I downloaded the whole PDF and one thing I find mesmerizing is just how sophisticated the business graphs looked back then. It seems we're only starting to slowly catch up with these in many web apps again.
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)
#32The same edition has articles about coordinates systems in graphics and Gaus-Jordan elimination method. There are circuit diagrams and program listings. It was a real trade magazine. Today that type of content is almost exclusively in in blogs. 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…
I feel similarly about conferences sometimes.
Like there is a whole world of conferences about such things....but miles away from doing...
Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)
#33Interesting how many of the integrations he talks about (OLE/DDE) are exactly the ones that mobile sandboxes make difficult to do these days.
Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)
#34I downloaded the whole PDF and one thing I find mesmerizing is just how sophisticated the business graphs looked back then. It seems we're only starting to slowly catch up with these in many web apps again.
The graph on page 350 is a good example. Gone is the golden age of data visualization.
Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)
#35Earlier 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…
Gates blew it on the internet. It's OK. There's a lot of revisionist history surrounding him on HN these days. Time does that.
Gates' vision of the internet was that people would connect to it once a day - maybe - to download their e-mail to read offline on a desktop PC.
It's why Microsoft went whole hog into Encarta. Gates believed the future of information was subscribing to encyclopedia CDROM updates by mail.
Windows didn't even get networking until 1992, almost a decade after the Macintosh had it.
Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)
#36Really forward-thinking stuff, but then again that's why Microsoft succeeded. It seems like all of Gates' predictions were spot-on in this article.
"Really forward-thinking"? All of what Bill Gates "envisioned" in this 1983 article was already done or about to be done at that time. Gates is well known for being bad at prediction and for having no vision to imagine the future. It certainly is not the reason why Microsoft kind of "succeeded". No need to rewrite history.
Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)
#37Really forward-thinking stuff, but then again that's why Microsoft succeeded. It seems like all of Gates' predictions were spot-on in this article.
"Really forward-thinking"? All of what Bill Gates "envisioned" in this 1983 article was already done or about to be done at that time. Gates is well known for being bad at prediction and for having no vision to imagine the future. It certainly is not the reason why Microsoft kind of "succeeded". No need to rewrite history.
>> Gates is well known for being bad at prediction and for having no vision to imagine the future.
Interesting. Got any references for that ?
Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)
#38Really forward-thinking stuff, but then again that's why Microsoft succeeded. It seems like all of Gates' predictions were spot-on in this article.
"Really forward-thinking"? All of what Bill Gates "envisioned" in this 1983 article was already done or about to be done at that time. Gates is well known for being bad at prediction and for having no vision to imagine the future. It certainly is not the reason why Microsoft kind of "succeeded". No need to rewrite history.
Microsoft "succeeded" by cranking monopoly power absolutely as hard as it would go.
They haven't really changed, although they have learned to be less obvious about it.
They set the software world back by 20 years. Before Microsoft, nobody thought computers should just randomly fail all the time. They got people to think it was perfectly normal, and not a reason to send the damn thing back for a refund.
Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Really forward-thinking"? All of what Bill Gates "envisioned" in this 1983 article was already done or about to be done at that time. Gates is well known for being bad at prediction and for having no vision to imagine the future. It certainly is not the reason why Microsoft kind of "succeeded". No need to rewrite history.
>> Gates is well known for being bad at prediction and for having no vision to imagine the future. Interesting. Got any references for that ?
640k more than enough for anyone
Multiple overlapping windows not useful
Re: Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983)
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few years ago I read a National Geographic article about "microchips" that was written in I think 1983. It was probably one of the most useful articles on the topic that I've ever read. Unassuming, and full of direct explanations (and detail).
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/the-chip/ This is what you were referring to, I'm guessing. 1982.
Exactly! But it was slightly more esoteric and personal to dig it out of a second hand bookstore and decide to read it.