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Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

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Re: Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

#31

Post by markus_zhang »

joebig wrote: post #11
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #9

Associated blog post from 2025: Celebrate 50 years of Microsoft with the company's original Source code https://www.gatesnotes.com/microsoft-original-source-code (Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43575884 )

Gates plays the long game. The man dodged multiple requests over decades to publish this og code that launched MS as a company (pretended he had misplaced the same or forgot to reply or something): only to perfectly time it for a jubilee release.

I imagine that was one of the happiest moments in his life (completing Altair BASIC).

Re: Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

#32

Post by petilon »

abecedarius wrote: post #27
petilon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this [1] interview Gates says that he and his group got DEC BASIC source code and enhanced it. [1] https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm

"The BASIC they did which we got ahold of the BASIC source code and enhanced t quite a bit was great." Thanks! I think this is still talking about his high school volunteer hacking rather than the MS Basic era. (i.e. doesn't obviously support your "ported it".)

They got the source code of DEC Basic, studied it, "enhanced quite a bit" then wrote their own Basic which is similar to DEC Basic, and you don't think it is a derivative? Ok. It is a derivative in my book.

Re: Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

#33

Post by tailrecursion »

One of the things I'm often curious about is how various BASIC interpreters organize memory for string storage. You'd think there's some way to reclaim memory after an expression involving intermediate strings is finished. But you don't see descriptions for how BASIC works in this regard.

Re: Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

#34

Post by MiroslavPokorny »

jhallenworld wrote: post #14
piker wrote: post #3

These two guys* were crazy productive in the 2 months they worked. Just the level of commenting shows how much thought they were able to give it during that span. * plus the math package guy

I always thought that the floating point routines were the big feature that made Microsoft BASIC a thing (compared with both Radio Shack and Apple integer BASIC). It's interesting reading about Monte Davidoff and also that Gates knew they needed a specialist for this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Davidoff

The reason i believe Microsoft Basic became popular across multiple platforms is because nobody else sold their BASIC to other hardware vendors.

In those days the money was in hardware which cost a lot, and software was thrown in. It wouldnt make sense for IBM to sell their BASIC to another hardware vendor.

Microsoft was different, they would sell their languages to anyone and they did. Can anyone actually name a competitor in those early days ?

Even Apple didnt sell their own Woz written basic to other 6502 vendors, C= had to buy Microsoft Basic.

Re: Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

#36

Post by avadodin »

petilon wrote: post #32
abecedarius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The BASIC they did which we got ahold of the BASIC source code and enhanced t quite a bit was great." Thanks! I think this is still talking about his high school volunteer hacking rather than the MS Basic era. (i.e. doesn't obviously support your "ported it".)

They got the source code of DEC Basic, studied it, "enhanced quite a bit" then wrote their own Basic which is similar to DEC Basic, and you don't think it is a derivative? Ok. It is a derivative in my book.

It is derivative as in it uses the same ideas not as in it uses the same code. The latter would run afoul of copyright law but the former is perfectly fine.

You can make your own reincarnation anime even if you formerly worked making cels for TenSura.

GNU is not UNIX.

Re: Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

#38

Post by roryirvine »

MiroslavPokorny wrote: post #34
jhallenworld wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought that the floating point routines were the big feature that made Microsoft BASIC a thing (compared with both Radio Shack and Apple integer BASIC). It's interesting reading about Monte Davidoff and also that Gates knew they needed a specialist for this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Davidoff

The reason i believe Microsoft Basic became popular across multiple platforms is because nobody else sold their BASIC to other hardware vendors. In those days the money was in hardware which cost a lot, and software was thrown in. It wouldnt make sense for IBM to sell their BASIC to another hardware vendor. Microsoft was different, they would sell their languages to anyone and they did. Can anyone actually name a com…

MicroFORTH would have been the nearest thing to it - but FORTH was sufficiently easy to implement that most vendors decided to make their own rather than pay FORTH Inc.

SofTech Pascal could have been there, too, if they hadn't priced it way out of the reach of hobbyists.

In many ways, that was Microsoft's real genius - charging just a few dollars per user to the manufacturers. Even the Professional Development System was only low hundreds of dollars rather than thousands. They were the first tech company to use the "make it up on volume" strategy.

Re: Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

#39

Post by LeFantome »

roryirvine wrote: post #38
MiroslavPokorny wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason i believe Microsoft Basic became popular across multiple platforms is because nobody else sold their BASIC to other hardware vendors. In those days the money was in hardware which cost a lot, and software was thrown in. It wouldnt make sense for IBM to sell their BASIC to another hardware vendor. Microsoft was different, they would sell their languages to anyone and they did. Can anyone actually name a com…

MicroFORTH would have been the nearest thing to it - but FORTH was sufficiently easy to implement that most vendors decided to make their own rather than pay FORTH Inc. SofTech Pascal could have been there, too, if they hadn't priced it way out of the reach of hobbyists. In many ways, that was Microsoft's real genius - charging just a few dollars per user to the manufacturers. Even the Professional Development System…

It is right there in the name.

Software had always been one big project with a dedicated team to build something one off, like building a hospital. Every customer commissioned their own software.

Microsoft recognized that the future was writing smaller software that was meant to be sold to many, many people for less money each.

Re: Altair Basic Interpreter Source Code (1975) [pdf]

#40

Post by EvanAnderson »

It's really neat that many of the comments in the 6502 version[0] match this 8080 version. I've only done a quick review but there's a lot of duplication. It's interesting to see how the 6502 version reflects its direct lineage from this version.

The table of constants for the SIN function doesn't have the two bogus constants that make up the "WAIT 6502" easter egg[1]. Since WAIT wasn't in this version that easter egg couldn't exist anyway. That's not to say there isn't an easter egg of some kind in here, but it's not that one.

(It's hard to believe it's been a year since the 6502 version was released. It seems like just a few days ago I was hunting around in the code for the easter egg...)

[0] https://opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09/03/microsoft-o...

[1] https://www.pagetable.com/?p=43

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