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Where Are the Original PC Programmers Now?
Esther Schindler writes "In 1986, Susan Lammers did a series of interviews with 19 prominent programmers in a Microsoft Press book, Programmers at Work. These interviews give a unique view into the shared perceptions of accomplished programmers, the people who invented the tools you use today. In Programmers Who Defined The Technology Industry: Where Are They Now?, I tracked down the fate of these prominent developers — from Robert Carr (Framework) to Dan Bricklin (VisiCalc) to Toru Iwatani (author of Pac Man, I'm glad you asked). The article quotes the developers' 1986 views on programming, the business, and the future of computing. In two cases (Bricklin and Jonathan Sachs, author of Lotus 1-2-3) I spoke with them to learn if, and how, their views had changed. One meaty example: In 1986, Bill Gates said, on Microsoft's future: 'Even though there'll be more and more machines, our present thinking is that we won't have to increase the size of our development groups, because we'll simply be making programs that sell in larger quantities. We can get a very large amount of software revenue and still keep the company not dramatically larger than what we have today. That means we can know everybody and talk and share tools and maintain a high level of quality.' At the time, Microsoft had 160 programmers."
... 160 programmers is all you'll ever need?
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
"We can get a very large amount of software revenue and still keep the company not dramatically larger"
Translation: more money for me.
PCs are little different than then the big iron when computers were new. I'd say that people like Grace Hopper who wrote the first compiler, Von Neumann who came up with the archetecture, John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry, John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, etc. were the real pioneers.
Free Martian Whores!
Everyone from my parents to job counselors kept telling me that learning programming and computers was a dead end because it was both a fad and a saturated market. IBM already had all the programmers they would ever need, who would hire more?
... past Dec 31, 1999.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yep - he seems to be describing Open Source development, rather than Microsoft.
which is totally what she said
"Most of these programmers had (and have) a programming methodology that today would be called Agile. They mostly created a prototype that worked, and kept adding functionality until it was ready to ship. They worked iteratively in small teams. And, as Bricklin's current thoughts indicate, these developers were always cognizant that at some point you have to quit adding to the software and send it out the door. I found myself wondering how many readers imagine that "Agile" is something new."
Duke Nukem Forever, are you listening???
The implementation of plaid shirts also seems to be a pre-requisite for effective programming.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I was hardware guy in a computer store in the mid 70's. Bill Gate was a guest speaker at 1 of the computer club meetings we hosted, It was in the early days of the Apple II and mostly we sold S-100 systems (Altair, Cromemco, Processor Technology...)
Bill gates whined aboout making 3 dollars and hour on Altair Basic because everybody just passed around the paper tape. He tried to convince us that he thought that software should be bundled with the hardware. We booed him off the stage.
I remember people coming in and asking to by a Visicalc computer, We always got a chuckle out of it when we had to explain they wanted an Apple .
Mostly what we were interested in was getting a program by Ward Christensen called CBBS working. It ran in an Altair with a Cromemco ZPU board using an Intertec Superbrain terminal with a couple Wangco 8 inch floppys and 48 K of Thinker Toys memory. This 1 Toy bar far had more effect on the world than anything else I remember. Ward was in Chicago and We had a guy named Kieth Peterson with us
You would have to use a program Ward made called Xmodem with a modem and dial up the store.
Now get off my lawn!
I remember reading books like Solid Code and understanding how to put together a program, not just write functions that would compile. MS Press filled the time between the old time books like Composite Structured Design and the Mythical Man Month and more contemporary books like the Pragmatic Programmer. What I saw, however, was that MS was not moving forward with modern techniques and design patterns. At least from the outside, it appeared that they were stuck in the 80's.
Nevertheless, one cold do worse than reading these books as a basis in programming, not just coding.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Pretty cool story: My grandfather worked in tool and die for PPG (back then it still stood for, Pittsburgh Plate Glass) and they had a super rudimentary "CNC machine" that used punch cards for coordinates in straight lines only. He had zero knowledge of computers but he did figure out how, within the limitations, he could plot enough points to create arcs and essentially circles. It was a huge improvement that teams of "programmers" had been working on unsuccessfully. He never even mentioned it to anyone until I was in college going for a CS degree and I was floored, he figured no one would understand or care since it seemed trivial.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I can find Bill Gates denying he said it. I can find someone saying they don't believe him. I can even find someone saying that the quote is likely apocryphal.
It doesn't seem like anybody is actually reliably attributed to this quote. So, either it's a meme that's stuck, or Bill Gates is lying, or it's mis-attributed and nobody knows who said it.
Anybody got something more definitive?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Where is Peter Norton? His Norton Utilities was the greatest set of utilities then -- especially Unerase!
I always wondered what happened to Bill Gates!
Wait, the article doesn't say anything about him but "duh". Nice bit of journalism, guys.
Well, take this with a grain of salt, but this would indicate he's done some programming. He's believed to have written a BASIC interpreter
I'm pretty sure he isn't credited with actually writing DOS. He didn't invent as much as he marketed. He's not some uber coder who actually created a lot of things.
He even said as much in 1986:
Bill Gates is a business man with a grounding in tech, and has been around while most of it was created so has a lot of perspective. But, I think his actual "hands on" coding is more limited than people think.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
imagine what I could DO if my little brain could wrap itself around the complexity of this massive OS...
Yeh. And then add in the several hundred parallel cores in your video card...
I'm pretty good at wonky stuff and I just sort of stare at the computer sometimes wondering how to fill it up.
Yes, I'm pretty sure Jim Butterworth died a few years ago. I know someone in the C64 scene (it still exists!) and he spent a fair amount of time with Jim attending C64 conferences.
Yes, I prized my Transactor magazines and ISA. So much great information, presented cleanly and with a desire to share.