Context here (Jeff Atwood's blog post dated 2007): https://blog.codinghorror.com/bill-gates-and-donkey-bas/
I love that right rear view mirror attached to the left front wheel! ;-)
Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
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Re: Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
#32This reminds me about my time writing games in Basic on my calculator during math class. I suck at math because of this, but at least I'm an ok programmer.
Re: Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
#33How old was gates when he wrote this thing??
The game was released in 1981, so Gates was 26 years old.
Re: Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
#34How old was gates when he wrote this thing??
Current Bill Gates age: 60.
This little game was written 36 years ago.
60 - 36 = 24 <- Bill Gates age when he wrote this.
Re: Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
spacebar works (it's the only key needed).
The "any" key also works, as well as the onscreen keys (e.g. F1) It's not surprising that this simulation of a 36 year old 4.77Mhz desktop runs fine in javascript on my 1.3GHz quadcore $40 phone... but in a way, it is.
This makes me wonder how accurate the timing is. I've been looking at the Gameboy Link Cable, which seems to need very low latency. Are we there yet, in the browser?
Re: Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
#36Here's a wiki link[0] for anyone else that didn't know what they were looking at. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DONKEY.BAS
> "We were surprised to see that the comments at the top of the game proudly proclaimed the authors: Bill Gates and Neil Konzen." This is odd that these comments aren't in the github source code, is it missing something? Why does it starts at line 940? 940 REM The IBM Personal Computer Donkey 950 REM Version 1.10 (C)Copyright IBM Corp 1981, 1982 960 REM Licensed Material - Program Property of IBM
Microsoft usually started at 1000
So you can see that they added the copyright and SAMPLES$ logic later.
Re: Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
#37How old was gates when he wrote this thing??
He was born on October 28, 1955. Therefore, in August 1981, when the game was released, he was 25.
Re: Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
#38Andy Hertzfeld recollects how Macintosh team dissected the new IBM PC and what they thought of donkey.bas: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...
Wow, that's a salty article!
Re: Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
#39Andy Hertzfeld recollects how Macintosh team dissected the new IBM PC and what they thought of donkey.bas: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...
Andy Hertzfeld sounds like a sore loser. Why should anyone care what he thinks about games? Macs suck for games and they always have. Every piece of software he's written has been a second rate failure.
Meh. Sort of. He mostly sounds like someone with experience on both platforms who is surprised by the dominance of the one that he considers inferior. His prominence as a developer isn't relevant. I trust that his ability is sufficient and that his experience with the platforms is actual. He is a suitable person to comment on the contrast between them.
Re: Donkey – A computer game included with early versions of PC DOS
#40Andy Hertzfeld recollects how Macintosh team dissected the new IBM PC and what they thought of donkey.bas: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...
Andy Hertzfeld sounds like a sore loser. Why should anyone care what he thinks about games? Macs suck for games and they always have. Every piece of software he's written has been a second rate failure.
> Macs suck for games and they always have
Not in the 80s. PCs were DOS machines for the office and if you wanted to play a game the Mac, Atari or Amiga were much nicer plattforms.