>writing a few thousand lines of assembly was what it took to launch a successful software company.
Yes, but that assembly was not DOS, and it wasn’t easy.
Microsoft purchased the DOS code, they didn’t write it. Of course, they did develop and modify DOS. But that was a clever (and lucky) business deal, not a technological accomplishment.
The real beginning of Microsoft was earlier, with Allen, Gates and Davidoff writing the Altair BASIC interpreter. That was a serious achievement.
They had never seen the computer they were writing that assembly code for. They did not even own any computers. It took them 8 weeks on a university computer they were not supposed to be using for that
“Altair agreed to meet them to possibly buy a BASIC interpreter… Gates and Allen had neither a BASIC interpreter nor even an Altair system on which to develop and test one. However, Allen had written an Intel 8008 emulator that ran on a PDP-10 time-sharing computer. Allen adapted this emulator based on the Altair programmer guide, and they developed and tested the interpreter on Harvard's PDP-10.
The finished interpreter, including its own I/O system and line editor, fit in only four kilobytes of memory, leaving plenty of room for the interpreted program. In preparation for the demo, they stored the finished interpreter on a punched tape that the Altair could read, and Paul Allen flew to Albuquerque to meet with Altair…
While on final approach into the Albuquerque airport, Allen realized that they had forgotten to write a bootloader to read the tape into memory. Writing in 8080 machine language, Allen finished the program before the plane landed. Only when they loaded the program onto an Altair and saw a prompt asking for the system's memory size did Gates and Allen know that their interpreter worked on the Altair hardware.”
Imagine if the University had sued for their share of the IP and that was created using their resources…
It’s funny because I thought Jobs/Wozinak got their initial funding from selling phreaking boxes. And more recently, Anthropic engaged in criminal copyright violations with only a slap on the wrist.
Feels like a common theme of every “great” company having its origins from a “boost” resulting from criminal activity. (After all, that’s where the money is!)
Just imagine the criminal penalties possible for pirating and selling one copy of a movie or making one long distance phone call with phreaking.
Being born into a 1% household and understanding the asymmetric upside that having the money and the time to speculate is far more significant than the civil and criminal legal violations on the way.
The most common way to go from one-percenter rich to .001% rich is to already have enough wealthy people generating capital in your personal network that you can raise capital on sweetheart terms to buy the labor of people who don't.
Then you sell it at a massive premium and repeat.
I think it's empirically dubious to identify the UW mainframes as the secret sauce instead of "being able to ask your mom for a meeting with the chairman of IBM followed by asking her for 80,000 dollars ASAP."
If the original creators of DOS were born into a wealthy family and on a first name basis with the chairman of IBM, do you think they would've sold it to Gates?
Trying to attribute the tech business "founding crime" feels like displacement for what is perfectly legal and accepted cultural practice.
I think you overstate the power of money. Of course it helps. But it’s far from everything. Just look at the number of rich kid fuckups or CEOs with poor backgrounds. It’s just one component that smooths risk and occasionally provides a starter network, but it’s not everything.
Well of course. To be a CEO from a poor background, you need to work your ass off making wealthy friends early.
That's why going to an elite school is such a lifeline for people from bottom quartile backgrounds. Getting the opportunity socialize with people born at the top and be treated as a peer in an institutional environment is invaluable. That alone is worth the price of admission.
It doesn't have to be your parents, but it has to be someone with money who already knows you, trusts you, and feels like you identify with them and their interests.
Of course, you could also work your way up slowly and prove your mettle through decades of dedicated service to your employer. But I'm not sure how you'd be able to build that long track record of likability and trust to be able to raise millions based on work history when that entire history is a 3 month internship.
One can't even blame the VCs. If you're investing in things that are often partially fraudulent by design...
...do you want the getaway driver for the pump-and-dump to be a family friend you've known a long time, or a stranger that might not be a good "culture fit" for what the valuation game often becomes?
I mean, rich kid fuckup still end up pretty good, unless they are full on addicts who committed robbery. And even then they get much better and qualified defense layer - ending with much lower punishment. But normally, they get a pretty good job through parents network and somehow muddle through.
> CEOs with poor backgrounds.
Statistically, upward mobility is low these days, people stay where they are born. So, I think that statistically there are not that many of those.
None actually, because I didn't recall the original amount correctly and I failed to correct for inflation, and Microsoft was already doing pretty well at that point. That was inaccurate to say.
It does make you think, though. If you too are able to work hard and build an operating system or save up six figures corrected for inflation, that still doesn't get you anything. What you really need is for your mother to be a good friend and socio-economic equal of chair of IBM.
Automation makes full employment detrimental if not outright impossible.
Say before tractors it took 100 men to farm enough for 1000 people.
With tractors 20 men can farm for 1000.
With automation 1 man can farm for 1000 if not significantly more.
Open Source Robo Communism is the way to go imo. Sure a handful of engineers have to maintain the robots, and build new ones. And a few jobs will remain human only.
But we could easily get to 80% of the population being free to make art and dance
Glazing? I stated an historical fact. What doesn't math for me is why we care so much what kind of economy other people decide to have. Eastern Europe isn't soviet anymore obviously. They can make their own choices.
We kill people all the time, what's the difference? Isn't it a sovereign nation's prerogative to do whatever they want? That said, it is our prerogative to be nosy and violently mess with other people's affairs too so..
The Iron Curtain was a real thing, as was the Berlin Wall. Successful social and economic systems do not need to execute their own citizens for attempting to escape.
By what metrics? Life expectancy rose during communism and fell afterwords. Are you seriously going to try and argue it was better during the Czarist times?
Russia lost nearly 2 decades of development post-WWI. And had a widespread hunger in 1930-s with 4-8 million people dead (we _still_ don't know the accurate number).
Even just looking at the industrial growth rates, the socialistic economy of the USSR was inferior to many capitalistic economies starting from the same base. E.g. South Korea or Japan.
You are willfully missing the point. You can’t compare Russia to South Korea to claim communism bad. Russia has and will screw up every system it tries. You need to compare communist Russia to capitalist Russia. There the comparison looks much less favorable.
Also your graph proves my point. The giant drop in life expectancy is when it transitioned from communism to capitalism.
> You are willfully missing the point. You can’t compare Russia to South Korea to claim communism bad.
Why? I absolutely can. DPRK vs South Korea is an even better example.
> Also your graph proves my point. The giant drop in life expectancy is when it transitioned from communism to capitalism.
Well, duh. And capitalism _swiftly_ outpaced the previous rate. As somebody who experienced Soviet dentistry and medicine first-hand, I'm not at all surprised.
Sure then I can compare China to Somalia to claim capitalism bad.
DPRK is a chinese buffer state run by a cult of personality where South Korea is a strategic allied US country. Like yes I too would take South Korea’s position? It has nothing to do with capitalism.
Did it? Doesn’t look too swift to me. Also why not compare Chinese life expectancy now to before communism? Looks pretty good.
Yes, but that assembly was not DOS, and it wasn’t easy.
Microsoft purchased the DOS code, they didn’t write it. Of course, they did develop and modify DOS. But that was a clever (and lucky) business deal, not a technological accomplishment.
The real beginning of Microsoft was earlier, with Allen, Gates and Davidoff writing the Altair BASIC interpreter. That was a serious achievement.
They had never seen the computer they were writing that assembly code for. They did not even own any computers. It took them 8 weeks on a university computer they were not supposed to be using for that
“Altair agreed to meet them to possibly buy a BASIC interpreter… Gates and Allen had neither a BASIC interpreter nor even an Altair system on which to develop and test one. However, Allen had written an Intel 8008 emulator that ran on a PDP-10 time-sharing computer. Allen adapted this emulator based on the Altair programmer guide, and they developed and tested the interpreter on Harvard's PDP-10.
The finished interpreter, including its own I/O system and line editor, fit in only four kilobytes of memory, leaving plenty of room for the interpreted program. In preparation for the demo, they stored the finished interpreter on a punched tape that the Altair could read, and Paul Allen flew to Albuquerque to meet with Altair…
While on final approach into the Albuquerque airport, Allen realized that they had forgotten to write a bootloader to read the tape into memory. Writing in 8080 machine language, Allen finished the program before the plane landed. Only when they loaded the program onto an Altair and saw a prompt asking for the system's memory size did Gates and Allen know that their interpreter worked on the Altair hardware.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_BASIC