🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3s8o61$kkd@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, tjrc1@mole.bio.cam.ac.uk (Tim Cutts (Zoology)) writes:
|> In article <3s7cgv$561@newsbf02.news.aol.com> cmcknight@aol.com (CMcknight) writes:
|> >Observations:
|> >
|> >1) One or more degrees in Computer Science do no necessarily mean that the
|> >individual is particularly competent as a      programmer.  It does
|> >indicate that the individual has the _potential_ to be competent.
|> 
|> Bill himself *is* a competent programmer.  Remember how he made his
|> initial money?  MS-BASIC squeezed into teeny ROMs on several of the
|> early home computers.  Quite an achievenment.

Achievement ?

I once disassembled part of the initial MsBasic and I must admit
that I was *not* impressed. I can't recall the details (this is
quite some time ago...) but my reaction then was : " how does he manage 
to *sell* such shit ?" Any of my students should be able to write
something similar in a few months.

Dr Dobbs Journal published a complete Basic interpreter that occupied
only 1 1 Kbyte Eprom. 
Integer calculus only (if memory serves) but quite powerful.
They just printed it right there in the journal for everybody to
type in and assemble. That's what I call an achievement.

The guy who wrote it accepted to give it away for free. Don't count
on Gates to do that. He has no idea of the concept "free" since his
only goal in life is $$$$$$$$$.

Of course, nowadays with all these multi-megabyte programs around
people believe that it takes a genious to write a small program.
I started programming in Algol 60 using a compiler written partly
by Peter Naur himself and running on a computer that had 0 ROM (not 
yet invented) 5 Kbytes of core-store and a magnetic (fixed) drum
memory of 60 Kbytes. The drum contained : the Algol compiler, a
stream text editor, an assembler, the operating system with command
interpreter as well as swap space, so don't come and tell us that
writing an integer Basic interpreter (I vaguely remeber that the 
floating point one was only on floppies) in a few Kbytes is an
achievement.

I think Gates is a very brilliant salesman, but that's about it.

In fact, I have the impression that you can be either a competent
programmer or a successful salesman, but rarely both. 

Finn
-- 
Finn Bo Jorgensen,  E-Mail : Finn.jorgensen@irisa.fr    Tel : 99 84 72 01
IFSIC, bureau TB122, Universite de Rennes
Campus de Beaulieu, 35042 RENNES CEDEX, FRANCE