system. After several weeks, supported by heavy wooden beams and house jacks, the engineers’ desks were five feet higher.
I’d have loved to work for him!
Error- 2 at line 10
Well, the compiler didn’t complain, so I checked it in. /s
Edit: Added the /s as people were not realizing that BASIC is interpreted was part of the joke.
Edit2: Looks at the downvotes. /picardfacepalm I’m never doing another comedic shitpost on Lemmy ever again.
Semicolons?
I’m too fucking old to remember if I needed those or not, so I thought WTF and just threw them in there.
That’s how long I’ve been programming, so long that I can’t even remember the syntax anymore. 😋
Lemmy isn’t the best place to make up stories about your programming pedigree… it’s kind of a thing here.
Lemmy isn’t the best place to make up stories about your programming pedigree… it’s kind of a thing here.
Not that I have any way of proving that to you, but I’m not, I just couldn’t honestly remember the last time I was typing BASIC code into my Apple II+ (and TRS-80 at the mall) , since I’ve been coding for over forty years, they all tend to kind of run together after a while. I usually let the compiler set me straight.
Not sure why you’re digging this hole, but okay… You claim to have 40 years experience, a retired software dev… BASIC has little relevance to the article OP posted… It doesn’t make much sense to post a hello world loop, further you can search for this loop and find thousand of syntax accurate examples, which any engineer would do normally, due to the PTSD of posting on public forums and being ripped to shreds for the most minor of typo…
Why would you claim to run two lines through a compiler to check it? I mean there are endless interpreters and plenty of IDEs that would have caught the mistake as well.
BASIC is a high level educational language to promote CS in the 80s and 90s, What does posting this here, and then misusing semi-colons, do to give you any credibility. Why not Lisp, COBOL or Fortran? Is it because your trying to steal credibility like Microsoft did? Make it make sense!
And finally what in the world is this CC signature. Your on Lemmy, the not-for-profit decentralized forum. Creative Commons licensing is for scenarios that involve commerce. Everything anyone posts here is free to use because there really is no way to enforce copyright on content where the owner cannot be identified and no single entity owns the federation. Unless Cosmic Cleric is your legal name…
Not sure why you’re digging this hole, but okay…
You’re the one publically accusing me of lying on a public forum. You’ll excuse me if I defend myself.
BASIC has little relevance to the article OP posted… It doesn’t make much sense to post a hello world loop
Agree on the relevance, disagree on the makes much sense. I posted it as a comedic post, not a serious one (what the kids these days call a “shit post”). I mean, the post subject was “Fifty Years of the Personal Computer Operating System”, so commented with old computer programming code that those who were around at the time when it all started would recognize.
I typed that code into many a TRS-80 computer at the mall in my time back then.
further you can search for this loop and find thousand of syntax accurate examples, which any engineer would do normally, due to the PTSD of posting on public forums and being ripped to shreds for the most minor of typo…
Except when they are lazy to do so, or are waiting at LAX to pick someone up and you’re quickly doom scrolling browsing Lemmy while watching for an arriving passenger you have to pick up.
Why would you claim to run two lines through a compiler to check it?
You’re being too literal in an attempt to win an Internet argument. My point was that I can’t remember every last syntax for every language I’ve ever learned, through forty years, so I let the compiler tell me when I’ve forgotten something or got something wrong. That’s the only point I was making, that I let the compiler assist me in remembering syntax when I forget it.
I mean there are endless interpreters and plenty of IDEs that would have caught the mistake as well.
Yes, and what I just said for compiler was also meant for the IDE. Way back in the day we had character based text editors and we used compilers for error output, there were no IDEs. But throughout my career I used both the IDE and compiler to assist me in remembering syntax. I’ve also been known to use a javadoc lookup or a search through online sources to remember things as well.
BASIC is a high level educational language to promote CS in the 80s and 90s, What does posting this here, and then misusing semi-colons, do to give you any credibility. Why not Lisp, COBOL or Fortran? Is it because your trying to steal credibility like Microsoft did? Make it make sense!
Again, I posted it as a humorous comment, not serious, and I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition (/queueMontyPython) by someone who wants to prove themselves against someone else. It was just meant as a joke, that’s all.
Why not Lisp, COBOL or Fortran? Is it because your trying to steal credibility like Microsoft did? Make it make sense!
I don’t know Lisp or Fortran, but I do know a tiny bit COBOL (I just missed having to work with punch cards, etc.). I know (in no particular order) BASIC, C, C++, Java, C#, LUA (WoW addons AutoShoutOut, and xtremeunitbuttons), AM (propriertary 4GL), PowerBuilder, QuickBASIC, Apple Basic (still miss my Apple II+ sometimes). BTW, you forgot Pascal, which I knew a little of back then as well.
Go through my commenting history, it’ll attest to my profession (if you’re being intellectually honest about deciding what you read).
I stand by what I’ve said in each and every comment.
And finally what in the world is this CC signature. Your on Lemmy, the not-for-profit decentralized forum. Creative Commons licensing is for scenarios that involve commerce. Everything anyone posts here is free to use because there really is no way to enforce copyright on content where the owner cannot be identified and no single entity owns the federation. Unless Cosmic Cleric is your legal name…
I’ve already posted enough comments about that just today actually. If you really want an answer to that question, go search through my comments for today. I would just add to what you would read if you do, that at this point I also have a morbid curiosity about all the people getting bent out of shape over me adding that link, and the interesting responses I’m getting from them.
We done? We’re both wasting too much time for me just admiting publically that I was just trying to do a joke comment and forgot the correct syntax that I had not used in decades, while commenting from a cell phone, doom scrolling, at a public place, while keeping an eye out for someone to arrive/meet.
Yikes, ok I can buy the shit posting. I think it’s fair to say it didn’t go over well. Most of the Lemmy user base is your age, who remember the dial-up days of the Internets. Most of us grew up with the Trash 80 and C64s and Apples in the classroom, which is why we are drawn to the Fediverse. So don’t be surprised when you get brigaded over a BASIC syntax error, because from our perspective it came across like a 22 year old who was pretending to know what the old days were like, and making an irrelevant comment on a post about a rather tragic part of computing history. Fair enough, we done.
Did you just claim copyright on two of the most common lines of code ever written?
Like when AT&T copyrighted /bin/true
I’m a sucker for copy and paste. /shrug
