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Bill Gates Remembers 1979
Hugh Pickens writes "Last week Gizmodo had a special celebration of 1979, the last year before a digital tsunami hit, that put Bill Gates in a nostalgic mood this week. Bill chimed in with his own memories of that seminal year when everything changed. 'In 1979, Microsoft had 13 employees, most of whom appear in that famous picture that provides indisputable proof that your average computer geek from the late 1970s was not exactly on the cutting edge of fashion,' wrote Gates. 'By the end of the year we'd doubled in size to 28 employees. Even though we were doing pretty well, I was still kind of terrified by the rapid pace of hiring and worried that the bottom could fall out at any time.' What made Gates feel a little more confident was that he began to sense that BASIC was on the verge of becoming the standard language for microcomputers. 'By the middle of 1979, BASIC was running on more than 200,000 Z-80 and 8080 machines and we were just releasing a new version for the 8086 16-bit microprocessor. As the numbers grew, we were starting to think beyond programming languages, too, and about the possibility of creating applications that would have real mass appeal to consumers.' Gates remembers that in 1979 there were only 100 different software products that had more than $100 M in annual sales and all of them were for mainframes. 'In April, the 8080 version of BASIC became the first software product built to run on microprocessors to win an ICP Million Dollar Award. Today, I would be surprised if the number of million-dollar applications isn't in the millions itself' writes Gates. 'More important, of course, is the fact that more than a billion people around the world use computers and digital technology as an integral part of their day-to-day lives. That's something that really started to take shape in 1979.'"
More on what dumpster diving meant to Bill Gates:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=437640&cid=22255952
"""
Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?
Bill Gates: No. the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system. You got to be willing to read other people's code, then write your own, then have other people review your code. You've got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you're doing wrong.
"""
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Of course eventually, these guy realize that not only are they not millionaires, they're not making much progress toward that noble goal. That's when they get ugly. You see, they see themselves as capable, intelligent, hard working people - and they are for the most part - who "have what it takes" to "make
Is that most people who are not millionaires but are working to become one would freely admit that they if they don't get there, its because they weren't good enough. You can work hard, study hard, etc, but, if you aren't good enough, you don't get to make the team millionaire. But along the way you do grow from what you do. You've tried to build a business, have made products, have made some sales, have learned about your gut and how the world really works. Those things you can only get from stepping into the ring, as Teddy Roosevelt so famously observed, and that, there's a certain thing you get just from getting in there and putting up your dukes.
What is important to us is having the opportunity to try and chase one's goals, and, if you listen to what we say, you would hear that over and over again - the Constitution doesn't guarantee success, but the right to pursue it. Nothing in life is guaranteed. The American dream is not getting rich per se, its about having the opportunity to try. When you guys on the left ramble on about guarantees, you've missed the point of life altogether. You want to have all of these guarantees for yourselves and in doing so really undermine your own ability to say, at the end, that you lived your life yourself. You want to trade away the opportunity for order, just because, you don't think you can succeed. That's just utterly pathetic.
So yeah, Bill Gates got rich. I didn't. Maybe I never will. I don't care and Bill Gate's wealth doesn't bother me. He got the opportunity to live his dream and I got the opportunity to live mine, and however I use my opportunity, my life, is my business, and has nothing to do with him, and has nothing to do with you.
This is my sig.