N
Nico Coesel
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
Winfield Hill said:Michael Black wrote...Winfield said:[stuff deleted]
I was an early customer for Bill Gates and Paul Allen's
paper-tape BASIC. It was a fine program and had many buyers,
but he groused anyway and mailed us all letters of complaint
(wish I'd saved mine). Hey, I never improperly used my copy!
I don't remember how much ram the original BASIC program took,
but it may have been under 1k.
I thought the letter had been printed in Byte, but a few years back
when I looked for it, I couldn't find it. I thought I had seen it
in a magazine.
It is, however, reprinted in "Fire in the Valley" by Freiberger and
Swaine, in the photo section. The letter is titled "An Open Letter
to Hobbyists", and is dated Feb. 3, 1976.
Thankfully that's one letter that's widely available on the web.
Here's a copy, where Bill complains of only earning $2 per hour.
I think we can all agree that he solved that problem. Bigtime!
=================================================================
AN OPEN LETTER TO HOBBYISTS
By William Henry Gates III
February 3, 1976
An Open Letter to Hobbyists
To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of
good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and
an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will
quality software be written for the hobby market?
break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being
written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist
can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his
product and distribute for free? The fact is, no one besides us has invested
One word comes to my mind: Linux...