>>>Bill and Paul were getting Basic to work an the very first PC - the Altair back then in Albequrque, NM (spelling?). <<<
There was a whole lot of history before the Altair. There were a lot of people in the S100 movement. Those were two. I would offer the obvious contention that the people that developed the chip sets, the folks that invented the s100 buses, the PC boards we all used, the designers of the 8080, the original inventors of basic, and many others were primal figures, and these two software guys built on other folks work, as most have done, at someone else's instruction, with someone else's investment.
Yes, Allen was a smart programmer, and Bill a smart entrepreneur. But they missed being first by at least several thousand predecessors. They could already see this thing was going to be hot, because there were so many enthusiasts before they got there. They jumped in front of the parade.
Think about it - MSFT were great inventors then, anticipating a whole industry that didn't exist at all yet, and those same personalities after that stunning success decided not to do anything innovative for the rest of their lives? (Well, I should leave Paul Allen out of it.) Not likely. People don't go from evanescent vision to metooism after a tremendous success of vision.
You need to know a whole lot more about the homebrew computer movement before you claim anything like what you are claiming.
Chaz |
