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Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)

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Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)

#21

Post by lonelappde »

neovive wrote: post #8
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

I love how the very next article is titled "The 8086 - An Architecture for the Future" I love reading old computer magazines and the archive.org collection is amazing. One interesting thing about doing that is that it provides a first hand account of what a lot of the people that worked in the industry thought the future of computing would be like. It is fascinating to compare that view with how it turned out. I wond…

I hope we can archive websites as well as magazines and newspapers. I feel that although so much more information is available now, large portions of it will be lost over time.

https://archive.org/

Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)

#22

Post by lonelappde »

nabla9 wrote: post #16
nv-vn wrote: post #3

Really forward-thinking stuff, but then again that's why Microsoft succeeded. It seems like all of Gates' predictions were spot-on in this article.

Everyone has blind spots. Gates is famous for completely missing the success of the Internet. He thought that it had no consumer appeal and as a result MS was focused on Office and PC software when the dotcom boom started. His first version of "A Road Ahead" published in 1995 didn't have a chapter about Internet. It was added later. To his credit he made complete 180 in his opinion in the same year and started to exp…

_The_ Road Ahead. Gates wasn't so modest.

Gates didn't miss the Internet. The first verst of the book said that the 1994 Internet was not the Internet of the future, and he was right about that. The Web got big in 1995 after Netscape Navigator came out (and Internet Explorer came shortly after). MS was anti web because the browser concept threatened the Windows monopoly as a computing platform. Gates/MS spent they next 5 years desperately trying to lock the Internet inside Windows, with ActiveX etc

Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)

#24

Post by nickt »

kick wrote: post #17
giancarlostoro wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Magazines write about stuff like "The Most Important Agile Trends to Follow in 2020". It's part marketing, influencing kind fluff where people write opinions about soft issues where you can't be clearly right or wrong. The mainstream ones sure, but there's others out there that don't. At least 2600 still the same.

Related: 2600 recently started publishing DRM-free PDFs. They're kind of floundering for funding, so if you like that sort of thing, you should probably grab a copy or subscription. https://www.2600.com/content/message-our-readers

I’d not looked at 2600 in years, but did as you suggested and I’m glad to see it’s not changed much at all! What a great magazine - looking forward to reading it again each quarter.

Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)

#25

Post by nabla9 »

lonelappde wrote: post #22
nabla9 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has blind spots. Gates is famous for completely missing the success of the Internet. He thought that it had no consumer appeal and as a result MS was focused on Office and PC software when the dotcom boom started. His first version of "A Road Ahead" published in 1995 didn't have a chapter about Internet. It was added later. To his credit he made complete 180 in his opinion in the same year and started to exp…

_The_ Road Ahead. Gates wasn't so modest. Gates didn't miss the Internet. The first verst of the book said that the 1994 Internet was not the Internet of the future, and he was right about that. The Web got big in 1995 after Netscape Navigator came out (and Internet Explorer came shortly after). MS was anti web because the browser concept threatened the Windows monopoly as a computing platform. Gates/MS spent they ne…

> The first verst of the book said that the 1994 Internet was not the Internet of the future, and he was right about that.

He was totally wrong. The future Gates was planning at the time did not include HTML, WWW or internet standards.

It was the Blackbird project and the first version of MSN, a closed subscription-based dial-up online service with Microsoft designed and owned content authoring tools.

Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)

#27

Post by Stratoscope »

bluedino wrote: post #10
Stratoscope wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for scanning that! I used to read Computer Design back then, but I haven't seen one of the old issues in a while. Coincidentally, the theme of this August 1983 BYTE is The C Language, with a dozen articles on C. As always with these wonderful old BYTE magazines, at least skim through the whole thing. The cover art and the ads are a real treat. Hit the Home key and start from there!

Before I had a computer, I had a box of Popular Science magazines from the early 80's. They were about 5 years old when I had them, so they talked about the ZX81, TRS-80, and the PCjr. Everything was already obsolete but they were fun to read. The best was a review of electronic typewriters that could double as a printer for your computer!

Ah, the late great IBM PCjr (PC Junior), with its innovative squishy chiclet keyboard.

I was writing PC software at the time, and I knew I needed to make my programs compatible with the PCjr. The Macy's store in Stanford Shopping Center was one of the few local retailers promising they would have them in stock on the release date. So I called Macy's to reserve one.

When I went there to pick mine up, they said, "oh, we're sorry, we got 10 of them and you were number 11 on the list."

Bullet dodged!

Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)

#28

Post by keithnz »

I love how that issue has all these other articles that have hidden gems of insight of things that, with the benefit of hindsight, would have been good to have taken note of. Including gems on Lisp, on the philosophy of designing software for unix and to make things small and testable as soon as possible. How things like structured programming had a lot of fluff talk around it that obscured the tiny gems of good ideas, that people got carried away with the "process".
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