I don't see any credit being given to Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) upon whose work this is based [1] [2] [3].

The quotes below only talk about OS source code, but they found language interpreter source code as well, see register story.

> "So, for a few years that is where I spent my time. I'd skip out on athletics and go down to this computer center. We were moving ahead very rapidly: BASIC, FORTRAN, LISP, PDP-10 machine language, digging out the operating system listings from the trash and studying those. Really not just banging away to find bugs like monkeys[laughs], but actually studying the code to see what was wrong." [4]

> "While his parents were concerned with his slipping grades, there was no slowing him down. He and Bill would go “dumpster diving” in C-Cubed’s garbage to find discarded printouts with source code for the machine’s operating system"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASIC-PLUS#Comparison_to_MS_BA...

[2] https://everybasic.info/doku.php/basics/decbasic#influence_f...

[4] https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm

[3] https://www.theregister.com/2000/06/29/bill_gates_roots/

[5] https://paulallen.com/Futurist/Microsoft.aspx

The Microsoft BASIC language is similar to DEC BASIC, but the actual implementation is completely different. For example, DEC BASIC compiles the BASIC source code into bytecode as it's entered for faster execution, while Microsoft BASIC is a pure interpreter that simply interprets the source code tokens at runtime. You have to remember how different the memory-constrained 8-bit microcomputers were from a PDP-11. Even if Gates looked at the DEC BASIC source code, there wasn't much there that he could have used.

The most significant contribution that DEC BASIC made was the REPL-like "immediate mode" that lets you execute individual statements without having to RUN the whole program. It was copied by both Microsoft and almost every other BASIC implementation since. Being able to fiddle around with "PRINT 2+2" is so fundamental to the BASIC experience that it surprised me to learn that Kemeny & Kurtz didn't come up with it, DEC did. (It came from DEC's earlier language FOCAL, which had an "English-like" syntax and doesn't resemble BASIC in any other way, and probably ultimately from LISP.)

digging out the operating system listings from the trash and studying those.

A lot of us did the same thing in that era. It's surprising how much information can be learned from what others think is useless.

Thank you SUNY New Paltz and the IBM submarine facility (no idea what it was called) for not securing your Dumpsters. It's how I learned computing before it was taught in schools.

A piece of software closely matching the interface of a different piece of software doesn't automatically make the former based on the latter, except in an abstract sense (in which almost all ideas are derivative in some ways, because everything builds on the shoulders of giants). What is this, the CP/M vs MS-DOS argument again? I'm not Gates' biggest fan in terms of his ruthless business acumen, but claims of plagiarism, however slight, need a bit of hard evidence to be anything more than a smear.

> upon whose work this is based

Erum, none of your references show this (or come remotely close).

MS did base NT on DEC work, and settled a court case as a result. Perhaps you're thinking of that story?

BASIC the language pre-dates the DEC implementation (it came from Dartmouth College), and nobody would reasonably think that seeing the code for a high level language BASIC interpreter implementation for Machine A, then writing an assembler implementation for Machine B means you "based it on their work".

In that Basic 80 link (number 2) I would have expected another variant to be listed: Microsoft Basic for the Interact Home Computer which used an 8080 processor. BTW I still have my Interact in its box and the MS Basic on tape and some other stuff. Looking for a museum or appropriate place to send it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17998940

DonHopkins on Sept 16, 2018 | parent | prev | next [–]

Speaking of weird BASIC features, does anyone know why DECSYSTEM 20's BASIC had a "LISTREVERSE" command?

Yes, it actually did exactly what it sounds like!

Chalk one up for DEC and BASIC. What other programming languages support that feature, huh?

    DECSYSTEM 20 BASIC User's Guide: LISTREVERSE command

    LISTREVERSE
    LISTNHREVERSE

    LISTREVERSE and LISTNHREVERSE print the contents of the
    user's memory area in order of descending line numbers. 
    LISTREVERSE precedes the output with a heading,
    LISTNHREVERSE eliminates the heading.

    LISTREVERSE

    EQUIV             10:53                      13-NOV-75

    40    END
    35    PRINT "THE EQUIVALENT CURRENT IS",I, " AMPERES"
    25    I=E1/R
    10    INPUT R
    5     INPUT E1

    READY