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There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

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Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#41

Post by jackhack »

gwbas1c wrote: post #31

Far too many people underestimate Bill Gates' technical skills. He was an excellent programmer; and in the early 80s, at the top of his game. Outside of the Bill Gates is evil bubble, he's regarded as a technical genius and a business genius; which is why he was able to trounce his competition. (Basically, he wrote better code and ran better businesses.) All of the late 1970s and early 1980s personal computers ran Bi…

>excellent programmer ... top of his game

One of these two assertions may not be true.

GORILLAS.BAS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_(video_game) DONKEY.BAS https://blog.codinghorror.com/bill-gates-and-donkey-bas/

Q.E.D.

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#42

Post by jackhack »

phire wrote: post #35
gwbas1c wrote: post #31

Far too many people underestimate Bill Gates' technical skills. He was an excellent programmer; and in the early 80s, at the top of his game. Outside of the Bill Gates is evil bubble, he's regarded as a technical genius and a business genius; which is why he was able to trounce his competition. (Basically, he wrote better code and ran better businesses.) All of the late 1970s and early 1980s personal computers ran Bi…

It's not really taught these days, but writing simple Disk Operating Systems isn't that hard. Any decent programmer could do it. And Dos 1.x's feature set was so small that a single programmer should be able to reproduce the it set in well under a year of full-time work. IBM's BIOS did most of the heavy lifting anyway.

The Apple ][ DOS was written in about 4 weeks by Paul Laughton. That doesn't mean it was easy, just that it was possible. (Laughton was/is an extraordinarily capable developer.)

(edit: fixed name!)

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#43

Post by dspillett »

_0ffh wrote: post #12
dspillett wrote: post #2

> 22 system calls ... that had the same function (and function number) as the CP/M code. That probably shows evidence of reverse engineering, not code copying, similar to the clean-room reimplementation of IBM's BIOS chips by Compaq. > the types of actions that send/receive text from a printer, phone, hard disk, etc. I know they are giving examples for a modern audience, but I was amused by the inclusion of phones in…

No reverse engineering necessary. Those CP/M system calls were all documented, and it never was a secret that QDOS was heavily modelled after CP/M.

TFA mentions the 22 calls as if the similarity is in some way potentially surprising though, which I took as meaning they weren't something in that documentation. Internal call points that were (at least at that time) intended to only be used by built-in tools and other internal routines, rather than being part of the published and supported API.

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#44

Post by pjc50 »

linker3000 wrote: post #22
pdkl95 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> int 21h http://www.ctyme.com/intr/int-21.htm DOS kernel interrupts by name: http://www.ctyme.com/intr/cat-010.htm # Ralf Brown's Interrupt List

> # Ralf Brown's Interrupt List Wow, that brings back memories of my ASM and Turbo Pascal programming days (inline ASM). I had a dot matrix printout of Ralf's list and it was invaluable. A couple of weeks back I found some old floppies in the attic and after I unpacked and refitted a 3.5" drive to my desktop machine, I rediscovered a lot of my old work from the late 1980s and early 1990s - for example (using kernel i…

I still have some of my code from that era, where with the interrupt list and the "PC Game Programmer's Encyclopedia" I wrote a few games. Space invaders clone (with soundblaster support!). Flat-shaded 3D engine capable of a few hundred polygons per frame.

I've considered putting it on github, but I wouldn't want it to be seen as representative of my current work!

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#45

Post by coldtea »

gwbas1c wrote: post #31

Far too many people underestimate Bill Gates' technical skills. He was an excellent programmer; and in the early 80s, at the top of his game. Outside of the Bill Gates is evil bubble, he's regarded as a technical genius and a business genius; which is why he was able to trounce his competition. (Basically, he wrote better code and ran better businesses.) All of the late 1970s and early 1980s personal computers ran Bi…

>Far too many people underestimate Bill Gates' technical skills. He was an excellent programmer; and in the early 80s, at the top of his game.

Err, tons of programmers in that era could program a BASIC or something similar. His skills are not particularly impressive given the time. At best, he was a decent programmer.

Contrast to someone like Bill Joy or Dennis Richie and you get my point.

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#46

Post by brudgers »

gwbas1c wrote: post #31

Far too many people underestimate Bill Gates' technical skills. He was an excellent programmer; and in the early 80s, at the top of his game. Outside of the Bill Gates is evil bubble, he's regarded as a technical genius and a business genius; which is why he was able to trounce his competition. (Basically, he wrote better code and ran better businesses.) All of the late 1970s and early 1980s personal computers ran Bi…

Spolsky's related blog post about Gate's technical chops and how he employed them when managing programmers: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#47

Post by [deleted] »

dspillett wrote: post #2

> 22 system calls ... that had the same function (and function number) as the CP/M code. That probably shows evidence of reverse engineering, not code copying, similar to the clean-room reimplementation of IBM's BIOS chips by Compaq. > the types of actions that send/receive text from a printer, phone, hard disk, etc. I know they are giving examples for a modern audience, but I was amused by the inclusion of phones in…

[deleted]

Re: There’s a $200k reward for anyone who proves Microsoft ripped off MS-DOS source

#50

Post by dorkalorka »

brudgers wrote: post #49
dorkalorka wrote: post #48

Complete with denigration of women. Nice, thanks for posting...

I don't understand.

"like a little girl"

Why not like a little boy? Because Joel thinks women are weaker then men, obviously.

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